BREMERTON — Local civil rights activists Lillian and James Walker have a new legacy in Bremerton.

On June 17, the City of Bremerton hosted a grand opening for a new pocket park, located at 2310 19th St., named Lillian A. and James Walker Park.

“Before Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, Lillian Walker was staging some sit ins,” said retired judge Robin Hunt, a personal friend of Walker’s. “Everything was peaceful, nothing malicious or violent. Peacefully protest the non-white policy for a local barbershop, a restaurant and a pharmacy. She also was letting the school district know of some inequality of treatment in the schools.

“She always approached it not in a mean, angry, demanding way,” Hunt added. “She expected there to be some justice and fairness, eventually. She knew it wasn’t here (then). Mrs. Walker was one of those people who was never deterred by hardship.”

The park, located in a small neighborhood near Bremerton High School, includes rain gardens, beach access and a grassy lawn, and was completed through a partnership between the city’s parks and recreation and public works departments, as well as the Washington State Department of Ecology, which granted Bremerton with an $800,000 grant partially used to fund the park’s creation.

“This neighborhood has been neglected over those years, and having access to the beach, having access to what we have provided here today couldn’t be any better,” Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent said. “It’s going to raise the value of everything that surrounds this area. We have that little park for the kids to play with that we opened five years ago, but now we have this big park for all kinds of kids to play.”

Lent provided some history behind the name of the park: In the early 1940s, Bremerton was home to thousands of people who worked at the shipyard.

“In those times, the City of Bremerton was actually segregated,” Lent said, “so there are areas and pockets throughout the city that were specifically for African Americans and then for the other guys.

“We, today, are such a unified city, county, state government, we really have the highest diversity of any city in Kitsap County, and the city couldn’t be prouder.”

Lillian Walker, together with her husband James, helped fight the inequality in Bremerton. Walker was born Oct. 2, 1913, and died Jan. 4, 2012. From her obituary:

“Besides being a parent and involved in PTA, Campfire Girls, and Scouting, she was a bookkeeper, accountant and office assistant. With James at her side, she was extensively involved in community service and advocating for civil rights and social justice in Kitsap County.

“She helped found the YWCA of Kitsap County, and she and James helped organize the Bremerton branch of the NAACP. She served on the Kitsap County Regional Library Board, and during the years she was active with Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, Eastern Star, Church Women United, the Kitsap County Democratic Party, the Bremerton Garden Club, Carver Civic Club of Bremerton, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the Kitsap County Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council.

“In her later years, she received a number of community service awards that included: MLK Citizens of the Century (along with husband James) from Kitsap County’s Martin Luther King Memorial Scholarship Fund Committee in 1997; Bremerton PTA Golden Acorn Award; Kitsap County Democrats Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006; YWCA Founders’ Award; and Liberty Bell Award from the Kitsap County Bar Association in 2009.

“She was known for her energy, her frank opinions and her persistence, and beloved for her caring attitude. Her practical advice and counsel and her inspirational spirit were treasured by her family and many friends.”

Hunt said, “One of her ideas was that a lot of people were mistreating other people, particularly the black citizens, because of the lack of information, the lack of education, so her mission was she was going to educate these people about what was going on. She figured that once they got educated, they would come around. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that, as we all know, but luckily she never gave up.”

Hunt said that the Liberty Bell Award she received in 2009 was due to her work in the community “for the cause of justice for all.”

“So this park is just a beautiful gem of a park, and is just a wonderful legacy that can keep both James and Lillian Walker’s memory alive into the future,” Hunt said.

“She was a wonderful, wonderful person. I miss her a lot, but she’s got a legacy.”