MINNIJEAN BROWN-TRICKEY

MINNIJEAN BROWN-TRICKEY

This civil-rights icon and social activist, who in September 1957 was one of nine black students who integrated the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., was the guest of honor at a gathering Monday evening at Flambeau’s Restaurant on Youngstown’s South Side. Some of her achievements:

On Feb. 17, 1958, Brown-Trickey moved to New York City and lived with Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark, psychologists whose research formed the basis for the NAACP’s legal argument in the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case.

In 1959, she graduated from the New Lincoln School, a private and progressive school in New York, before attending Southern Illinois University and majoring in journalism.

After moving to Canada, Brown-Trickey earned a bachelor’s in social work degree in Native Human Services from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. She also earned a degree in social work from Carlton University in Ontario.

Her career and social activism included work in peacemaking efforts, environmental issues, diversity training and education, youth leadership and cross-cultural communications, along with gender and social-justice advocacy.

For two years, Brown-Trickey served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Workforce Diversity in the Interior Department under President Bill Clinton.

She is a regular part of Sojourn to the Past, a traveling interactive American history course that takes high-school students and adults to key civil-rights sites in the Deep South.

For her work, Brown-Trickey has been the recipient of numerous awards, such as the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Tribute and the International Wolf Award for her contributions to racial harmony. In 1999, Clinton awarded her and the other eight black students the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture