K. Washington; Community College Leader

Kenneth Washington, a pioneering black educator and the veteran leader of the Los Angeles Community College District, has died. He was 75.

Washington, who also was president of City College of San Francisco, died Saturday at Alcott Rehabilitation Hospital in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke and heart failure.

Originally a teacher, Washington was one of the original board trustees of the community college district. He left the board in 1975 to become the state’s first black college president in San Francisco. After seven years there, he returned to the Los Angeles district as vice chancellor of educational services until his retirement in 1986. He was reelected to the board of trustees in 1991 and was president for two terms. He served on the board until his death.

Washington also was president of the Los Angeles Fire Department Commission in 1988-89 and remained on that board until 1993.

When the community college district was formed in 1969, 135 candidates ran for the seven positions on the board of trustees. Many saw the job as a steppingstone to higher elective office and used it. Washington’s fellow original board members included Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., who went on to become governor; Mike Antonovich, who later joined the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and Marian LaFollette, who went on to serve in the state Assembly.

“How I got by the first hurdle [the primary], I don’t know,” Washington later told The Times. “It was reported that the voters thought they were voting for the football player Kenny Washington. I told them they sure know how to hurt a guy.”

Kenneth Washington was the consummate educator. Born in Chicago, he went to high school in Detroit and to Chicago Teachers College, and earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s in guidance and a doctorate in psychology from Roosevelt University.

He began his career in 1951 as a teacher at Centennial High School in Compton and later became chief counselor for the Compton Unified School District. In the late 1960s, he worked as assistant to the chancellor at UCLA and assistant dean for the California State University system.

From 1972 to 1975, he was assistant superintendent in the California Department of Education.

“My job was to help minority kids get into higher education,” he once said of his Compton years, “and I’ve pretty much been there ever since. I have always been committed to the kinds of students who attend community colleges.”

A family spokesman said Monday that Washington “believed the purpose of education is to perpetuate the culture, to prepare young people to live civilly in a civilized society, and to help them develop their skills so they can work and participate in our society and enjoy the benefits.”

A leader in the African American community, Washington preferred to work quietly even during the tumultuous demonstration-laced late 1960s and early 1970s.

“I was hoping change would come without making a lot of noise,” he told The Times in 1995, speaking of efforts to integrate the Fire Department. “There were some changes and we managed to keep ourselves out of the newspaper. I was hoping [department officials] would find religion and begin to do the right thing without a crisis.”

Washington was state chairman of the California Community Colleges African American Trustees and Chief Executive Officers and active in the Council of Black American Affairs of the Assn. of California Community College Administrators.

He is survived by his wife, Helen; a son, Kent Terrell; a stepdaughter, Patricia Graham; a sister, Bettye Harwell; a cousin, Joy Crawford; one granddaughter, Chalon; and two nieces and three nephews.

A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday at City of Angels Church of Religious Science in Culver City.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to the College Fund/UNCF, 725 S. Figueroa St., Suite 800, Los Angeles, Calif. 90017 or to a charity of the donor’s choice.