The Vista Academy drama club presents Middle School Voices Matter: The Civil Rights Movement is Still Happening.
A crowded and hushed Shanker Hall listened as MinnijeanBrown-Trickey told hundreds of middle and high school students what it was like that morning 57 years ago when, as an African-American student their age, she walked through crowds of hissing, cursing white adults and up the steps of Little Rock HS to start school.
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JONATHAN FICKIES
MinnijeanBrown-Trickeytells students what it was like to be one of the “Little Rock nine.”
Guarded by federal troops, she was one of the historic “nine” who broke the back of segregation in schools in the South by risking their lives that September morning. She explained that she knew she lived in a segregated world but noted, “I was not prepared for the hatred that day. It broke my heart.” Brown-Trickey described how she transformed that broken heart into her lifelong commitment to nonviolence. When people ask her, “Why did you do it?” she answers, “Because someone had to do it, and we just happened to be the ones.” Her lesson for the students in the audience: “Ordinary people do extraordinary things.” Brown-Trickey shared her story at A Season for Nonviolence, an educational event for students and educators organized by the UFT in collaboration with the New York City Gandhi-King Season for Nonviolence Task Force and the Association for Global New Thought. In addition to a United Nations flag ceremony, the event included presentations by the Nathaniel Hawthorne MS choir, Curtis HS’s Stand Up and Lead team and students from Vista Academy in Brooklyn, Edwin Markham IS on Staten Island, Richard Green HS of Teaching and Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
