 Good morning, Highline. So my name is Lin. I'm speaker of Calcutta's student government. I'm also a member of MLK committee So today I would like to introduce our keynote speakers Jenna hand card Jenna hand cards is a lifelong community Storyteller who has spent her career centering and amplifying diverse voice Jenna is a leader of culture and innovator and reveter of women's run co-working and a community company poised to become a modern union of working women's under equity and advocacy team She builds a unit membership programming and community partnerships centering DEI strategy Jenna spent last decade of her career as a broadcast journalist in New York State Kansas City, Missouri and most recently in Seattle, Washington She is a three-time Emmy Awards winner and Edward or Muro award recipients as a reporter and anchor Jenna was responsible for cultivating researching managing writing and producing regional and national news stories in Seattle Jenna create a the Emmy nominated series race and parenting which Explore how families of different backgrounds talked about their kids about race Racisms and identity the series is currently being used as a tool for local school districts and the racial equity groups subsequently Jenna created a follow-up series called race and sports, which was awarded original Emmy Award in 2019 Jenna grew up in Chicago and with a family roots in New York City For the last four years. She's been soaking up in Seattle rain and sanic landscape of Pacific Northwest Our keynote speaker today will be about Courage's stories in the face of resistance. Please welcome Jenna Hanchild Appreciate it. All right. Can everyone hear me? I got this loud mic on you can okay good How's everyone doing this morning? Good Go get just like a little bit more energy. How's everyone doing? I want to make sure she hears you She likes being up here. She starts kicking when she feels lots of energy from the crowd So thank you so much. How many y'all are getting credit for being here today some school credit Okay, a good number of you lots of students. I like that. That's good. That's good Well, thank you. I'll try to make this worth your time and I appreciate training Where'd you go there you go for it for the introduction and for having me and for doors Thank you so much for having me and for the entire MLK committee here at Highline College. Thank you so much For having me here All right, so I have got a question for you all Have you ever heard a story so many times, but you never really examined the fact that you're not in it Have you ever gotten so used to being written out of a narrative that you don't even think twice about some of the most historic moments? So I'm gonna really question the day that we celebrate the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr So I definitely have gotten a little bit tired as I'm sure some of you have of always hearing the same I have a dream speech like I'm sure these said a few other things But I've always been thankful or I felt as if I've been expected to be thankful That we black people got a day on the calendar a space to revel in the achievements of our past Examine our present and activate our future So let's take a moment to revisit the day that Dr. King delivered what many would consider his most quoted speech It's gonna all right. So this was that day that day was August 28th 1963 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC for the March on Washington for jobs and freedom And this is a photo from the agenda from that day Famous civil rights activists and now us representative John Lewis spoke along with Activist Whitney Young's you could see the full program there and as most of us in this room know You know who took the Took the stage that day. It was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He captured us that day But what about this woman on the left anyone know who she is or this woman on the right? Does anyone know who she is so that woman on the left kind of giving dr. King the side eye That's Dorothy Hyatt And that woman on the right That's Anna Arnold Hedgeman So in 1963 Dorothy Hyatt was the president of the National Council of Negro women and Anna Hedgeman was a staff member They were both civil rights activists and leaders Hedgeman was the only woman on the planning committee for the March on Washington She used her ties with the National Council of Churches to bring white pros and Protestants to participate in the March Both Hyatt and Hedgeman noticed that during the planning of the March that male civil rights leaders did not consider women as Speakers or participants in the March on Washington. So there were women as musicians There was even talk of having only the wives of the male civil rights leaders on stage But no discussion about having black women having a voice at the table So in 1963 Hyatt and Hedgeman had the radical vision that women should be on the official program The women who marched the women who organized So Hedgeman drafted a memorandum to the all-male group Noting in light of the role of the Negro women in the struggle for freedom Especially in light of the extra burden they have carried because of the castration of the Negro man in our cup in our culture It is incredible that no woman should appear as a speaker at the historic March on Washington meeting at the Lincoln Memorial So in the end you can see there right in the middle The women got one slot as a group a Tribute to Negro women fighters for freedom Merlee Evers was supposed to speak. She's the wife of the late mega Evers, but she couldn't make it So it ended up being Daisy Bates. She was one of the nine students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 this is her She ended up speaking on behalf of all women and she said in part Friends the women of this country are pledged to you to Martin Luther King and all of you fighting for civil liberties That we will join hands with you as women of this country. We will kneel in we will sit in until we can eat in any corner of the United States We will walk until we are free until we can walk in any school and take our children to any school in the United States And we will lie in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote this we pledge to the women of America So Daisy Bates reminds us here that women were there. They were on the front lines They were arrested. They were physically and verbally harassed. They too faced the same dangers and threats as men and they too put their lives on the line But at the march on Washington women didn't get a chance to walk with civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr Who walked on pennsylvania avenue with the press linking arms with all only male civil rights leaders Women leaders such as dorthy height and rosa parks. They marched actually on a different street on independence avenue At the end of the march the women the men they went on to meet with president kennedy and all the women were excluded Coretta scott king would later write about the march and her husband saying quote It had been my great wish to march beside him Not from any desire to share the spotlight because I wanted the joy of being with him on this special day However, it has been decided by the planning council that the march would be led by the top leadership And of course I had to exceed a seed to their wishes I must confess though that I felt that the involvement and the movement of some of the wives had been so extensive They should have been granted the privilege of marching with their husbands and of completely sharing the experience together As they had shared their dangers and their hardships So let's think about this for a moment One of the biggest moments in civil rights history barely had black women at the table One of the biggest moments In civil rights history intentionally left out black women organizers and leaders So the radical vision for the march that day may have been less about dr. Martin Luther king's dream The radical vision is that black women must be included in the fight for black freedom That radical justice cannot be accomplished without gender justice I've heard the story so many times that I never really examined the fact that I was not at the table That my unborn daughter wouldn't have been at the table I think we're taught as marginalized people to have gratitude to be thankful for being in the room And in my opinion, it's not enough to have a seat at the table It's not enough to ask me to be at the table If you want me at the table, then you have to want my voice too. You have to want all of me I cannot be asked to separate my blackness from my gender identity I cannot be asked to separate my gender identity from my race For allies and for advocates don't freeze up when I start speaking at the table It's at the table where you will be tested You may have fought to get me into the room You may have convinced those in power to make space for me, but you're going to have to fight to keep me there when I open my mouth That's what it means to be radical and righteous for those who feel hopeless And voiceless So inclusion it cannot wait. It cannot center whiteness. We cannot think about women tomorrow We cannot think about queer justice tomorrow. We cannot think about refugees tomorrow We cannot think about migrants tomorrow because tomorrow is too late Dr. King said we are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now in this unfolding conundrum of life and history There is such a thing as being too late So there's no time for apathy or for complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action So in our radical vision, we have to reclaim our past by re-examining our history We have to rewrite our present by re-evaluating inclusion and we have to re-imagine our future by centering voices that are absent And disrupting the structures that perpetuate the systematic failures that keep us out So in many ways I look up to height in hedgeman I see myself in their stories in their fight to not just be at the table But to have a voice and to have some power at the table There's a reason also why they say hindsight is 2020 And as I look back at the last decade of my experience as a journalist I can now see what that fight for inclusion looked like for my story So I stepped into my first newsroom at 16 years old at mbc news in chicago I was part of this six-year paid internship program through an organization called the emma bowen foundation And the goal of the foundation at the time was to put more black and brown students within various news departments In news media companies the idea is that she would work at a major news corporation throughout college And then after you graduated the company would then offer you a job So during my first week of the program I was asked to bring a tape to the newsroom And the moment I walked in that's when I knew that's where I wanted to spend my time people were Talking fast and debating news ideas and talking with their hands and I felt like this is actually a place where I could belong So this was me with Ann Curry So my first summer I spent in chicago and my second summer I was in new york city at 30 rocker feller center at mbc news Every morning there was a newsroom meeting and everyone had a chance to throw out different ideas at the time Different ideas that they thought would be newsworthy At the time every senior producer in those meetings was white And I remember sitting in the meeting and realizing and Seeing the news stories and I couldn't see myself in any single news story that they pitched There was one black associate producer and I pulled her aside and I said to her I think I want to start pitching stories about black and brown people. No one else does Maybe that will help get our stories out there. She said no absolutely not You have to prove to them that you can tell their stories first You don't want to be the reporter that only does black stories Then that's all they'll think you can do and then that's all you'll be In that moment. I learned that whiteness was not Only the language that I had to become fluent in but within that corporate and capitalist and colonized space there were levels Those in power had the keys and authority to decide whether my black stories could be on tv So at the time I thought okay my parents are paying money for me to go to school I got to get a degree. I want to be successful I want to be the reporter at the white house one day asking the president questions I want to be embedded with the troops on the front lines So I worked on my language skills in the back of my mind I also knew that if no one was bringing up our stories within the newsrooms of larger media companies then who would When would the stories that centered black and brown voices be part of the fabric of daily newscasts? But more importantly Would there come a day when I could muster up the courage in a room filled with people who didn't look like me To pitch the stories that matter and fight for them to be on air Centering black and brown voices in corporate journalism companies has always been seen as a liability to profit It would require newsrooms to step outside of often simplistic and damaging narratives That don't allow viewers to see black and brown people and stories and experiences as complex But allows mostly white viewers to feel comfortable with the world as they know it So following my internships I went on to become an anchor and reporter in upstate new york For a couple of years and after that I was hired as an anchor and reporter in canta city, missouri And it was there that I really started to push the boundaries and understand the costs that came with speaking up So I learned pretty early on in my career that in order to be heard and to advance I had to center whiteness men white women and heteronormativity Over time it became exhausting in editorial meetings. I hemmed and hawed about speaking up I constantly had to ask myself. How do I keep my job? How do I excel at my job? And how do I be true to myself and my identity in spaces that weren't designed to include my voice? So a lot happened during my time in kansas city And one of the most memorable stories that i've ever covered Was the murder of michael brown in furgus in missouri in 2014 The initial images haunted me the first a body lying in the street in a neighborhood just outside of st louis missouri the second a burned down gas station The latter image was more unsettling because it symbolized a city being torn apart by rage grief and despair michael brown's blood seeping into the asphalt on a street in his neighborhood Was not only an image Unfamiliar to blacks What whites for that matter in furgus in missouri? What was unprecedented in furguson was a community that had come apart at the seams Crying for help a revolt against their treatment and marginalization at the hands of police and local government So at the time in 2014 my news director She's the one that heads up the entire newsroom She was skeptical like many others that the death of michael brown and the subsequent unrest was not a story of local coverage Once I saw the burning gas station. I emailed my boss No response I called her She said no jenna. This is just another officer involved shooting. We're not sending you. You can't go She couldn't see beyond the black body. She couldn't see the bigger story that wasn't centered in her reality So the next day I decided to go to work early and meet my boss in the parking lot It wasn't confrontational. It was just direct and urgent The moment she got into work I had to tell her that these were the images that we've seen before we saw it in 1992 in south central l.a In 1968 in chicago and detroit and if we're seeing it again Then we have reached another significant moment in our national history and our racial politics a moment that must be captured by journalists But it wasn't just my voice in her ear was the voice of white male allies White cisgender male allies who were in positions of power at the news station who were also saying it should be jenna to go It should be jenna reporting on the ground That as a company we should spend the resources to send her with her microphone and her voice so It worked My news director said yes, and at that point I was in furgus in missouri for two weeks Gathering the stories that unraveled after the gas station burned down But I also spent time trying to understand why news leadership struggled to give me the green light I knew at that moment that newsrooms must be filled with journalists who are sensitive to the history and experiences Of the people who live in these cities and the neighborhoods and the deep knowledge of those institutions and those Who govern and regulate them? Furthermore, I knew that it just wasn't enough to be at the table that I had to be heard I had to have allies and advocates who were willing to Meaningfully step into their allyship to amplify my voice to make institutional change So in 2015 I arrived in the pacific northwest in tucoma I was hired to be the tucoma pierce county bureau reporter at king five And it was last february 2018 laury mozacala sent me a facebook post by a mom in redmond who was horrified By what happened to her two kids Her 18 year old and her 14 year old were walking down the street Stopped to take pictures near a strip mall with cool retro lighting They happened to be outside of a bar at a time and a woman who worked at the bar came outside with a bat and told the two kids The manager doesn't want inwards on the property Now she said the word no abbreviation The kids went home told their parents who then called the police and the police arrested the woman I pitched the story in my editorial meeting and you would have thought that it was watergate The questions the scrutiny and it's my belief that it was due diligence that would not have been applied if the kids were not black They asked what were the kids doing there? Do they have a criminal record? We should ask to look at the photos that we were they were taking And even if at 14 and 18 a brother and sister were criminals does that make them deserving of racism? We went out to interview the entire family the mother of course was shaken The kids didn't understand what they did to be Deserved being called the n word and their parents were left wondering if they had properly properly prepared their children for a world That sees them as a threat So I returned to the newsroom to pitch the story again I argued that this isn't a story about this incident alone I pitched that we examined the conversations that parents have with their children about race racism and identity And at this point I wasn't settling on any more two-minute news segments. I wanted my own table I wanted four tables I wanted to have this conversation over dinner and center the voices of the people there and put those conversations On the 11 o'clock news for the world to see So this is what birthed this series that we called race and parenting and I'm gonna play you guys a clip from it Can you guys hear it? Today I'm bringing folks back to the table Got a camera here a few finishing touches Before we continue a discussion we started a few months ago In may I invited 20 parents from different backgrounds to join me for dinner I feel like if diversity was really a priority for my family then I would do something about it I wanted to examine the conversations parents have with their kids about race racism and identity It's like we have to explain that are that our bodies Matter what goes into protecting kids making them resilient. This is how you say my name Don't mess with it and proud to be who they are And at home we listen to a lot of music in spanish four episodes aired on king five with black white latino and asian families Today two people from each episode are coming back for the next hour We'll bring you some of the highlights from those episodes in the car We were speaking spanish and then when we stop at the park and say, okay The english here, okay, and then we're going to dig a little deeper. You may be trying to get through the Thanksgiving dinner Right. I'm trying to get to the next 70 years of life. Exactly. I'm bringing in professor Rulina Joseph from the University of Washington to help us out My name is jenna hanchard. I'm no expert. I'm just a curious journalist Who hopes we can all learn from our experiences on race and parenting So thank you all for coming. We finally made it here. So thank you so much for being here Help us understand a little bit while race is a as a social construct It's very much real right in terms of how we function and how we interact So race is not something that we know is is biological It's something that was created hundreds of years ago to separate people to divide people to be able to exploit People to enslave folks racism the structure of racism comes from these notions of race racism Of course being the structures the institutions that come from this discrimination We think of racism as being something that might happen interpersonally, but that really can only happen when someone has institutional structural power We had these conversations because they're The experiences that we as adults are having and we bring them home and talk and negotiate through them with our children But they are the conversations that white families need to be having with their children as well So for you all when was the first time you realized that you needed to talk to your kids about race? I had a really good conversation Recently my daughter came home from school and just kind of out of the blue. She said like We learned about slavery in in school and it made me really sad, right? So it was a it was a great opening for a conversation and just kind of led to me asking more questions What about for you guys? I mean you're yeah, yeah, I think out of necessity. It came probably earlier than maybe it Would have had I had um a white child friends at preschool would say that's your mom You know when I would come and visit. Well, I mean I remember a turning point for me in terms of how important I thought it was um, and that was when I watched for the first time the video of eric garner Pleading for his life and saying I can't breathe And it hit home for me. Okay. This actually is happening And so I wanted to take more of an active role In addressing some of those issues through my work Also with my kids It's similar that my daughter was just wondered out of nowhere from the backseat of the car Why is it always on the news a white policeman shooting a black man? And she was maybe five that's so thinking like my kid is not thinking this deeply at this point was What about for you? He brought up the n-word one time and so just so I was How did he bring that up? He was so that happened at school and like I was like, okay And when that happened at school, how did it happen? Like did someone say it? He had heard that that is just a bad that's just a really bad word and I was trying to contextualize it How do you all feel when you get asked those questions? I mean when they I mean, I remember when I asked my parents like weird questions. They'd be like, oh boy Okay, now I gotta talk about it You know like how do you all feel when you get when your kid walks into your house and says I heard the n-word today Well, they're bringing it up. I'm like, oh, let's go. Let's go and try to bring as many different resources And make them animated as much as I can and so I I'm fortunate but again, I still wish like the school system would be doing would be would be Practicing some of this as well All right episode two you're looking at me. Yeah, we're all I'm looking at you. You don't have to say anything Like you said, I think the episode was a good it was a good start, right? Right But I think if we were to go deeper and especially if you look at all the episodes together It's just so clear that that racism is a white person's problem Like it's like white people created this system And all these groups of color happen to do the parenting to to survive within this system And so We need to start having that conversation or more white Everybody's having the conversation but more white people need to be having that conversation That they need to be doing more to make sure your kid's not so exhausted that you're not everybody else Is not having to cater to white people's comfort So white people need to get more uncomfortable You know practice getting more uncomfortable and it's their job to help them do it It's like we have to explain that are that our bodies Matter that our bodies have worth that our bodies have have you know weight There's always this concept and that and that actually is what cold switching gets to right is it's it's to it's to really show Hey, I'm not one of those type of Person I am an expert Let me show you I grew up in the pacific north north north west all of my life I mean all of my life has has been how do you how do you embody a black body in white spaces? Right, especially in seattle. How do I am a body blackness in a sea of whiteness? And how do you do it? Yeah, it really is this method of What can I do to ensure that That I'm able to advance And how do I hang on to the fact that? That I do like fried chicken, but I won't eat it in public right that I do love watermelon But I'm not gonna eat it around you That I do enjoy these things, but no no no actually no I'm fine It's you know, how do you it's a constant sacrifice, right? It is this constant Struggle and tension that we have to live with just to just to exist I mean and and I actually tell tell tell tell folks. I say, you know, I speak two languages English I am bilingual I speak English and I speak white You better put them now that may not show up on a resume I mean Are the things to make white people feel more comfortable around us My life could be ended If you feel unsafe as a white person, right? And that's that's a as a black man I don't feel comfortable jogging down the street and better not put a hoodie on Because if you're running then you're either did something wrong or we're about to go do something wrong, right? And do you think you'll have a conversation with your kids about that with your two boys? I mean because you have two black boys two black boys go to the gym sign don't Don't be running I'll be running in the streets unless you got a ball in anything And that's bad too, right Okay All right. I'm gonna pause it. I'm gonna pause it there Because it's about like 10 minutes and I don't know we got a few more other clips. Okay, so after we did this We realized that these tables led to more tables neighborhood watch groups They held watch parties for these episodes school groups used the series to create a curriculum for parent equity groups And it was these tables that forced us to really reconsider Whose narrative was at the center of commercial television It was these tables that allowed people to see themselves beyond 10 second sound bites that you usually see on the news And after this we created another series called race and sports about how race racism and identity Touched the lives of former coaches Um former athletes, excuse me coaches and then fans and I'll play you guys a clip from there We don't avoid the conversation Now is promises of democracy There are struggles that have shaped our history That is said you can't play here with us To discuss more than just wins and special presentation of race and sports will nod to our past And embrace a real discussion of our present talk about race and sports We talk about it just in the lens of kind of a cavernic kneeling or just in the lens of a serena But we don't talk about it on this level when I think about sports like and I think I coached at an I coached at an inner city school um cleveland is obviously predominantly african-american You know mixed with a few asian girls And you know, I reflect back on games that we played against let's say a seattle prep or a holy names and you're looking at the foul count and cleveland has you know 15,000 the first quarter the other team has three and you stop to ask the referee like hey, you know What are my girls doing? How do I make the adjustment? Your girls are the aggressor So I'm the first time I heard that I was thinking like dang I got a whole bunch of Inner city kids some african-american girls and this is how you view my players as aggressors like this is a basketball game How would you even use that term? Aggressor like I was so offended What do you think you were able to use that as a life lesson for them? Oh a life lesson motivation because you know The thing is is like I try to tell my players that The sport this is just preparing you for life race matters. It matters in everything and if we say it doesn't you're either naive or You're ignorant. How did you all break down those barriers of bias and racism? I mean, I think you know, I I can remember there was A teammate of mine who we are we're friend good friends now Our kids play against each other She is not a person of color and she you know said something that was offensive It just came out of her mouth one day. We were stretching in practice and she just said it what she said I don't say because then she'll know and then you know, everybody will know You know, she she made a comment about The odor that would come from just the black girls on the team And we were stretching and boy, I mean it was like the wreck, you know the scratch the record You know and at that moment there were you know Uh women of color who were clearly offended. I was one of them. There were you know White women who were offended like hey, what are you doing? What are you talking about? and we could at that moment just said hey We're good. You know, it took it took us to both say I'm not going to cut you out. I'm not going to shut off and just say that's what I think and we're not going to ostracize her Because really the numbers don't for a basketball team the numbers don't support that You tend to compartmentalize it, right? Yeah Because that's a safety That's a place of where you can be safe the locker room gives you that kind of safe space to kind of exercise some things out But it doesn't always go from the locker room to the To the home. So you can you can have one Way that you're operating in the locker room and then it's a total code switch When you when you get out when I walk into a football locker room like use is separated by position But it's also separated by race too You can you just you can see the line right down get a white black and then everyone's just kind of doing things What is time to play? Yeah, we come together and we have this one thing that we're That we're fighting for but I've had to play beside dudes that have told me like I don't want my sister the data A black guy, you know stuff like that, but I have to play right beside this dude So you get this kind of false sense of Acceptance and understanding and security but like do they really know what makes you cry? Do they do do they know what color you like even cry? Yeah, exactly Like can you even talk about the trauma? You know saying can they even understand the trauma and how that impacts you and how it makes you who you are Like do they really know that or do they just know me good enough or well enough to be like Hey, let's go do this and we'll was whatever's between us. Don't yeah, exactly if If sports is going to impact a person in a way that it totally changes them then They have to also do a lot of work around Uh, their perceptions of things outside outside of sports. I mean, I guess All right, thank you all for letting me share that with you. So that was in 2019 that we aired those They were four different episodes Each one were four and then we aired a an entire hour series So after they aired in 2019, I was told there would be no more space for my tables at king five And I'd have to return to the two minute news script And a couple of weeks later. We won an Emmy award for the series for the race and sport series Thank you And then one month later I quit I wish I could say that allyship and advocacy stepped in to fight for my voice, but that didn't happen I realized that I actually had to bet on myself I had to bet on me more than I bet on any institution believing in me I had to have a radical vision for myself in 2020 I had to find new tables to build explore different ways to tell stories And take the risk of being outside the boxes that I'd been in for the last 10 years And I'm still writing that story For those here whether you're a student A young and seasoned professional You will be challenged Marginalized people you will have to figure out how to dance the push and pull of how you could be truthful to yourself And still be within these spaces Allies and advocates you will have to step up and see where you can step in to amplify and center marginalized narratives Before I leave you I want to go back to that day the march on washington 1663 I wish I could tell you that it was dr. King who pushed for women to speak on the stage that day Or john lewis or whitney young its historians too as well who have often left out the contributions of women that day Anna hedgeman would later write about that day and she said About dr. Martin Luther king your dream of a new frontier is bound up in the dreams of all men Who have had a vision beyond the moment a vision of some men in the world from the beginning of time Martin Luther king standing in front of 250,000 people in the face of all the men and women of the past I wished very much that martin had said that we have a dream In my opinion hedgeman is saying it's not about you. It's about us It's about the collective. It's about everyone's dream for equity for a voice I don't tell you this to discredit king or anyone else's contribution to this movement I tell you this to challenge your views of the stories that have been told to you How they've been told to you who brought them to you? Inclusion must be intentional And it is the fight for the inclusion That must be courageous even in the face of resistance Thank you all very much for your time