Jenkins was born in Liberty City, Miami, the youngest of four siblings. His father died when he was 12, and had earlier separated from his mother, believing that Jenkins was not his biological son. During his childhood, Jenkins was raised by another woman in an overcrowded apartment. He attended Miami Northwestern Senior High School, where he played on the school football team. Jenkins later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film from Florida State University in Tallahassee in 2003.\n', '

Jenkins debuted on the screen with his 2003 short My Josephine, but his first breakout film was Medicine for Melancholy, a low-budget independent feature released in 2008, starring Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Heggins. The film was well received by critics.\n', '

After the success of his previous film, Jenkins wrote an epic for Focus Features about "Stevie Wonder and time travel" and an adaptation of the James Baldwin novel If Beale Street Could Talk, neither of which entered production. He later worked as a carpenter and co-founded an advertising company called Strike Anywhere. In 2011, he wrote and directed Remigration, a sci-fi short film about gentrification. Jenkins became a writer for HBO\'s The Leftovers, about which he commented, "I didn\'t get to do much."\n', '

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