Honoring a leader

Part of the Rev. Percy Happy Watkins’ leadership comes from the proverbs he has memorized to share as needed to lend an insight.

Known in the region for passionately reciting words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – especially the “I Have a Dream” speech – he keeps King’s words alive today.

Watkins also has truisms from his grandmother and quotes picked up along the way to make people pause and think.

He says his life turned around when he read: “Life is in session. The question is, are you present?”

The Washington Association of Churches is honoring Watkins with one of four annual ecumenical and interfaith justice leadership awards, the one designated for an Eastern Washington leader.

It will be presented at the Eastern Washington Legislative Conference next Saturday at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (see accompanying story for more information).

Watkins started as pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in 1990, accepting the church’s call for him to serve the community, not just the congregation. He has worked to improve the correctional system, police department, school district, youth programs and race relations. 

New Hope has led worship services and a Bible study at Pine Lodge and Geiger correctional facilities. For three years, the church brought prisoners to its services. 

Aware that blacks – about 2 percent of Spokane’s population – make up 18 to 25 percent of those in the criminal justice system, Watkins has worked with the Spokane Ministers Fellowship, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the South Hill Leadership Group and the Martin Luther King Jr., Family Outreach Center to turn those figures around through education.

“We work together to address common concerns such as the learning and graduation gaps,” he said. 

“Dr. King said we need to sit at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood, put issues on the table and discuss them to gain understanding.”

As the oldest of 10 children growing up in a poor family in the Bronx amid 2.5 million diverse people – block after block, like his street, with thousands of blacks and whites, Puerto Ricans, Irish, Poles, Italians and Jews – Watkins was shocked by the quiet and seeming wilderness of Spokane when, at 19, he arrived in 1961 with the Air Force.

Within a month, he was attending Morningstar Baptist Church, which lightened the depression, homesickness and loneliness he felt at first. There he met his future wife, Etta, in 1962 and married her the next year.

Discharged from the Air Force in 1965 after serving 18 months in Okinawa, he decided to stay in Spokane. Here he has made an impact in civil rights and race relations, as he and Etta have reared their four sons.

Watkins has been involved with the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center for many of its 40 years.

The Rev. Dick Leon of First Presbyterian Church and pastors on Spokane’s East Side formed a committee in 1961 to bring children and youth off neighborhood streets. They created a drop-in center at Bethel African American Episcopal Church which grew into the Martin Luther King Center. 

When it outgrew that space in the 1980s, it moved to a recently closed fire station at 845 S. Sherman St. Now the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center provides day care, parenting education and family services, before- and after-school, summer, literacy and tutoring programs.

Programs encourage children to stay in school, prepare for college, gain job skills and contribute to the community.

“The caring the children receive enhances their learning,” said Watkins, who has served 10 years on the board.

The center has been involved with organizing 21 years of Martin Luther King Day marches. In 1989, 54 people participated in the first march from the county courthouse to the federal building.

The march has grown to nearly 4,000 participants, gathering at the INB Performing Arts Center and marching to River Park Square for entertainment and a community resource fair.

Watkins’ rendition of the “I Have a Dream” speech – which King delivered Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. – is another annual highlight of the day.

His knack for memorizing began with reciting speeches and verses for Christmas, Easter and Mother’s Day children’s programs in the Methodist church his family attended.

His high school teachers had him enter two speaking contests.  Watkins placed first in the Bronx and third in New York City.

After King’s assassination in 1968, the “I Have a Dream” speech became popular. A woman at Hutton Elementary School first asked Watkins to read it in 1985.

In 1983, a federal law established Martin Luther King Day on the third Monday of January. 

When it was first observed in 1986, former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner traveled around the state. Lydia Sims, then president of Spokane’s NAACP chapter, arranged for the governor to come to a luncheon at the Ridpath Hotel and asked Watkins to read the speech.

“Sunday after church at Calvary Baptist, I shut myself in a room from 2 p.m. to 3 a.m., memorizing the speech,” he recalled.

When he recited it at the luncheon, complete with emotional climaxes, listeners were excited and teary-eyed.

Since then Watkins has given the speech at Fairchild Air Force Base, at many regional churches and universities, and at elementary, middle and high schools from Cashmere, Wash., to Genesee, Idaho.

In Cashmere, where children of farmworkers and orchard owners go to school together and get along well, Watkins was moved to recite it to those youngsters who were living into the dream.

A few days after an appearance in Sandpoint, a package arrived at his home, filled with 90 typewritten letters thanking him for coming.

“I keep them by my desk, and whenever I feel discouraged, I read one,” said Watkins.

Now he gives the speech 30 to 40 times a year in the weeks around Martin Luther King Day and during Black History Month. Along with reciting the speech, Watkins teaches children, teens and adults about segregation, civil rights and life.

“I tell about separate facilities, the bus boycott and freedom riders,” he said.  “From reading books on Martin Luther King’s life and speeches, I learned that keys to his life were his family, home and kitchen table.”

Over the years, Watkins has performed many weddings for young people who heard him talk about family, home and kitchen table.

When he says, “If it is to be, it’s up to me,” he means with God’s help.

“I know God lives,” says Watkins, “and I depend on God.”