COLUMN | Skyway Celebrates Black Panther Park as Community Pushes for More Investment

Nine years is a long time to carry a vision.

So when Nyema Clark, founder of Nurturing Roots, an urban farm formerly located on Beacon Hill, stood before a crowd on Sunday afternoon in Skyway, at times having to pause tearfully, the emotion needed no explanation.

"Everybody that poured into this, this is y'all's park. This is our space," she said, addressing the people who helped turn an idea into Black Panther Park, which celebrated its official opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony over the weekend. The South End's newest park is located at Renton Avenue South and South 75th Avenue.

Clark's words captured the gratitude, collective ownership, and hard-won triumph of a project that took nearly a decade to bring to fruition. Over the past nine years, the park's organizers weathered setbacks, a pandemic, and the expected exhaustion that has buried so many of our community's dreams before they ever reached the ground. In that time, they also welcomed new life along the way. Organizers had five babies born among them during the years it took to bring the project to completion.

Clark said the goal was to create a community space that honored the ancestors, the work of our parents, and the Black radical tradition represented by the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party. She quipped that when she tells children she is building a park for the Black Panthers, many respond with "Wakanda Forever." Although the anecdote was shared lightheartedly, it reveals how historical memory can fade and how we must continue to work to reclaim it.

At the ceremony, Aaron and Elmer Dixon, founders of Seattle's Black Panther chapter, stood as living witnesses to that history. Clark, speaking directly to them, said through watery eyes, "I can't imagine being 17 and doing what you guys did."

In the '60s and '70s, the Dixons and their comrades engaged in a number of significant revolutionary activities: They launched a free clinic that became the Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center — notably, the only one of 13 Black Panther Party clinics opened nationwide that remains operational today. They organized free breakfast programs for children, efforts that helped shame the federal government into feeding students at scale. They defended their headquarters from police raids, relying not only on arms but on community networks, including a phone tree that could bring dozens of Central District residents into the streets within minutes.

Elmer Dixon delivered a clear reminder of what the Panthers understood, emphasizing that these efforts were not charity. They were "survival programs pending revolution, and the revolution is still pending."

Although the park is not in the Central District, its placement in Skyway feels apt. Skyway remains home to one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in Washington state. Though often overlooked, at Sunday's event the area was emphatically centered and uplifted. The organizers said they were intentional about prioritizing Black-owned, women-owned, and Skyway-based businesses and professionals in the park's construction, from metalwork to irrigation. 

The ceremony felt like a declaration of community and celebration of culture. African drums echoed throughout a vibrant crowd, who laughed together, shared words of affirmation with one another and carried plates of food from local vendors. More than half a dozen permanent mural pieces surrounded over a hundred attendees who, among them, included people who'd traveled from out of town to attend the ribbon cutting, like Fred Hampton Jr. Children rode on their mothers' hips and their fathers' shoulders. Community leaders posed for pictures with one another while volunteers continued to work in the gardens.

Speakers honored the many volunteers whose vital contributions helped power the work that made the park possible. Among those volunteers was Michael Dixon, an original Black Panther. Organizers noted that despite being an elder, he showed up to haul wheelbarrows, even in the pouring rain.

The park is part of a wider ecosystem of grassroots investment in Skyway. Nearby, La Tanya Horace-DuBois and The Silent Task Force transformed a once-condemned building associated with crime and police activity into a community resource hub.

"We ensured the community that our job was to not only make them safer by trying to beautify the space with the meager resources we had," said Horace-DuBois, "but to provide real services to people who've been underserved, underfunded, and have had some of the greatest health disparities in our King County area, for generations."

That organization now provides food access, youth programming, support for people impacted by the criminal legal system, anti-violence services, workforce pathways, and WIC services, and has plans for a holistic healing center.

In many ways, these dedicated community members are reframing the story of Skyway by turning vacancy into vision. And they are already eyeing expansion. Across the street from the park sits another county-owned grassy parcel organizers would like to activate for performances, recreation, and broader programming. They are asking residents to press King County officials and local lawmakers to support it.

As a community, we should not have to beg for what thriving neighborhoods elsewhere receive automatically. But the message from organizers was clear that, for us, pressure will always be part of the process.

Near the close of her remarks, Clark offered words that captured the spirit of the event — words that are especially needed in an era defined by toxic individualism and capitalist forces that pull communities apart.

"Look around at each other," said Clark. "Don't lose touch. We're a community. We're together."

Gennette Cordova is an award-winning writer and communications strategist focused on advancing racial equity and community-driven change. Rooted in amplifying underrepresented voices, she seeks to challenge dominant narratives and connect issues to broader movements for justice.