[Podcast] An Interview With the First Black Person in America to Have a Liquor License

Jackie Summers is an author, public speaker, the creator of Sorel Liqueur, and was the first black person in America to have a license to make liquor. We talked about what it takes to obtain a license to make liquor (hint: it's nearly impossible), diversity & inclusion, fitness, and what it's like to overcome a tumor that he was given only a 5% chance to make it through following his surgery. A must-read article is this Esquire Magazine article that Jackie was featured in.

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MACHINE-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript likely contains errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.

 Welcome to episode number four of the built unstoppable podcast. I'm your host, Justin Levy and today I'm joined by Jackie summers. Jackie's an author, public speaker, the creator of Sarah liqueur, was the first black person in America to have a license to make liquor. Thanks for joining the podcast today, Jackie.

 Justin, it's always a pleasure. How have you been?

I've been good. You know, can't complain in with being home stuck at home, it's given me an opportunity to start building out my own kind of gym in my garage and excellent, you know, do some fun stuff like that.

So let's kick it off with something that is probably on everyone's mind. What does it take to obtain a liquor license and then even further to go to a launch a liquor brand?

Ideally to launch to launch a brand or to acquire liquor license, you need to have a million dollars and be part of a Laker family. If you don't have that kind of money, and if you don't have that kind of access, for the most part, you are shit out of luck.

But if you don't have those things, what I recommend, the thing that works for me, is a combination of unrelenting stubbornness and not having the ability to know what you can't do.

 I don't know what I can't do. So I just do things I don't get the thing impossible.

Because if you don't have a mean books, and if you don't, don't come a flute from a liquor family, launching a liquor brand is close to impossible.

Well, you proved all that wrong for sure.

When I got my liquor license in 2012, I was the only black guy in America with a license to make liquor now, I think there were five of us. But what you find out in retrospect is that these barriers are not accidental, they are deliberate.

The story I like to tell at this point is the first person of color, the first black person in this country in America to get a license to practice law was 1896. He passed the bar. And there was once of the academic community was to move the goalposts, they said, Now, before you can apply to take the bar, you have to have a BA.

So the people who could afford to get a bachelor's degree, handful of them got their degrees and applied for the plan for the bar. And when they saw that happen, they changed the rules again, they said now if before you can take the ball, you have to have a bachelor's degree in a four year law degree and if you couldn't afford six years of school being a lawyer was something that was out of access who you it was just beyond your reach.

It's not this similar with liquor. With liquor. You can trace pretty much all of the existing laws back to right. prohibition when they repealed the volstad Act, the people who made a lot of money, running alcohol illegally pay politicians to rewrite the laws to make access pretty much impossible. Yeah. So if you want to, again, and this is speaking specifically specifically for liquor, I'm not sure if it's the same for wine or for beer.

But if you want to have a license to make liquor, it's a 10 year background check and everywhere you've lived everywhere, you've worked every dime you've made, federal city and state. It's A criminal background check if there's anything on your record, it's an automatic disqualification. They want you to hold a lease on your physical space, which will be empty and unoccupied and only costing you money for the duration of the process which can take up to two years. They want you to list the serial numbers of your equipment, wow. You're on your application. So they want you to buy a few hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment before it started. Wow. So it's designed to prohibit entry to market. So again, if you if you have million bucks, if you come from like a family, you're good to go. If you don't, it's gonna be challenging.

 That's incredible. And I didn't know about that. But you know what you're talking about the first you know, person to ever earn their law degree. It's what we've seen with a lot of things right, the moving goalposts so it's okay you know, you need to do this. Well, someone does that.

You know, whether they're of color or of poverty, you know, they, and then all of a sudden it's like, ooh, someone accomplished that they weren't supposed to. So now we got to move that a little further. But they weren't supposed to accomplish that. We'll move that a little further for every one else. So, unfortunately, it's something we continue to see these days. Now, what's the idea behind the name of the brand, sir Raul.

So there's a beverage called sorrow that's been in the Caribbean for about four centuries. It first started to be made in the 16th century when they began to import hibiscus flowers from West Africa into the Caribbean as part of the spice trade. And they would make a tea from the flowers. It's incredibly healthy for you. It's full of vitamin C. It's got Antioch anti microbials it's just really good part of what they would do to preserve the tea. British naval officers all had to step in this room as part of the salary so they'd put some money in the tea. And that would make it last a little bit longer. And this got to be a beverage that was mixed with other spices.

Depending on where you fell in the Caribbean, if you were in Jamaica, for example, you probably got it with ginger and cardamom and all spice. If you were deeper in the spice route, you probably got cinnamon and nutmeg. Like all Caribbean families, I had a version that I was doing in my kitchen that I thought was pretty good. But I couldn't call mine sorrow, because I have a speech impediment and I had great difficulty pronouncing ours and ELLs. So for me trying to say sorrow is like trying to say, rural or to our it's an awful word. However, I'd had eight years of enunciation classes in public school are the kids that got to go play after school.

I saw a speech pathologist.

And here's one of the things that I learned.

Words that end in a down sound are sad.

Oh, is the third word well is happy, and I can pronounce it. So my brain which is based on sorrow is called swell. So our sound like a dumb ass anytime I see the name. That's so two things.

 So that one, I travel to the Caribbean. Often with my family. I've been to, I don't know, five to seven islands Now, over the years, if not more, and I always seek out hot sauce that's particular to that area right particular to that island because kind of the what you were seeing everyone has a different hot sauce not only to the island, but to different people that are making it at home.

I remember when we're in either st Maarten or Aruba, or it might have been both. Like we we pulled into some type of market on the side of the street and this older woman was selling it out of the back of her car. By far, some of the best hot sauce I've ever had. There's no label on it, no nothing. So I'm gonna have to go search that out the next time. I'm in the Caribbean to taste it.

 And one of the other things that you mentioned with kind of ours and ELLs, is something I made fun of, usually is that I typically don't sound out syllables like n in G, and things like that. And it's somewhat from grown up in the northeast in spending time in Boston. in things like That nature. So I have to very consciously do it and I still miss it probably 90% of the time. So I understand exactly where you are, but it is interesting and I didn't know about the the sadness versus the happiness but as you said it, it made perfect sense.

 It's a very distinct thing in the lilt in Caribbean accents. For example, when Jamaican taught everything in and a down sound, always sound, anger, anything live everything happy. So it's, it's a it's a very subtle distinction, but I can always tell a Beijing accent from a Jamaican accent.

 As grown up someone with a Jamaican stepfather from the age of one. I can tell you exactly what what that sounds like, you know, throughout his family and of course from him. So Something I've talked over the past couple episodes, I think that's very relevant. You know, these days it been July 2020, that we're recording this and something I know obviously is very important to you is diversity inclusion belong in? How have you seen that? You know, obviously, you had that experience with the liquor industry. Have you seen that become increased or, you know, more kind of transformed and also in the hospitality industry overall, which I know you haven't, you know, you've kind of played in over the years.

 For the last five years I taught at liquor conventions is seminar called, how to build a longer table with the idea Dear, that we can encourage inclusivity and diversity if people who had extended their tables to others who did not yet have, and that seemed like a good idea at the time, and then COVID overthrew all of those tables.

The model that everyone was used to using, suddenly didn't exist anymore. And I find in this current COVID atmosphere, that I lack the desire to reset tables that were never designed to include me, the thing I'm teaching people nowadays is instead of how to make a longer table is how to build your own table. Sure.

So if there's somebody who has a table and I can borrow a hammer, if they can point me in the direction of somebody who's selling the wood at a price that I can manage Or if there's somebody who's willing to help me with the craftsmanship, sure,

I am all for collaborations that actually allow people to move forward. But in a general sense, what I'd like to see nowadays is not as much the constant request for validation as much as people deciding that they would no longer require the validation and setting things up on their own. And it's a harder way.

But at the end of the day, it is ultimately much more satisfying and puts us all on a path toward equality.

I agree wholeheartedly and you know, as someone that spent my past 10 years or so, in Silicon Valley, everyone says that they that they have a culture That, right? We have a great culture. It's based on diversity, belonging and inclusion. This was even before all of this took place. You know, Black Lives Matter in this whole movement that's currently going on.

But I didn't believe when I worked between different companies or consulted with different companies, that they really incrementally meant that in their core, you saw that maybe they hired a person or celebrated a month. But what was that celebration Really? Like? Did they did they hire because that person was the best person for the job? Or did they just hired a checkbox and they that's how they got away with it. And that's not how in my eyes We should, we should be looking at any of this, or we should look at who are the best people for the jobs.

Again, I grew up with a Jamaican stepfather most of my life. I am someone that can truly say I don't see color. I know a lot of people say that, but I grew up with it. So I don't believe that people should hire to check a box. I believe that people should look at the skill sets. And if they don't have the skill sets, train up on the skill sets offer people how to become more diverse or to open their eyes wider. and things of that nature, which I don't see happening that often these days either.

Well, the difference between diversity and equity Diversity being the idea that a mix of backgrounds whether it is religious, ethnic, sexual geographic makes for a better management team in a better company. But equity takes into account the idea that structurally speaking, the AI, the concept of meritocracy is a myth. And the idea that there's a a best candidate will always produce the same kind of candidates because of the way the system is designed to work.

For example, the schools that were in the neighborhood that I grew up in, were impoverished, because the neighborhoods were impoverished because black people were only told they could live in certain neighborhoods and redlining was a real thing. It does not mean that the abilities and the desire And the motivation was not there to do all of those other things. But systemic denial of opportunity is a real thing.

So I always want people to say, I, I want you to see color. I want you to see the idea that on a base level, my experience is different. And that means that the advantages that I was denied, play a part into whether or not I have the opportunity to show I can do a job. I myself, I am unlettered, I did not have the opportunity to go to college. I have no formal degrees of any kind. Almost all of what I know is self taught.

That said, I was a good teacher and I learned a hell of a lot. And I didn't let those things get in my way personally. To the extent that one can, through shares strength of will overcome centuries of systemic oppression.

I have tried to do that with some limited success, but actually want for folks to be able to look and see if you will, if you are a person of color, if you are a woman, if you are a person who is not a heterosexual, there have been absolute barriers put in place that make the idea of meritocracy.

unreliable, and I want for folks to be able to look and go, that's somebody that can do the job. If I give them the chance within that they have proven that they could do it up until this point, because the advantages or disadvantages based on their marginalization have to be taken in To account I want for people to see my color. I don't want for people to deny my lived experience is different by design and not by my design, but by the design of the system. I was raised up in.

I myself am unlettered, I do not have any kind of formal college degrees. Everything that I do is self taught. Fortunately, I was a good teacher and I learned a lot and it is between that and being incredibly stubborn. As I said before, I've been able to, in some cases, circumnavigate some of the systemic barriers that have kept other people from achieving the same kind of things that I have done. At the same time, I always want for people to be able to look and say, actively,

I understand and appreciate that.

The same opportunities that are not afforded to all of us. Here's a great example. The neighborhood that I grew up in in Southeast Queens was poor. And because of that the schools were poor, because schools are tax funded. So I literally, the kids who grew up with that they it's impossible for them to get the same level of education, even though they're theoretically going through the same grades.

I want for people to acknowledge and recognize that we have as much ability and desire and motivation as anyone else, if given the opportunity. And too often we have to make those opportunities for ourselves because we're seen as method lesser than I want for folks to acknowledge this.

I can, you know, I think you and I have a lot to agree on this besides growing up with a Jamaican stepfather and things of that nature, but your comments about where you grew up, you know, I grew up in a gang ridden neighborhood that, you know, my apartment building was riddled with bullet. And High School seemed like this thing that to graduate was like what to us nowadays is to graduate with a master's degree.

Right? So, to come out of that graduate with a bachelor's, then I went on to become one of the first people in the country to have my master's degree and, you know, be where I am now. That's not supposed to happen in that neighborhood. And graduation Ain't you.

But it, you know, fights every day at my middle school or you know, things of that nature happened. And it was a normal part of life. And so I know Exactly. You know, what you mean? I'm sure, obviously there are some differences. But, you know, I know what it means to grow up in poverty and kind of have to claw your way to get to where you are and defy odds.

So, yeah, so turn a recent conversation, and I didn't realize this at all. But during a recent conversation, we realized that we both suffered from tumors that we fought, yes that we both fought back from I'm curious of two things. How did you find out and then how has your journey been, you know, from finding out to being either post tumor or learning to live with it? I those are the pieces I don't know.

So here's how I found out I had been having this This is a decade ago, this is 2010. I, I've been having sciatic pain so bad that I could not sleep. And I will never forget having one night when the pain was so bad that I had my legs up against the wall like an L shape, because that was the only thing that didn't hurt. And I got out of bed at six o'clock in the morning, and laid on the floor with my knees to my chest like a dead cockroach again, because that was the only thing that didn't hurt.

And I laid there for about three hours trying to decide if I should call in sick to work. And eventually, around 9am I got up because I needed to pee and I attempted to cross my living room floor. And then the various first step I took my leg gave out and as I fell, I hit my head on a bottle of wine and also the night before. So I'm lying there on the floor. Pain streaming dominant leg so bad I can't stand up, not on the back of my head anymore.

My first thought was, holy shit, I can't have sex. I don't even have a girlfriend. But I'm no good on my back on my front. I can't sit, I can't stand, I can't walk, I need to see a doctor. And when my doctor could not find out why my static was not improving, he sent me for an MRI, and they found a tumor, the size of a golf ball lodged inside my spine that was cutting off.

That was kind of off my nerves. So that's, that's how I found out I had a tumor.

Well, then. Now did you have sir I'm assuming I guess that you had surgery to remove it, and then had some type of physical therapy after that regained the strength and what have you.

So the interesting thing is the, the type of tumor that they thought I had, is called an opinion moment, and it's Usually malignant. So they told me right up front, you have a 95% chance of death and a 50% 50% chance of paralysis if you live because in order to get to this tumor, we need to take a bone out of your spine, and then take the spinal cord out through the hole we're going to make and do neurosurgery on your spinal cord because that's where this tumor is attached to.

They said if it turns out to be we have this we got to take it out. But if it turns turns out to be what we think it is, it's already in your lymphatic system. You have maybe six months. I consented to the surgery, they remove this tumor. It turned out to be benign. 5% chance and I I hit I hit the I hit the jackpot. And I was standing the next day to everybody's surprised Wow.

So again, impossible things is kind of my thing.

Well, I mean, a lot of people that visit this podcast are those that will find it through other methods. You know, mine was a brain tumor. And the way that I found out was that I had a tonic clonic seizure, which is well known to be Grandma, kind of a more official term for it, but I had a tonic clonic seizure.

And I shattered both my shoulders, you know, had to have the humor I rebuilt and both of them the rotator cuffs lost so much bone that they had to rebuild them with donor bone. I have two screws, my left shoulder I have no wires and anchors and stuff all throughout both shoulders. And when they're doing all the MRIs to figure out why I had this.

They found That I had a brain tumor on the front left side of my brain and what that affected was both speech and motor skills. And so naturally I had to have have it removed. And, you know, one of the things Well, luckily, there was no potential impact on if I had a high percentage to live or die, right.

I didn't have your situation where you know, 95% kind of death rate versus 5%. You never know what can happen in brain surgery, right, like, one touch the wrong way and you know, thankfully, you know where we live. I go to UCSF and they're number three in the country, for neuro.

So I get to be treated by the doctors that write journal articles that other doctors in the country learn from. So I've just had that, that, you know, ability that just came of happening to live around here. But it was scary. I remember sitting in the car two things happened one night when I was recovering from my shoulders pre brain surgery, now sitting there with my wife and my mother in law who had flown out from Connecticut to be with us, and we're watching some movie.

It was similar to the notebook but I don't remember what the name of it was. And the guy's wife had died from cancer. And he ended up finding that in a drawer upstairs in their desk, she had written written a card for Everything into the future, every birthday for him and his daughter, every anniversary at every Christmas, everything that she had left something forever for them.

I went to bed that night and started to sob. And I looked over at my wife and I said, I'm scared, I'm going to have to do that for you. And then fast forward to the morning that I was going in for the surgery. You know, it's a was about a 30 to 40 minute drive from my house to there. I couldn't talk.

I was frightened, even though I knew I had one of the best surgeons in the country. Literally, I was frightened by it. And I would come to find out that my wife, she just said she had to get up. And you know, when I was being prepped for the surgery, you know, the neurosurgeon came By and talk to me and some things like that.

What I ended up finding out later was that she had gone around the corner and began hysterically, crying so much that her contacts have come out of her eyes. And that was scary. I mean, the night that I came out of the surgery, my heart went into a fib. That whole experiences is, as you know, dealing with a different tumor. It's scary.

It's by far one of the scariest things that you can go through within. I think we both had tumors within the two areas that no one hopes to have them. But I gotta tell you what you're describing sounds terrifying.

Well when I went through this after I consented to the surgery, I did the only thing that made sense to me. I went on vacation. Me and 10 friends in a beach house in Cancun and shopping carts full of alcohol and I made peace with death. Yes, I I completely made peace with the idea that I was gonna die and when I got back to the hospital, when I when I went when I got to the when I got to the room, I've never been more common my whole life because I knew I was going to die.

It was okay, I wish I could have said the same. But you know, the, the one I guess bad thing for me was well, besides a lot of it, but was that the hospital room the surgery got moved up. The you know, I got a call on Sunday night and the surgeon said Hey, listen, we have a bed freed up, you know we can do the surgery this Saturday. So we need to come in everyday this week for, you know a number of you know, you got to get tested for this that the other thing before we do the surgery, the surgery was initially supposed to be a couple weeks out.

My surgery fell on September the 11th. So every year for the rest of my life as we, you know, think about, you know what happened on September the 11th here in America. I get to look at you know, one of the scariest moments that happened in my life. It's just how life happened for us. 

But so before all this happened, you know, before I found out that we both kind of shared a similar journey of having tumors and everything we first met in fitness have a fitness challenge. that several of our mutual friends do every year it's you know, something that a friend of ours Lord Gassner opening and myself had kind of started. I don't know what it is.

Now I'd have to go back and look say five years ago or something at this point. And 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge, yes. 10,000 kettlebells swings in a month, which sucks, but every year I've gotten through it.

Now, I know that fitness obviously something very important to I've seen plenty of photos and videos that you've posted over time. Where you did you use fitness previously, and after the fact when learning about your tumor slash, you know, having the surgery or when did all of that passion come about for you. 

I was always athletic. I've always played in sports teams go all through school. But the fitness has been part of my life as I have gotten older. I'm 50, I'll be 53 in October, it's become part of my life because I want to be able to continue to move around, or I see people who are my age and younger, who groan when they stand up who can't see their feet, who have not taken care of myself of themselves.

I want to make sure that as long as I'm breathing, this flesh that is carrying me around, but is in the best shape possible because that lets me do the things that need to be done in my life. Life. My life has demands that require me to be able to have stamina. And if I don't do those things, if I don't eat well, if I don't hire raid if I don't exercise if I don't meditate, I don't have the stamina to do my life demands.

So the wild there are definitely aesthetic of values that are attached to taking care of yourself physically. Mostly, I want to make sure that I'm training my body as well as I'm training my mind.

Sure. And, you know, it's funny one, one story that I've always shared, especially with my grandmother, my grandfather now is unfortunately passed away, but they used to own a condo down in Florida, right, that kind of winter escape type thing. And my grandfather at the time was, I don't know say in his 70s or something like that and I went down there for a week with them. And you know, everyone you know, elderly you're pushing around walkers with their tennis balls on them and playing foster Ball all day and things like that. And he would go for long swims and, you know, go golf, say nine holes or something, you know, every couple days. And a lot of those people that were pushing those walkers and doing these things were younger than him, you know, and yeah, and that's always been something and now my father in law is in his early 60s.

And if you saw him you would never once guess it. And he is stronger than most 20 year olds, not even aesthetic yet. You know, he's not trying to have a six pack and big biceps and all that. He just wants to have endurance. And that guy can. When I see him, he runs me into the ground.

Like he'll be like, let's go move three tons of stone around the house, and Now I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to do this workout and then I really want to swim for two hours and then we're coming back and we're doing this and even myself who stays extremely fit, gets tired trying to keep up with him. Yeah, and that's just him.

That's his TNA. That's you know, he very similarly finds true value in staying fit into him. It's not a statics at this point. He, he doesn't care about aesthetics. He just wants to endre his life and feel healthy and be able to do the things he likes now with you know, his grandkids and be able to go play you know, he loves to scuba dive and ski and all these things. He just wants to be able to do those and not be out of breath. Not well. Not in healthy way, right?

So one of the questions that I asked everybody, and I'm very interested to hear what you have to your answer is is what does being built unstoppable mean to you?

For me, it means not letting anyone else's expectations of you ever limit you. I'll tell you a story if I've got a minute left.

Again, I went to elementary school in Bayside, Queens, and the boys played stickball during the recess. I don't remember what the girls did. The biggest kids always win the stipple game and that meant that the fifth graders and I'll never forget the first day of being a fifth grader at ps 46th Bayside, finally being the big kids movie. I've been in this big ball game. And I wasn't picked first or second to third, I think I was born. Again, other people's expectations. But my very first at bat, I hit a home run, hit a home run over the fence out of the park instantly like being last vote bowl last game over. And nobody expected of me. But me.

And I remember being 10 years old thinking, I knew I can do it.

A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to unworked other people's expectations of them from the expectations of them of themselves. Listen, if you think we can do it, fuck with it when things do your thing. It's not trying to prove anyone wrong. It's just proving to yourself that you already know

I completely agree And to hear that at such a young age for you, is incredible. When I mean I've always tried to work to defy odds, right from growing up in poverty to, to where I am currently, but but a more recent story for me is, I'll always remember it was the Wednesday before my surgery on my shoulders. And my neurosurgeon who's or I'm sorry, my shoulder, sir surgeon came in and said, you'll never be able to lift weights again. I'm going to get you back to normal as much as possible.

But the mobility and the stress on your shoulders are it's just going to be different. And a lot has happened since right and I won't go into all those details. It's been all positive, but you know, I have completed Did, I don't know 12 or 15 Spartan races, then, you know participated in probably close to 10 go ruck challenges. 2017 I completed my trifecta, including, you know, being at the Spartan World Championship, which was a eight and a half hour run at 10,000 feet, elevation at certain parts.

It was defying the odds that I was told I could not do that I would never be able to do what again. that drove me to prove everyone wrong. Five months after have my shoulder surgeries, I was swimming in open water in St. Lucia. And I'll never forget coming back. And I showed him you know, one of my visits I showed him and he asked me to send the video to him.

Because he had never had someone do that and that's all you know most people he operates on one shoulder and never mind both shoulders and the kind of depth of surgeries he had to do he has that video I don't know who he's shown it to since then because I don't you know having kept in contact with him but it was the Find the odd that told me I could not and and I couldn't to continue to do that and have always done that. So finally, you were featured in a Esquire magazine article, I include that in the show notes.

 But beyond that, where can people find you on the web, whether that's social or website, etc. The website which pretty much is the go to is Jackie's numbers dot NYC. On Instagram, it's the libertarian Li ke UO or a RIN? That's my mom's nickname for her kids because she doesn't like calling with alcohol. Whether it would be jack from the ln theme on Facebook, yeah. Lm perfect.

 Well, hey, Jackie, I think this was a phenomenal conversation that, you know, we're able to talk about a number of topics. And, you know, I thank you for being so inspiring to those that are going to hear this podcast. And you know, you've been a great guest today. So thank you.

An absolute pleasure. Please stay safe and take care.

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