‘On fire for change.’ Recent protests through the Tri-Cities eyes of a former Black Panther

Wayne Jenkins is no stranger to the struggle against racism.

The Pasco pastor was one of the founding members of the Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party. The 68-year-old sees the echoes of what he fought for then again sweeping across the country.

“I think it’s a breath of fresh air,” he told the Herald. “It has turned from an event into a movement. Events don’t change anything, movements do. .... Now you’re hearing the voice of the people.”

Now the pastor at New Hope Baptist Church and chaplain at Kadlec Regional Medical Center said race relations have improved in some ways since he joined the revolutionary political group that formed in California in the 1960s to fight police brutality.

“I hope this moves us into the place to where we get out of color. We get out of race. We get out of separation. And we start to unite as one people,” he said.

There is a long way to go still, he said, still believing many institutions, including law enforcement, are still flawed with discrimination against people of color.

“Racism is ingrained in the system. It provides capital. It provides influence. It provides power,” he sad. “We’re coming to find out that we’re all one people. The powers that be kept us divided. When it comes to money and human welfare, money wins out every time.”

The death of people of color at the hands of police is nothing new, he said, but because coronavirus is keeping people at home, they couldn’t avoid seeing George Floyd’s death and being outraged by it.

He believes people from all races and backgrounds have joined together to try to find what is at the heart of the racism the nation’s and the world’s institutions.

“We should not be afraid to open ourselves up and to hear what we might think is real uncomfortable,” he said. “Because until we become uncomfortable and get out of our safe zones and our preconceived notions and our fears and our anxieties and expose ourselves, then we become teachable.”

Growing up in the South

Jenkins grew up in Mississippi in the 1950s in a family of sharecroppers during a time when they needed to be afraid of offending white people for fear of ending up dead.

For him, white privilege showed up early in life, even in his elementary school books.

“’Little Black Sambo’ was this African kid with a bone in his nose, a top knot, a spear and a loin cloth,” he said. “Anything that dealt with Black people was erased other than we came from Africa and we were a backwards people.”

His white counterparts had Dick and Jane books, which represented the American dream of having a house, two kids and a dog.

“They played on a paved street with trees in a beautiful neighborhood. Dick had a hobby horse, and it was painted like a Palomino and I thought it was the coolest thing,” he said.

By comparison, his family lived in a one-room shack in the country with an outhouse and no running water.

Jenkins said the racism in Mississippi was oppressive, and he grew up to be afraid of white people — afraid to look them in the eye.

“You get the talk. The talk is that you make sure you get home. You’re respectful. It’s yes ma’am and no ma’am and yes, sir and no sir, and you stay in your place,” he said.

After his family moved to Tucson, it took a teacher mentoring him to get beyond his fear. He worked with him to bring up his reading and math skills.

Becoming an activist

It was after Jenkins moved to Seattle in high school that he became an activist.

He was in 10th grade when activist Stokely Carmichael spoke at Garfield High School. He told students they could form a Black student union and print a Black newspaper, so they could write about what goes on at their school from their perspective.

They began organizing with help from college students, and he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His first protest was a sit-in at the University of Washington in support of a Black Student Union at the school.

“It felt new,” he said. “It felt like we had a voice. .... We weren’t going with that old mindset of just be patient. We’d been patient. We were on fire for change.”

He heard lectures from Malcolm X and read about other civil rights activists like Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois, and learned about historical figures like Harriet Tubman.

One day he saw on the TV news a group of young Black men carrying guns into the capitol in Sacramento, Calif. They were opposing gun regulations being brought by some Republicans to stop people from openly carrying firearms.

At the time, the first chapter of the Black Panther Party, originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was engaging in armed citizen patrols to protect Black residents from Oakland police brutality.

“They stood on the capitol steps and said that we have no more patience for the loss of Black lives in our community,” Jenkins recalled.

Later, Jenkins went with Aaron and Elmore Dixon to Oakland to meet with original Black Panther founders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and returned to start the Seattle chapter.

Olympia gun protest

Though President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act years earlier, life for Black citizens and their interactions with police hadn’t improved.

Jenkins said it was a time when a white friend would be stopped by a police officer for making a wide right turn and the driver could complain to the officer without fear.

But Jenkins knew he could be killed for doing the same.

“On Friday night and Saturday night, more Black people lost their lives at the hands of the police,” he said. “Getting pulled over for a broken taillight. Getting pulled over for you fitting a description. Being pulled over for driving Black. You get pulled over and somebody was going to lose their life.”

So the activists armed themselves and began patrolling the streets. They took an active role, but it was never intended to become violent, he said. They just wanted to make a change through protest.

Then in 1968, a group of Black Panthers displayed rifles and shotguns at Rainier Beach High School to defend a group of Black students threatened and attacked by white students, according to a history of the Seattle Chapter by Linda Holden Givens.

In response, legislators in Olympia reacted by trying to pass a law that would make it a gross misdemeanor to exhibit firearms or other weapons to intimidate others.

That brought Jenkins and a group of armed Black Panthers to Olympia to protest. No one was threatened and no one was hurt, and after about a half hour they left, he said.

“When they showed us, they always showed the picture of Blacks having guns. Doesn’t the Constitution say that we have the right to bear arms, but that means white people have the right to bear arms,” he said. “Black people do not have the right to bear arms.“

After the Olympia protest, the tenor had changed. They had more support from a wider range of people, though nationally they also were labeled by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as the No. 1 threat to America.

‘We had a voice’

“The propaganda said we were militants. Why? Because they showed Black people with guns. That’s dangerous. They’re not supposed to have those. That’s for us,” he recalled.

“We were radical. We went against the power system. We were militant because we had a voice,” he said. “When Black people stand up for themselves, we’re always considered radical.

Jenkins and others were accused of trying to incite the overthrow of the U.S. government and inciting a riot.

“We got killed for marching. We got killed for standing. We got killed for going into the courthouse to say that we were brought to court on trumped up charges. We got put in jail for having a voice in the courtroom,” he said.

Jenkins said much of the good the group did is often forgotten. They organized free breakfast and lunch programs, offered free medical and dental clinics and sponsored tutoring and other help for the community.

Ending racism

Since his time in the Black Panther Party, Jenkins has been a fashion designer, owned a clothing store, and been an alcohol and drug counselor.

Now as a chaplain, he works to make sure people become better and not just bitter.

“Relationships in some areas between Black and white people have changed, but where it’s stagnant is in the powers that be,” he said.

While he’s skeptical about wording of defund the police, he said there is some truth to the idea that police are being asked to do things that they don’t need to, such as being mental health professionals, social workers, domestic violence counselors and housing experts.

He doesn’t expect to see the end of racism in his lifetime, but he is hopeful it might happen in his children’s lifetime.

He urged people who don’t understand to talk to people of color and hear their stories, because change can only come about if people understand each other.

“Accept the fact that you don’t know,” Jenkins said. “It was important that Black people understand white people, not understanding could cost you your life. But it was never important for white people to understand Black people.”

This story was originally published June 21, 2020 at 2:01 PM.