Fifty years ago Minniejean Brown made history.
Minnijean Brown-Trickey (born September 11, 1941)[1] was one of a group of African-American teenagers known as the "Little Rock Nine." On September 25, 1957, under the gaze of 1,200 armed soldiers and a worldwide audience, Minnijean Brown-Trickey faced down an angry mob and helped to desegregate Central High. She was later expelled from Little Rock Central High School in 1958 for several reasons, among them an incident in which she dropped her tray which had chili on it and the chili splattered on the white students in the cafeteria where they had been verbally abusing her. The chili incident was a clear expression of the meeting to stop integration and get one of the Little Rock Nine expelled.
This seminal event in to American history was just the beginning of Brown-Trickey's long career as a crusader for civil rights. She has spent her life fighting for the rights of minority groups and the dispossessed. For her work, she has received the Congressional Gold Medal, the Wolf Award, the Spingarn Medal, and many other citations and awards. Under the Clinton administration, she served for a time as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior responsible for diversity. Currently, she lives in Maryland, and is continuing her work for civil rights and social equality. She is also working on her autobiography, tentatively entitled Mixed Blessing: Living Black in North America.
No comments:
Post a Comment