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February 08, 2005
“We were just going to school”: Rights activist Minnijean Brown-Trickey speaks to Hamline students
At 15, Minnijean Brown-Trickey faced down an angry, roaring mob.
At 63, Brown-Trickey, a self-described “activist for every cause,” stood in front of Hamline students and retold her story of Sept. 25, 1957.
She spoke to a crowd in the Kay Fredericks Room of the Klas Center last Thursday in an event that was part of Black History Month and sponsored by Commitment to Community.
Brown-Trickey was a member of the “Little Rock Nine,” a group of African-American students who, under the eye of an angry mob and protected by the 101st Airborne Division, walked into the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“It was a story of bravery for those nine to just go to school,” Brown-Trickey said, a sentence she repeated throughout her lecture.
“We were just standing with the militia on one side and the mob on the other,” she said. “I just shook. I’m still struggling with describing how I actually felt.”
The group desegregated the school that day and continued to attend classes against the wishes of the then-governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, who incited the mob.
Their act garnered worldwide media attention.
“We were on the front page of every newspaper in the world,” Brown-Trickey said. “It changed the world that day. Television was a closed system. The only people on TV were white, except Buckwheat from the Little Rascals.”
While at school, Brown-Trickey said the nine were “terrorized,” and she once had hot soup thrown on her.
Her heels were stepped on, leaving them raw, and a purse containing six padlocks was thrown at her.
During her stay at Central High school, Brown-Trickey said she received many racist and hate-motivated phone calls at her house, some answered by her three-year-old brother.
Brown-Trickey was eventually expelled from Central High School after calling a white girl who was physically tormenting her “white trash.”
Brown-Trickey said she blamed herself for her expulsion and carried the feelings of guilt for 30 years. She felt bad for leaving the other students to face the hatred and oppression of their fellow white students.
Brown-Trickey later graduated from high school in New York and completed college at the University of Southern Illinois.
After the initial desegregation, Brown-Trickey said, the pulpits were ringing with the message that “Letting white boys and black girls to sit next to each other is an abomination of God.”
That argument, Brown-Trickey said, is the same argument used today to repel gay and lesbian marriages. The statement received strong acknowledgments and cries of agreement from the crowd.
Currently, Brown-Trickey advocates for many causes and rights, attempting to remove descriptors such as “gay,” “women’s” and “civil” from rights.
If you don’t fight for rights for all and instead push for rights for only specific groups, you are losing more than you are gaining, she said.
Posted by msveum at February 8, 2005 04:00 PM