Little Rock Nine Member Brings Humor, Challenge to UAM

Managing Editor

   Having a statue made of yourself while you are still alive hardly qualifies as an ordinary experience.

Photo by Indra D. Kriner

A Challenge to Change - Little Rock Nine member Minnijean Brown Trickey discussed racism and her place in history during her lecture at the SGA-sponsored "Journey to Justice" program as part of Human Rights Month at UAM.

   “I can’t believe how exciting that is,” lifetime activist and Little Rock Nine member Minnijean Brown Trickey told a nearly-full auditorium during her lecture at the University of Arkansas—Monticello Fine Arts Center Feb. 15. “One Christmas (kids) put stuffed animals and Santa hats on them. The State of Arkansas said that was vandalism, but I thought it was great.”

   UAM's Office of Student Programs and Activities and the Student Government Association sponsored “Journey to Justice: An Evening with 1957 Little Rock Nine Member Minnijean Brown Trickey” as part of SGA’s Human Rights Month.

   Following a piano performance by Robert Webb, remarks by SGA President Zack Tucker and a praiseful introduction by 1978 UAM alumnus and Little Rock Central High School graduate the Rev. Shay Gillespie, Trickey discussed her place in history and the “simple acts” that make lasting change possible.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Possibilities

   Trickey and eight other students entered Little Rock Central High School Sept. 25, 1957 under military escort as part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s forceful segregation of American public schools. Then-Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus had challenged the Supreme Court ruling, utilizing the Arkansas National Guard to deny the students entry, only to have it wrested from his control by the federal government. The students won entry and made history.

   The reasons for deciding to go to Central were simple, Trickey said. It was within walking distance of her home. It would have new books. It was the “prettiest school I’ve ever seen.”

   And two of her friends had put their names on the list to go.

   The reasons were all about “simply wanting to go to school,” she said. An announcement came over her school’s intercom, asking interested students to sign a sheet and take it to his or her homeroom teacher.

   “That’s how history is made, people,” she said. “Keep that in mind—it’s made by simple acts.”

   People often overlook the heroes in their midst, Trickey said. “There is often a belief that history is made by very important people who are very special, not very ordinary,” she said. “And certainly history is not often made by teenagers.” 

   Much about the Civil Rights Movement was about making gains in equality for children, she explained.

Photo by Indra D. Kriner

Brother- and Sister-in-Arms - Fellow social justice activists Minnijean Brown Trickey and the Rev. Shay Gillespie embrace following his warm introduction as she takes the stage.

   “Why in our society do our children have to take us forward?” she asked, but then, “Who else can do it except the children?”

The Institutional Roots of Racism

   The hate and vitriol that embroiled protests at Central shocked Trickey. She recalled protest signs bearing phrases like “Integration is an abomination against God” and “Race-mixing is communism.” She shared the deep fear she felt when she caught her armed guards trembling.

   However, people would not possess racist attitudes and beliefs, Trickey said, were it not for institutional forces and “people in power who had persuaded them that they had something to lose by having nine black kids in a school of 2,000.”

   Racism functions as ideology, structure and process, she explained. Societal structures, such as law and public policy and the institutions that create them, do so in order to reinforce an ideology of white male supremacy. Process refers to the practice of the racist and discriminatory acts borne of this ideology and structure.

   “Individual acts against individuals are merely a practice of institutional training,” she said.  “So we have to interrogate the institutional power that incites the people to behave in a certain way.”

   People must unlearn what they were taught, she said.

Photo by Indra D. Kriner

"I Believe I Can Fly" - Vocal music major Robert Webb sings the R. Kelly song at the opener of the "Journey to Justice" program featuring Minnijean Brown Trickey. (more)

A Simple Challenge?

   One social problem plaguing the United States, Trickey said, stems from learned beliefs and behaviors, ingrained over centuries, that are not easily unlearned. So she proposed a challenge to those in academia: they must acknowledge their role in teaching diversity and changing toxic belief-systems.

   “Do you have any anti-racism courses here?” she asked. “Well, that’s a modern issue…in society. You need to get your money back, because you’re not being educated for successful interaction in the modern world.” 

   However, students must take responsibility and demand that education if their schools do not offer it, she said. “You need to ask somebody to make sure you get it.”

Going Forward

   The September 2010 loss of Jefferson Thomas, the first of the Little Rock Nine to pass away, was difficult to digest, Trickey said.

   “It was a wake-up call because we didn’t know that we could die,” she said, and described having to write her own obituary to have ready for the media upon her death. 

   Nevertheless, she spoke cheerfully but conservatively about her future. When asked by an audience member about future plans, she responded, “At 69, who cares?”

   Seemingly wanting to relax going forward and leave possibilities open, she spoke wistfully of a desire to travel and spend time with family. 

   But some fires burn long, and some "ordinary" people cannot help but be extraordinary. 

   To raucous cheers, she announced, “I fully plan to raise hell until I die.”

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