Sixty-seven years after the Little Rock Nine was escorted by armed soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division through an angry white mob to desegregate Central High School, that pivotal piece of American history is little more than a footnote in American schoolbooks.
“Specifically about Little Rock I think there are about 175 recognizable books” that have been published, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, one of the nine, told about 350 Quad Citians on Monday, Jan. 20, during a lively Q&A at the 42nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Services at the MLK Center in Rock Island. At the same time, however, “United States’ history books for high school have half a page about Little Rock,” she said during the Martin Luther King Day keynote address. The event also kicked off the west Rock Island MLK Center’s 50th anniversary year in 2025.
“Kids outside your country know more about this than we do,” she said. Why?
“The reason we don’t want to tell that history is because a lot of it is shameful,” Ms. Brown-Trickey said. “But it isn’t Black history or white history. It’s American history.”
In addition to Ms. Brown-Trickey’s firsthand account of that seminal event, the 2025 MLK Center’s “Inspiring Greatness” services also featured the presentation of the following annual MLK Center awards:
- “I Have A Dream Award” presented posthumously to Nathaniel Lawrence for outstanding service to the community.
- M.L. Lockhart Scholarship awarded to Layla Rice.
- Black Hawk College Commitment to Diversity Scholarship awarded to Lyric Rice.
- Youth Expression Contest winner Zakyia Dade.
East Moline’s Westbrook Singers and Aubrey Barnes’ spoken word performance also were featured during the program which was emceed by Rock Island Milan School District 41’s Rita Jett.
Lifetime of activism
“In the autumn of 1957 Minnijean Brown took her rightful place in what had previously been a whites-only school,” Ms. Jett, an educator, said in introducing Ms. Brown-Trickey. “In front of a worldwide television audience she walked past those armed guards and an angry mob to help set Americans on the path of desegregation of schools.”
That act would mark the “beginning of her fiery career as a social activist,” Ms. Jett said of the 83-year-old guest speaker.
For Ms. Brown-Trickey, the events leading up to the integration of Central High School were not heroic. When she decided to enroll in Central High in response to an intercom announcement, she said she was not thinking about the Brown vs. Board of Education decision or whether segregation in public schools was possible.
“I thought that it meant that my friend Jefferson who lived across from a white school could just go there.” She herself lived just seven blocks from Central School which was considered one of the best in the state. Those were two reasons why the then naive Ms. Brown wanted to enroll at Central.
None of them anticipated what that decision would mean.
“The Little Rock Nine were just ordinary kids. We weren’t special,” Ms. Brown-Trickey said.
“I lived in Little Rock in a very safe, segregated bubble,” she added. “I knew that outside there was all kinds of racism and I knew I was on the back of the bus, but I was very safe.”
That would soon change dramatically and she and her entire family would pay a steep price when she and the other eight students chose to enter their new all-white school.
‘This is serious’
“When we get there we find out that, oh, my God, they would rather kill us than let us go to the school, then you find out, uh-oh, this is serious. And that’s when the rod comes up in your back and you’re saying, ‘You’re not chasing me away,’” Ms. Brown-Trickey said.
Moments like that also have a lasting impact.
“Watching people in a mob mindless, saying all kinds of horrible things that were very shocking, they transformed me because I have become a peace activist for the entirety of my life,” she said.
The students were not without their supporters from the start, however. They included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who at the time was just 26 years old. “Everybody came to see those Little Rock kids,” Ms. Brown-Trickey laughed. “We were hot. It was big.”
Their reaction to the civil rights leaders’ visit? “He came, we thought he was cute,” she said. But he was also “a regular person, they were just ordinary people.”
What he did, however, was not ordinary. “He sent an irate letter to President Eisenhower when we were barred from the school by the Arkansas National Guard.”
Rev. King also attended the graduation of Ernest Graves “the first black boy to graduate from Central School,” Ms. Brown-Trickey said. That moment was chronicled in the film “The Ernest Green Story.” During the ceremony “when they called his name, nobody clapped except for his mom, his grandfather and Dr. King,” she recalled.
Years later when Ms. Brown-Trickey said she was talking to Coretta Scott King, Mrs. King told her “‘Oh, you inspired us so much.’ I was so flabbergasted, Mrs. Coretta King was saying we inspired them?” Ms. Brown-Trickey recalled.
Inspiring other activists
“Later, as I met civil rights people who are icons, they all said that it was the Little Rock Nine that inspired them and I was very happy and I’ll tell you why young people,” she said. “Because we were the first black kids on television who were not part of the Little Rascals and it was a moment in time that transformed the world and I know it transforms the world because I have letters from around the world and I hear from around the world.”
Many of those letter-writers have become activists, too.
“So we need this story for our young people,” Ms. Brown-Trickey added.
“I want us to remember Dr. King was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things and I want us to remember that a lot of the people involved in Little Rock have passed away. We’re going fast. The Little Rock Nine is now the Little Rock Seven.”
That makes telling the story more important than ever. So does the terrible price to be paid for ignoring that historic event.
“We cannot be intellectually thoughtful, courageous, conscientious citizens if we don’t know anything about the history of our country – and it ain’t Black history, it’s United States history,” she warned.
“I don’t know about a society that tries to stop people from learning things and all the kids walking around with a handheld computer all the time. What kind of craziness is that?”
