A Higher Promise for Black Lives

Sa’Mya and Amari are tired of facing the same microaggressions every day. 

Sa’Mya doesn’t want people pulling at her curls, making her feel like an animal rather than a person. Amari doesn’t want to be followed by employees while she shops as if she’s intruding on their space. But that anger is exactly what fueled their starting A Higher Promise.

Sumner Academy junior Sa’Mya Lewis and her sister Kansas City Community College freshman Amari Lewis started their business — A Higher Promise — in June, selling signs with a black heart design to spark conversations of racial inequality and create a sense of comfort for everyone in the community.

“I feel an angry-ness and frustration towards the world,” Sa’Mya said. “I used that as energy and turned it into a positive thing.”

Their signs feature a simple black heart over a white sign, meant to be a symbol of unity while giving a voice to Black lives, according to Sa’Mya. The sisters agreed that they wanted the signs’ meaning to be open to interpretation, allowing each person who buys one to find their own meaning in the black heart design.

The sisters wanted to first focus on bringing their business to predominantly white communities like Johnson County because it was in those areas they didn’t see the same inclusion of Black people as in their own community, Wyandotte County.

“I think that it being specifically a heart, it softens people to the [Black Lives Matter] message,” Amari said. “And that way, they can receive it more than they would if it was just words, and they were like, ‘I don’t like that because it’s a political statement.’ A heart can’t be a political statement.”

Having been a part of Stage Right and subsequently becoming friends with East students and others who live in Johnson County, they noticed the lack of conversations over racial inequality and wanted to make minorities living in Johnson County feel safer and seen.

“The area that we live in is super diverse and very inclusive,” Amari said. “But when we go out and do theater in Johnson County, it’s really not. It was a culture shock almost to be out there and experience those new experiences. So being able to put [signs] out there and see our friends take our signs and put them in their yards and create a safe space for us was really the whole point of A Higher Promise.”

But their intentions for A Higher Promise aren’t solely based on spreading awareness and starting conversations about race — it’s also a way to remember and honor their brother.

Amari and Sa’Myas’ older brother L.J. Lewis died of gun violence in Kansas City in August of 2019. It was his character that inspired their business and leadership — and even the name, A Higher Promise.

L.J. always kept his promises to his family. When he promised to help them practice for their orchestra trips, he always followed through. When he’d promise to come watch one of Amari’s Stage Right Performing Arts performances, even if she didn’t see him in the audience, she’d know he was there from the flowers or card he left for her. Now, Amari and Sa’Mya are keeping their own promises to him while keeping his memory alive through A Higher Promise.

Now, five months after starting A Higher Promise, the sisters have sold over 5,000 signs, managing to reach all 50 states with their business. They spent most of their summer and now their after school hours going through sign orders while working on their website and social media presence.

With the expansion in their business’ popularity, instead of placing the black heart stickers on each sign individually and shipping them personally, they now go through a distributor. The sisters have made connections with multiple local churches and even Donutology, hosting sign distributions at their locations.

Each sign is priced at $10, the profit from their business has been going to the sisters’ college education funds, and they’re looking to begin donating more of the profits to local nonprofits like The Learning Club.

In addition to selling the signs, they’ve been using their Instagram and social media presence, @ahigherpromise, to partake in other supportive actions like promoting Kansas City’s Black Business Saturdays. On Saturdays, they’ll post about different local Black-owned businesses such as Loray Easterwood Realtor and Eat Her Cupcakes, featuring information about the business and a quote from the owner.

Currently, Amari is working on a new website for A Higher Promise that she plans to have up and running by December. The site will break down the history of the Black Lives Matter movement and educational resources for the reader, with articles she included to help educate people about racism and how they can help move the conversation forward to make people more aware of racial injustice.

In the future, the sisters hope to expand their business to promote a range of other social issues, like LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights. 

Senior Reilly Kenney has known the Lewises from Stage Right for four years and agrees that in this predominantly white community, there’s not enough attention paid to working on diversity and inclusion. Living in Johnson County and attending an 85% white school, Kenney’s proud to now see the signs all across yards in the East community and believes they are a big step towards starting conversations about recognizing white privilege.

“In this area, I feel like our eyes aren’t very open to other perspectives,” Kenney said. “We don’t have a very deep understanding of what might be going on in other parts of the country at that moment, or in the past, and [the signs] help us open our eyes and understand one another and really start to recognize how we can make a difference.”

The biggest surprise to the sisters was the amount of support they’ve received. Both Amari and Sa’Mya were shocked at the rapid pace A Higher Promise grew, and the number of people they’d never met who wanted to buy their signs. Sa’Mya wasn’t just shocked at that, but also at the number of white people living in predominantly white communities who were focused on making change.

But for two teen girls, it hasn’t been easy. Amari and Sa’Mya struggled watching their peers relax and enjoy their summer while they were busy packaging and shipping signs or holding a sign pick-up event. A business is a lot to take on, especially as teens still in school.

But both of the girls saw that the outcome of their work far outweighs any social sacrifice. Amari and Sa’Mya know that even when they’d rather just go watch a show or stop feeling the pressure of being a leader in this movement, they’re making change through A Higher Promise for another young Black woman tired of facing discrimination.

“We’re still teenagers,” Amari said. “And so there are things that we want to do like watch TV, or just have time to ourselves. So I will say that the hardest part was kind of giving up our summer, but at the end of it, it was really worth it.”

With all the work they put into the business, Amari and Sa’Mya are proud of the message they’re spreading and the impact it’s leaving in Johnson County — and around the country.

“Especially in Johnson County, where people may be afraid of stepping outside of whatever everybody else is saying, I feel like the black heart is like this safe way of saying, I think… different,” Amari said. “And [the sign is saying] what I think is that all people matter, including Black people, including undocumented people, including wrongly convicted felons, including whoever.”