From the Ground Up: A Family Legacy in North Minneapolis
One of the first lessons that my parents taught my siblings and me is entrepreneurship. My father was the imam of Masjid An-Nur, and my mother worked in administration at the masjid, but they both had side gigs outside of their full-time jobs. My dad’s first entrepreneurial endeavor was a janitorial business, and my mom turned her skills as a seamstress into a profitable side hustle.
My mom taught me how to be in community. Her role as “first lady” of the masjid could be very challenging because so many community members came to her with issues and concerns. I have a very vivid memory of her cleaning, from top to bottom of the house, for a friend who was diagnosed with cancer. She would spend all day offering comfort, providing service, and finding solutions for her community, then come home and care for her family and her children. And then, at the end of the day, she would turn on her sewing machine and get to work.
My mom sewed dresses for many of her fellow “first ladies” of the Black churches and congregations in North Minneapolis, and she also sewed uniforms for Harvest Preparatory School (now Harvest Best Academy)—skirts, jumpers, pants for the students. She taught me that being Muslim doesn’t mean sacrificing on style—she always dressed my siblings and me in bespoke clothing that she made herself. She even sewed prom dresses for my friends and me.
And my father, with whom I had an especially close connection, taught me how to be guided by Islam. He would sit down with me for deep conversations about our faith, speaking to me about how the Qur’an is our guiding light.
I never had another vantage point, and I never wanted one—I felt fully fulfilled in my spiritual life from a young age. I didn’t know many other Muslims my age who were born into the religion, but I was always very sure of my faith.
My parents believed that being a good Muslim meant being a good neighbor. They aren’t just prominent leaders—they’re also kind, compassionate humans. I saw them practice kindness and compassion in so many small moments over the course of my childhood. I remember one day, when we were making a delivery of fruit baskets to the nursing home down the street, I was in a bad mood. My mom told me: “You better give every single one of these people a smile because if you ain’t got nothing else, you can give somebody a smile.” By the time we left that day, I was so fulfilled. It changed me to realize the power of sharing kindness with someone else.
My parents’ kindness extended beyond our own faith community. They’d encourage my siblings and me to make friends with other children in our neighborhood who were Christian and even attend Vacation Bible School programming with my Christian friends. From our perspective, it wasn’t sacrilegious—it was serving as representatives of Islam and building mutually respectful relationships with our friends of other faiths.
My parents also taught us to build relationships with neighbors and community members across racial and ethnic boundaries. When I was young, most of our community was African American, but it became a melting pot with refugees from Laos, Vietnam, and Somalia moving in. Along with our rich history of Jewish residents, this blend of cultural backgrounds has given North Minneapolis a pizzazz that I’ve never found anywhere else.
That’s one of the reasons that I consider myself a Northsider For Life, an “NFL.” I’ve never had an address outside of the 55411 zip code. In fact, I recently moved back into my childhood home—the same house that I watched being built from the ground up.
My family and I saw the Northside community develop over the decades, with homes being built, neighborhoods being constructed, businesses coming and going. My father was one of the first African Americans to own and operate a food truck, which would eventually become El-Amin’s Fish House. He started with turkey legs, polish sausages, and hot dogs, and he would recruit the family to travel to various shows, fairs, and festivals throughout Minnesota. I remember early Saturday mornings, we would wake up before dawn, load up the food truck, and drive out to the Chisago or Anoka County Fairgrounds, where we would spend all day vending. Soon, we developed our signature fish recipe with the help of another Muslim chef, and that solidified our legacy. We became known as the Fish House.
Seeing my parents succeed in their small businesses infected me with the same entrepreneurial bug. From a young age, I wanted to do my own thing and be my own boss.
I would pitch my ideas to my mom, and if she liked my pitch, she would lend me a few dollars to get started. I was always a great saleswoman, so I would use her loan to buy stock—clothing, jewelry—and sell it to my friends and my peers.
My parents also taught me that having faith values means putting certain limitations on how you make money. I knew that if a specific product would harm my community, I couldn’t go around selling it to my people. I also knew that selling to my people required stewarding relationships with them—I couldn’t just sell something and then leave. I’m part of this community.
An entrepreneur is not a comfortable thing to be. There are always challenges and failures along the way. But if you have this enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, you’d rather deal with those bumps in the road than work a 9-to-5 job, if it means you can pursue your passions and practice vocational and financial self-sufficiency. I think the adversity has made me more strategic and more resilient.
After volunteering and working at Al-Maa’uun for over 25 years, I realized that one of my biggest strengths is my ability to evaluate systems, processes, and procedures. I can take a look at a business or an organization, identify critical gaps, and create a plan to fill those gaps. I was the IT person at Masjid An-Nur and helped bring them into the 21st century.
Now, I’m taking that skill and turning it into a small business. As the President and CEO of KNE Resource Services, I go into businesses that are out of compliance with relevant laws and regulations, and I help them understand what’s required of them to stay in operation. Often these requirements aren’t clear to business owners because compliance isn’t something that’s been taught to us. Maybe a business has gone through a leadership transition, or they’ve secured a large federal grant, or they’ve been fined by the state—whatever the situation, I look at the relevant documents and contracts to create a plan for them to stay in compliance.
I’m also working on a small AI language model to help businesses stay in compliance. I think there’s potential for AI to help us automate our systems, answer our questions, and become more efficient. After 25 years of putting together these systems from scratch, I’m excited about providing tools for our small businesses and nonprofits that make compliance easier. With what I’ve learned from my family and my community and what I’ve been given by God, I’m hoping to benefit others and give back.
Legacy is big in my family. The lessons from my parents are the same ones that I’ve passed down to my own family. As a teen mother, the path was not always smooth, but my children have been my greatest blessing and my greatest reward. My oldest son in particular has been a companion throughout my life, because in many ways we grew up together. I have four children, whose ages range from 13 to 34, and five stepchildren, as well as three grandbabies.
In my family, we’re always praising the names of those who came before us and those who built our community from the ground up. As an African American Muslim family, we have ancestors whose history in this country and in this community stretches back decades and centuries.
Especially those who are no longer with us deserve to have their names spoken and their contributions remembered into future generations. All year long—not just in February—we’re paying homage to those ancestors and to those still with us.
Kamillah El-Amin is the President & CEO of KNE Resource Services, Economic Empowerment Agency based in North Minneapolis, MN. Through her work, Kamillah specializes in creating employment and business opportunities for underserved populations in North Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. She is also the founder of Hurriya Village Development Group (HVDG), an economic development organization dedicated to supporting local businesses, organizations, and residents through strategic collaboration and community-driven initiatives.
Kamillah has also held multiple leadership positions within Masjid An-Nur and Al-Maa'uun – The Neighborly Needs Program, where she contributed significantly to stabilizing families and fostering economic opportunities. Her deep-rooted knowledge of local resources and strong community relationships allows her to effectively connect North Minneapolis residents with the tools and services they need to achieve financial independence and stability.
Born in Illinois and raised in North Minneapolis since the age of five, Kamillah is a proud lifelong Northsider (NFL). Despite traveling the world, she has always remained rooted in 55411, committed to uplifting her community.
Whether through real estate development, nonprofit leadership, or entrepreneurship, Kamillah's mission remains the same—to support, assist, and empower underserved families so they can focus on what truly matters: themselves, their loved ones, and their future.