Minnijean Brown-Trickey spoke Thursday night as part of WVU’s Festival of Ideas program.

Minnijean Brown-Trickeywas one of the “Little Rock Nine”-students who desegregated Central High in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957, and she spoke about how that time affected her personally, as well as changed America.

She said that the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis is part of American history, not just black history, because at its core it was a constitutional conflict. This crisis gave individuals an understanding of the theory and practice of racism, was one of the elements that helped to end segregation across the country, and was key to helping people realize some sense of self-determination.

She said that non-violence is a way of life and quoted the title of a poem by a the Spanish poet Antonio Machado “We Make the Road by Waking” saying that we can not predict the future, we instead make the future ourselves.

She said that we are challenged to take responsibility for the world we live in.

She discussed the history that led to the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis. The Plessy V. Ferguson (1892) decision was the ruling that set up separate but equal and authorized the segregation that separated black from whites in all aspects of life as the justification for Jim Crow laws. She said that there was resistance to this ruling and during this time there were unparalleled acts of violence against blacks, with 10,000 lynchings in 30 years.

Brown v Board of Education (1954) was the ruling that led to desegregation and the time that most Americans would mark as the Civil Rights Movement. She said that it was believed that if young people interacted together, it would make things easier, that children who grew up together would later get along. She said that this ruling affected not just blacks, but also Chinese, Mexicans, Japanese, and other people of color.

Her history in the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis was that in 1957, the Little Rock School Board proposed to desegregate the schools, and when they asked for volunteers and Minnijean Brown and others added their name to the list. That summer the names and addresses of the students who were to desegregate the school were published in the paper, and the violence started immediately.

On the first day of classes, the governor placed troops around the school, and there was a mob outside, as well as media from around the world. When the soldiers closed ranks to keep the students out, this was shown all around the world. This took three weeks to straighten out, and finally the guard left and the students snuck into the school, only to be evacuated for their safety as the mob outside attacked three black newsmen, one of whom died later from his injuries.

Because this was the cold war, and Eisenhower was afraid of what the Russians might think and do, he eventually sent troops to desegregate the school and provide guards for the students.

She said that she wanted to go to school, despite everything, because if they were going to be so threatened to keep them out of that school, then “there must be a treasure in there.”

Minnijean Brown-Trickey said that she never wants what she went through to happen to anyone ever again, yet it did happen again, which disappointed her. She is also disappointed that we are regressing and again becoming a segregated society, although this time the division is occurring on the basis of class and neighborhood and not the outright color segregation that occurred in the past. She asked whether we as a society have decided to allow these cultural enclaves, with the implied question of what will we do to make the change, to keep this from happening.

She said one of her favorite things was what she called the “mirror trick”, or “Seeing myself in every other person.” and she also quoted Gandhi: “We must be the change when we want to change the world.”

She mentioned several of the Principles of Non-Violence, and suggested that they should be a guide for everyone.
1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
…
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

(Martin Luther King Jr’s 6 Principles of Non-Violence)

She said most importantly, “I believe non-violence is the strongest force on earth”