Carol Jenkins, the former longtime WNBC News anchor, was recently honored at The New Jewish Home’s Eight Over Eighty Gala for her ongoing dedication to journalism and activism.
Jenkins and nine others received recognition as elders who have continued serving the community past the age of 80.
Jenkins told the AmNews that she welcomes the designation: She said she’s always had an activist inkling. “I consider myself a former journalist, an activist, and a writer, as well as a grandmother,” she said.
While employed as a journalist, Jenkins couldn’t express her opinions; for 25 years, she felt she had to limit what she could say, but now she’s an activist. “For equality in every way, shape, or form,” she asserted.
“In the beginning, because I came out of the media, it was [about] trying to correct the discrepancies there,” Jenkins said. “When it was pointed out to me that, in fact, our Constitution did not provide equal protection for women … I spent 10 years working for that: testifying in Congress and doing grassroots work.”
More recently, Jenkins has focused her activism on child poverty. “I always told the people at the ERA Coalition, as soon as we get this in the Constitution, I’m moving on to child poverty, because no one is paying enough attention to that — the fact that children are unhoused, they’re starving. In New York City shelter systems, they have a website you can check every day [to see] how many kids spent the night in a shelter, and it’s astronomical.”
She pointed to child poverty as an increasingly pressing issue, as highlighted in the book “Invisible Americans” by Jeff Madrick. Jenkins and Madrick are now co-hosting “The Invisible Americans” podcast to heighten awareness of the issue.
“I think it’s [necessary] to try to help fashion a country that understands and cares about the fact that children do not have breakfast or lunch or dinner, and that the wealth in this country must be divided to make sure that they are fed, and that they are housed,” she said. “It’s a scandal, and I want people to feel ashamed. That’s a terrible thing to say, but you know, you just cannot walk away from these kids.”
The keeping of our histories
Jenkins was born in Montgomery, Ala., and her family moved to Queens when she was three years old. Once she entered the world of journalism, her first major role in broadcasting was as the co-host of WNBC’s “Positively Black” along with Newark, N.J.-community activist Gus Heningburg. Later, Jenkins became a correspondent and anchor on the WNBC news desk and worked there for more than 20 years.
When she retired from broadcast journalism, Jenkins started a media consulting business and began working on a manuscript with her daughter, Elizabeth Gardner Hines. Their 2004 book, “Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire,” tells the story of Jenkins’s maternal uncle, a Birmingham, Ala.-based real estate and insurance entrepreneur who was one of the 20th century’s wealthiest Black Americans.
Gaston’s funds were vast enough for him to provide financial support to key players in the Civil Rights Movement: He paid bail for arrested protesters like Martin Luther King Jr. and allowed 1965’s Selma-to-Montgomery marchers to rest and sleep overnight on his family farm.
After publishing her book, Jenkins served as founding president of the nonprofit Women’s Media Center from 2006 to 2009; the organization aims to increase women’s coverage and participation in media. In 2010, she founded the media consulting firm caroljenkins:media. In 2016, Jenkins became the host of the interview-oriented television show “Black America” on CUNY TV.
“Black America” recently wrapped up its 10th season.
“When we started doing the show, we were doing 50 shows a year, if you could imagine — weekly shows interviewing Black Americans and asking each of them how they felt about their place — our place — in this country at that particular time,” Jenkins said. “When we started, it was 2016: Barack Obama was the president then, and Darren Walker, who was the head of the Ford Foundation, was our very first guest. We talked about equality and equity, and that’s what we’ve been doing in one way or another throughout the full 10 years.”
The show features interviews with both famous people and community members who are making significant contributions. It’s a program designed to reflect where Black Americans are in this country now.
“We’re in what we perceive as a much more threatening place,” Jenkins said as she spoke about the current political atmosphere in the United States. “Because when people can say out loud, ‘We want to erase your history,’ it’s hard to find two or three sides about that. I think that we all need to be alarmed, and we all need to take into our own hands the keeping of our histories, family histories, anything that we remember or respect; all of the old books that we have. Now, my kids have been saying, ‘Oh, get rid of those old books.’ I said, ‘No, never.’ Now they’re a part of at least our archive of what has happened in this country.”
Jenkins added that she thinks “we all need to be on the alert and to do whatever we can to maintain the history and to also make sure that we are giving our young people the support that they need in this environment, so that they do not feel threatened. I have three grandchildren — 12-year-old twins and a 16-year-old — so the question for me almost every day is how I can make sure that they feel that this is their country, that they have a place in it, they have a history in it, and that we deserve to be able to celebrate that. That’s our family goal.”