Overcoming poverty’s odds > Maine’s first black senator began life poor, fatherless

LEWISTON — Growing up poor and fatherless on the mean streets of Newark, N.J., John Jenkins could easily have wound up in a gang, in jail — or dead.

Instead, he became Maine’s first black state senator. How Jenkins beat the odds to also attend an exclusive college, become a martial arts expert and serve two terms as mayor of the state’s second-largest city amazes even him sometimes.

“I ran with gangs for a while,” the 44-year-old Jenkins said. “I’m not proud of some of the things that we as youngsters got involved in, thinking that sometimes might makes right. Unfortunately, some of my friends kept doing it, and most of them are not alive today.”

That it took Maine 176 years to elect a black to the Senate this fall might not be too surprising, considering the state is less than 1 percent African-American. Maine elected its first black to the House of Representatives in the 1970s.

Still, Jenkins’ election shouldn’t be overlooked, some say.

“Certainly, these are small mile posts along the way to changing times, and they show you how society changes, even in a state like Maine, which is slow to change and is still overwhelmingly rural and predominately white,” said former Rep. Herbert Adams of Portland, an amateur historian of the Legislature.

Jenkins, a Democrat, has called Lewiston home since 1970, when he won a scholarship to Bates College. The liberal arts school’s ivy-covered campus was a radical departure from the tough Newark ghetto where Jenkins’ mother enrolled him in karate and Scouting at an early age to keep him off the streets.

Jenkins said his parents got divorced when he was about 8, but not until after his mother had to be hospitalized from the beatings her husband gave her. Jenkins recalls his mother struggling to feed, house and clothe her three children by working in a steaming-hot laundry for 23 years.

One summer, Jenkins offered to help so he could earn some “book money.”

“I was an athlete. I thought I was invincible,” Jenkins said. “I lasted two weeks.”

Thanks to the discipline learned from countless martial arts lessons on a cold, cement floor, as well as the positive influences of his mother and numerous others, Jenkins said, he managed to escape the worst Newark had to offer.

He starred in football and track at high school, where he also became class president. A former teacher remembers Jenkins as having a strong desire “to achieve, to be better.”

“He was just a bright, bubbly, young individual and he always struck me that someday he was going to be somebody,” said Newark Mayor Sharpe James, who taught Jenkins at the former South Side High School. “He would listen, he would follow instructions. He always had this energy about him.”

At Bates, which had few black students, Jenkins had to make some big adjustments. Arriving on campus with years of pent-up racial anger inside him, it took Jenkins a while to realize “suffering was not a black thing. Love was a universal thing.”

Working part time, Jenkins taught karate and played in a small jazz band with some friends. In 1974, he graduated with a psychology degree and soon took a trip to the Far East to perfect his self-defense skills and compete on an international level.

Back in Lewiston, the charismatic Jenkins developed a talent for motivational speaking by giving pep talks to schools and businesses statewide. He opened a karate studio and invested in real estate.

A conversation with the intense, strongly built Jenkins can be an uplifting experience. He peppers his rapid speech with slogans like “Learn to see beyond your circumstances” and “There’s no `I’ in the word `team,’ which stands for Together Each Action Matters and Together Everyone Achieves More.”

Twenty years of lectures like that before classes in Lewiston and around Maine have been a major factor behind Jenkins’ success, said Douglas Hodgkin, a Bates political science professor.

“He’s well known as far as having that exposure to all these kids, and the word gets back to the parents,” Hodgkin said. “Many of those kids are now voters.”

Jenkins became Lewiston’s first black mayor in 1993. He says he ran for re-election after “the people” asked him, winning the largely ceremonial post handily last year. He won the Senate race against an ultraconservative Republican by a 2-to-1 margin.

Among his accomplishments as mayor, Jenkins says, is an initiative to attract more international business by capitalizing on Lewiston’s French heritage; a partnership with neighboring Auburn to cut expenses and improve services; and involving young people in government by putting students on the City Council and other boards.

However, Jenkins has had run-ins with controversy. His critics accuse him of letting several of his properties become dilapidated while falling $17,000 behind in city taxes and defaulting on thousands more in loans while mayor.

“He trashed over half a million dollars of property we had to have torn down,” said Glenn Nutting, owner of Maine Motel and Cabins in Lewiston. “Every time you turned around, there was something you found out about this guy that just didn’t add up.”

Jenkins, who has never been married, admits he has made some bad investments. But he insists “everything has been resolved, all my debts to the city and the bank have been paid off.”

In fact, Jenkins said the experience proves he’s a leader.