The Northwest School's Maya Jackson, who lives in Auburn, has signed to run track next season at Portland State University.

— image credit: Courtesy photo

Maya Jackson cannot pin down the moment she decided to make the civil rights movement her life’s cause.

Indeed, says the Auburn resident and Northwest School senior, there were many inspiring moments and events.

And she’s counting on the power, speed and grace in her two legs to get her where she wants to be.

Jackson, the defending Class 1A state champion in the 400-meter dash, has signed with Portland State University to compete next season in track and field. She plans to major in political science, with an eye toward earning a law degree and practicing civil rights law one day.

“Throughout my academic career, I have learned about injustices,” Jackson said. “It’s really inspired me to do something.”

When she was younger, Jackson said, someone asked about her ethnic background.

“Human,” she answered.

Pressed further, Jackson explained that her father is black and her mother is Chinese and Korean.

“I never knew I was biracial until someone pointed it out to me when I was younger,” she said. “I just thought it was normal to have parents of different races, which it is.

“It just never occurred to me that was something other people would think is strange or unique.”

Born in Alabama, Jackson moved to Washington when she was 3, where she learned that until a statewide, special election in November 2000 overturned it, her native state had had an anti-miscegenation law on the books.

“It was actually really interesting when I learned that interracial marriage was illegal when my parents got married,” she said. “That just really interested me.”

That may have been the genesis of her future plans, but later events firmed up her thinking. Her participation in a mock trial for her seventh-grade history class, she said, gave her an attorney’s perspective. She performed several duties in that case, she said, from cross examining a witness to crafting a closing statement about someone who had murdered a friend.

“I just got really into it,” she said. “I felt it was something I could do and a way I could change stuff.”

Jackson is enrolled in a law class that just finished reading Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” which was recognized as one of Time’s 10 Best Books of Nonfiction in 2014 and won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

”It’s about the use of the death penalty and stuff like that,” Jackson said. “It has been used in juvenile cases unjustly for harsh treatment. I don’t agree with the death penalty at all. Cases where the police overuse their power, we have seen that throughout this year and last year.”

Jackson, who has a 3.72 grade-point average, had hoped a summer internship with the local chapter of the NAACP could start her working toward her career, but she’s got track obligations, and those long-range plans will have to wait.

In addition to running for The Northwest School, Jackson competes for the Auburn Elite Track Club. Her father, Kevin, who ran the 400 for one season at UCLA, coaches both teams.

“He has a lot of insight,” she said. “He’s a great coach.”

Kevin often stands at a corner of the track where he tells his daughter about her pace and pushes her to move faster as she approaches. Beyond that, he tries to avoid overloading her and his other runners.

“Every athlete is their own person,” he said. “I just try and tell her to be strong in what you do and run your own race because (doing otherwise) doesn’t lead you to be prosperous.”

The plan has worked well. Jackson’s time in the 400 at state last year was 57.37 seconds. At last Saturday’s Bellevue Invitational, she finished second, in 57.56 seconds.

Jackson, who also plays volleyball for The Northwest School, enjoyed competing at the Invitational, which draws in teams from several classifications throughout the Puget Sound region and beyond. But she was disappointed with her performance in the 400, which West Seattle senior Lani Taylor (56.83) won.

“It wasn’t my best meet,” Jackson said. “I was kind of disappointed in how I performed. I thought (the 400) came down to the last 50, and I didn’t push hard enough.”

Jackson also competed in the 100 and 200 at Bellevue, placing 11th in the 100 (12.8) and fifth in the 200 (26.14).

Still, she considers her specialty the 400. Her goal, she said, is to defend her title next month in Cheney and place in the other two.

And, even as the defending state champion, Jackson said, she believes she can improve, “my mental state and my strategy when I run it.”

Whatever direction that – and life – take her, Jackson is grateful to have her family behind her.

“They’ve been very supportive,” she said. “They’ve always pushed me to do my best.”