Jenkins works for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta where he is an expert on minority issues in STDs. In 1969 he tried unsuccessfully to end the Tuskegee experiments in which 400 Alabama black men infected with syphilis went untreated for decades in an effort to understand the progression of the disease. The experiments began in1932 and were halted in 1972. Now Jenkins manages a program that provides medical coverage to the men who were part of the experiment and their families.