The above image, Quaheed: I Was Blessed, was created by artist Linnie Greenberg as part of the 2021-2022 Souls Shot Portrait Project exhibition.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Quaheed Bailey had style. He cared about his appearance, his mother Erica Dixon said, and he liked to help others look good, too, by cutting their hair.
He enjoyed giving his friends and brothers shape-ups and he did his own as well. In fact, he was looking into going to barber school with the goal of getting his license to cut hair professionally.
But in the meantime, he needed a job, so he interviewed at a company that handles security for concerts and other events at the stadiums.
“He came home and he was telling me, ‘Mom, I don’t think I got the job,’ and I was telling him, ‘You got the job.’”
While he was waiting to hear back, nearly one year ago, Quaheed was shot and killed May 19, 2018 in Nicetown, a block away from the street where he grew up.
No arrests have been made. Erica met recently with the detectives who are working on the case and a motive for his murder has not yet been identified.
About two weeks after his death, Erica said the security company called his phone offering him the job.
Quaheed was born April 8, 1997 in Philadelphia to Erica and her former husband, Antray Graves, who is now deceased. Quaheed was Erica’s third child and her first son.
Her first four children, Quairra, Niairra, Quaheed and Saheed were all born within a few years of each other, so they had built-in playmates.
“They were so close in age that I would always tell them that they didn’t really need to go outside and play when they said they were bored,” Erica said. “There were two boys and two girls, so they could just play together.”
She tried to instill the message to her kids that they were all that they had, and as a result, they remained close as they got older.
Quaheed was different from the others, though—cool and laid back.
“He was really quiet, he didn’t speak or say much, he tried to stay out of trouble, tried to stay out of the way,” Erica said. “It made him so different and made him stand out a little more.”
As he got older, and taller—he was 6 feet, 3 inches tall—he became a bit of a ladies’ man, Erica said, pointing out that “he didn’t chase the ladies, but the ladies definitely chased him. In Nicetown, they gave him the nickname ‘Tall and Sexy.’”
Quaheed attended Philadelphia public schools, including Simon Gratz High School, and he obtained his diploma from Vision Quest.
He had turned 21 just six weeks before his death, and celebrated by going to a strip club for the first time as well as SugarHouse Casino.
Erica’s favorite memory of Quaheed took place one Thanksgiving. One of her daughters asked why people on Facebook were saying they were on their way over to eat, and it turns out Quaheed had invited a bunch of their friends.
“Quaheed said, ‘It’s Thanksgiving. Everybody eats,’” Erica said.
She added: “I always said if I can’t do nothing else for you, I can feed you, and everybody who was hungry can always come to my house and eat. So when he said that, it put a smile on my face, and I thought, ‘He is right. It’s Thanksgiving and everybody’s going to eat.’”
When he was younger, the family used to have family reunions, and in recent months Quaheed had been asking when they could have another one.
Planning started, and the day prior to his murder, the family held a fish fry to raise funds to help pay for the reunion.
Instead of using the money for that, though, Erica’s relatives chose to give it to her to pay for Quaheed’s funeral expenses.
In addition to his mother, sisters and brother, Quaheed is survived by two additional siblings, Sironti and Santi, stepfather Larry Dixon, and countless other family members and friends. He is laid to rest at Merion Memorial Park.
Date: 2018-05-19
Location: 1900 E Cayuga St, Philadelphia, PA
Leave a Reply