BY RICK PUSIAK
There?s a country song from a few years back with the lyrics ?you?ve got to stand for something or you?ll fall for everything.?
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Minni-Jean Brown Trickey, (left) a member of the Little Rock Nine, spoke Thursday in Sudbury about prejudice in the American south in the 1950s. Standing next to the social activist is Cheryle Partridge of the Native Human Sciences program at Laurentian University. |
On Thursday afternoon a large crowd in the Science North Cavern got to meet someone who embodies the spirit of that tune.
Minni-Jean Brown Trickey, a person of colour who broke through the barriers of racial prejudice in segregated Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, presented a film about her life.
Brown Trickey was a member of The Little Rock Nine, the first nine black students to enter the white-only Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
When Brown Trickey went to school on Sept. 25, 1957 she and the other black students had to enter the building under the protection of more than 900 members of the 101st Airborne Division.
In a question and answer session following the screening of Journey to Little Rock: The Untold Story of Minni-Jean Brown Trickey, the graduate of the Native Human Services program at Laurentian University came across as a humble and almost shy speaker, aware of her place in history and also aware of the need to keep the flame of human rights burning bright.
?Chill out, be cool,? said the activist. ?I?ve been demonized more times than I can count?I had no clue 40 years later that I was going to hang with the president in the White House.?
President Bill Clinton received Brown Trickey and the other eight black students in a ceremony in 1997 commemorating the 40th anniversary of an event that shifted American society.
An integration crisis started bubbling in the United States not too long after a Supreme Court decision in the mid-1950s striking down education systems based on race.
Little Rock had already started desegregation in areas such as public transit and the library, and things were expected to go smoothly at the high school.
The Arkansas governor, however, called in the National Guard to prevent black students from entering the educational institution. He cited fears of mob violence.
The state troops were eventually withdrawn, but when a mob did show up outside the building Little Rock mayor Wood Mann asked then-president Dwight Eisenhower for help in the form of federal troops to restore order and allow the black students to enter.
The crisis will never be forgotten. A museum visitor centre was dedicated at the school to preserve a pivotal moment in history.
Brown Trickey recalled that back in 1957 she was a black girl tired of a society where people of her colour had to go to dirty washrooms instead of the clean ones, washrooms with signs on the door saying ?white ladies only.?
She had no idea a mob of 1,000 people would be waiting for her on the first day of high school and no idea troops would be called in.
She later relocated to Canada during the Vietnam War with her husband who was avoiding the draft.
Brown Trickey told the crowd she has worries about the future, including what appears to be an imminent U.S- led attack on Iraq.
She said she does take some consolation in what appears to be a growing anti-war movement in North America.
?We might not be able to stop this one, but we might be able to stop the next one,? said the activist.
Brown Trickey returned to the United States in 1999 as deputy assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior in the Clinton administration. She continues her work for civil rights and social equality.
She spoke as part of Laurentian?s first native social work conference last week.
