Nanny Jack & Co, LLC is named after a real-woman: my great-grandmother and my mother Betty's grandmother, Gertrude B. "Nanny Jack" Jackson, who migrated with her husband Philip "Fiddlin'" Jackson and their children from West Virginia to East Towson, Maryland in the early 1900s. She eventually moved to Sandtown-Winchester, in historic Old West Baltimore, where she was a midwife and grand matriarch of not only our family, but also the block where she and our family lived in this close-knit, segregated community. 
 

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Nanny Jack was 71 years old when I was born and from that day forward, I immediately became "Nanny Jack's boy." It was from her that I learned to value and collect the wisdom of age and the stories and things around me. Nanny Jack said that I would one day be a preacher, thus the Biblical spelling of my name with one, "L". In a sense, her prophecy has been fulfilled; my calling goes far beyond collecting, as I preach and teach about the African American journey. 

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When she passed in 1989, I decided to honor her by naming my company after her.