Jim Walton, Tacoma icon of Civil Rights Era, joins News Tribune Editorial Board
Jim Walton has spent most of his life breaking through walls of predominantly white institutions in Tacoma. At age 81, he’s about to do it again.
In the 1960s, as leader of Tacoma Community College’s black student union, Walton organized for civil rights, stood up to a white student mob and savored the moment when a black man was appointed to the TCC board of trustees.
In the ‘70s, he was in the thick of protests against Metro Parks Tacoma, demanding the resignation of a parks commissioner who spewed a hateful racial joke at a public meeting. The commissioner eventually buckled to pressure. Walton soon went to work in the city’s human relations department.
In the early 2000s, Walton parlayed his service across three decades at City Hall into the top executive job there. He was passed over once and nearly twice, but in 2003 Tacoma finally had its first black city manager.
When Walton retired two years later, TNT reporter Jason Hagey wrote a valedictory profile on the former Fort Lewis soldier from Mineola, Texas, and summed up this way:
“He infiltrated the government and spent his career trying to change it.”
Now Walton is making another breakthrough, right here at The News Tribune. He accepted an invitation to join the TNT Editorial Board as our first community representative on a regular basis. (Pamela Transue, former president of TCC, has graciously served during election season since 2016).
Talking with me by phone Friday, Walton said he, too, sees parallels between joining the Editorial Board and some of his other groundbreaking accomplishments in Tacoma.
“You’ve given me an opportunity to walk through a door where I didn’t know there was a door,” he said, recalling how as city manager he sometimes found himself on the business end of critical editorials. “I always thought you were locked in a basement somewhere,” he added, laughing.
This is just one step we’re taking to bring underrepresented Pierce County perspectives into our civic conversation.
In particular, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity on the Editorial Board has long been apparent. I could rattle off a dozen excuses why we stood pat for so long with our core group of professional journalists. But they all sound hollow now, so why bother?
Suffice it to say the same reckoning of racial justice and equity, which has caused so many institutions to look in the mirror this year with 2020 vision, is what gave us the final nudge we needed.
We’ve written countless editorials telling other local institutions they need to get with the program. We’ve preached that it’s past time for cops to wear cameras, for voters to elect more people of color, for public officials to rethink having Franklin Pierce as a namesake.
Well, today we acknowledge it’s past time to welcome a broader range of voices to the Editorial Board table (or for now, the Zoom room).
Though plans are still rough, in 2021 you can expect to hear about a TNT community advisory board that will help inform our opinion pages and news coverage. We intend for it to have a good mix of age, gender, race, ideology and life experience.
Having Walton join us now is a down payment. He will sit in on our weekly Editorial Board discussions, chiming in on the civic discourse we should lead and the institutions we should hold accountable.
I feel personally privileged to share this responsibility with Jim, a true elder statesman in Tacoma. He helped establish Tacoma’s first affirmative action and neighborhood council programs. He’s one of the founders of the Black Collective, an organization of local political, social and religious leaders that meets weekly.
Walton continues to serve on community boards including the United Way of Pierce County and the Elizabeth Wesley Youth Merit Incentive Award Program for African American students.
The term “elder statesman,” however, is a trope that in some ways does a disservice to Walton. The truth is, his elder statesmanship is a natural extension of his role as a cool-headed younger statesman during the Civil Rights era.
A defining moment was the Mother’s Day Riot of 1969, when Walton interposed himself between police and an angry mob in the Hilltop neighborhood, trying to play peacemaker.
In an era of historic tension, “he was more reasonable and purposeful than most of us who were raising hell,” said Tom Dixon, one of Walton’s longtime friends, in that 2005 TNT profile.
Tacoma needs reasonableness and purposefulness today as much as 50 years ago. We’re glad to have Walton reinforce these qualities on our Editorial Board.
He’ says he’s excited, too, telling me he sees this as a “watershed moment to open up your circle to a fuller range of life experiences that are so important to the community and to the democratic process.”
Walton joins the board immediately and will participate in what’s left of our 2020 election candidate endorsement process.
Matt Misterek has been an editor at the News Tribune since 2003 and editorial page editor since 2016. Reach him at matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com