Former S.L. County councilman escaped segregation to oversee millions
By Thomas BurrThe Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON—He has been a Lutheran, a Muslim, a Mormon.
He owned a cleaning company, served in the honor guard at President Kennedy's funeral, and left behind a segregated childhood to later oversee civil-rights protections for millions of people.
Above all else, Winston Wilkinson is living the life his father couldn't.
In his position as head of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Wilkinson has nearly 300 employees in 10 regional offices and in Washington. It's a job he says fits well, given his background and personal experiences that help him understand the challenges of the people he serves.
"I know it because I personally lived it," Wilkinson says. "I'm not talking about it because I read about it somewhere."
"It was challenging and hurtful when I lived it," he says, "but now having that experience and being able to apply that experience, and understanding and compassion to the laws I'm implementing has made me more of an effective leader."
Wilkinson's office now overlooks the reflecting pool in front of the U.S. Capitol, and if you lean far enough by the window near his desk, you can see the Capitol dome. His office wall is adorned with photos of him with President Bush and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.
Though a short distance from his childhood home, it's a long way from childhood for Wilkinson, a Black man and self-described "pioneer," who grew up knowing only people of his color and a home with no running water or inside toilet.
It's a life hinged to his conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a fateful meeting with then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, who would play a key role in Wilkinson's ascension from unemployment to Salt Lake County councilman to his current Bush administration post.
"Trying to Find Myself"
Born in 1944, Wilkinson lived in Cedar Heights, Md., behind a literal wall of separation: his side a poor, all-Black community, the other, the nation's capital, dominated by rich, powerful white men. Wilkinson never dealt with white people until he joined the Navy after high school, he says. The civil-rights movement was going on everywhere but in his neighborhood, where people went about their business as usual.
"It was pretty much all I knew," he says. "Nobody knew what was going on."
His father, Curtis Wilkinson, worked a blue-collar job at the Government Printing Office, but prodded his son to work hard and overcome any challenges.
As a member of the military's Honor Guard during the 1964 inaugural for President Johnson, Wilkinson says then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace tried to wrestle the Alabama state flag from his hands. He failed.
After his stint in the Navy, Wilkinson went to Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he met his wife, Gloria—a friend of his ex-girlfriend. "She was the better choice," Wilkinson says of his 35-year partner.
On to Howard University Law School, and then to work on local issues for the Washington-based National Center for Community Action.
But Wilkinson wasn't happy and was still searching for a faith that fit for him and his wife.
"We looked at four or five religions," he says, trying out life as a Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran, and for three years settling into Islam and attending a mosque in northwest Washington.
"I was trying to find myself," says Wilkinson, who went by Waheed Mohammad for a time. His wife renamed herself Jakarta. "It was something I fell into," Wilkinson says now.
It was a time of transition for Wilkinson, who grew up a Democrat. "Back then, all Blacks were Democrats," he says.
Seeking Self-Reliance
In 1972, Wilkinson met some Republicans who pushed the philosophy of self-help and self-determination.
"That's what my dad taught me. I could relate to that platform a lot more."
At a Republican meeting in Ocean City, Md., Wilkinson decided—on a whim, he says—to ask a man to what religion he belonged. That man was Dallas Merrell, a staunch member of the LDS Church who later become the Salt Lake City mission president and was called to the Second Quorum of the Seventy, one of the Church's governing bodies.
"Winston has a good reading on people," says Merrell, now retired and living in Utah. "He pays attention to people, their personalities, their values, and is not afraid to speak up."
After dinner at Merrell's home, with two LDS missionaries, Wilkinson and his wife were baptized as Mormons. It was 1980, just two years after Mormons allowed Black men to hold the faith's lay priesthood.
Again rising in Washington, Wilkinson became a special assistant to Education Secretary Terrel Bell, a Utahn and a Mormon. In 1988, Wilkinson moved to HHS to serve as deputy secretary of the Office of Civil Rights until President George H.W. Bush left office in 1993.
From there, Wilkinson wanted to start his own business, and launched a commercial cleaning company, which he ran until 1997, when he let it fizzle out. Recalling a childhood memory of the beauty of Utah, Wilkinson went West.
No job was waiting there, but Wilkinson was still "confident" something would happen.
Eye on the House
Merrell set up a meeting with Leavitt at the Governor's Mansion, where Wilkinson was told to contact Leavitt's former chief of staff Charlie Johnson.
Johnson, now HHS' chief financial officer, says Wilkinson has "intriguing" qualities and is "always captivating."
"He has character," Johnson says. "He's someone you can trust. He is loyal. He is someone who is going to reflect well on you."
With a few high-profile contacts, Wilkinson landed a job in the LDS Church personnel office.
Wilkinson says he saw a lot of ethnic minorities who blamed their problems on race. So Wilkinson ran for elected office and won an open seat on the new Salt Lake County Council. "I went back to a lot of Blacks and said, 'Look, you can do it,'" Wilkinson says.
In 2002, Wilkinson decided not to run again for the council and set his hopes on a bigger prize: Congress. He joined a field of 11 people running for the 2nd Congressional District, but lost out to a better-funded Republican.
This time, he took a different route and won a seat on the Republican National Committee and was elevated to the committee's executive panel. After his stint was up, Wilkinson called up Johnson at HHS and said he was looking for a position back in Washington.
He got it. Wilkinson now directs efforts to ensure that patients are not discriminated against and also fields complaints about breaches of privacy. The office annually receives some 3,300 civil rights complaints and about 6,900 allegations of privacy violations.
Wilkinson has faced controversy. Critics say his office is not enforcing a federal law on patient privacy. Since the law was enacted in 2003, the office has received 19,000 grievances but has not issued any civil fines for violations and prosecuted only two criminal cases, according to a June Washington Post story.
"They have done almost nothing to enforce the law or make sure people are taking it seriously," Columbia University health care privacy expert Janlori Goldman told the Post.
Wilkinson says the office's goal is to work through complaints on a "voluntary compliance" basis and that has been "satisfactorily obtained."
For now, Wilkinson is satisfied with his job. But he does have his eye on that Capitol dome.
"I wouldn't rule out the 4th District," Wilkinson says about a proposed fourth U.S. House seat in Utah.
If he succeeds, he would be the first Black Republican House member since former Rep. J.C. Watts left in 2002.
And even if he doesn't succeed, Wilkinson says his parents—especially his father—would be pleased.
Born: Prince George's County, Md.
Military service: Four years Navy Honor Guard
Education: Morgan State University, Howard University Law School
Family: Wife, Gloria; four children; eight grandchildren
Government service: Former Salt Lake County councilman; past member of the executive committee of the Republican National Committee; former special assistant to Education Secretary Terrel Bell; current director of the Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services