Honesty Vital to Freedom of Speech

A wise man looks at things twice and is honest about what he sees.

That's the message that Minnijean Brown Trickey brought yesterday to UCA's Fall Public Forum. She was invited to speak as part of the campus' recognition of National Freedom of Speech Week.

Trickey knows about the power of free speech. She was one of the "Little Rock Nine," the first black students to integrate Central High School in 1957. She was suspended twice that year, once for dumping a bowl of chili on the head of white boy who blocked her way in the school cafeteria and a second time for calling a girl "white trash" after the girl hit her with a purse.

Trickey moved to Canada during the Vietnam War and spent several decades working for minority rights and social justice. She has been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and several other honors, including an honorary doctorate of law. Trickey now lives in Little Rock with her mother and daughter.

She joked at the forum that being a critically conscious person had gotten her into trouble and decades of civil service had exposed many of the myths and lies about America. She cited the national platitude that the U.S. has the greatest medical system in the world as one of those lies.

Minnijean Brown-Trickey

By citing the book Lies My Teacher Told Me and the poem Soul Make a Path Through Shouting, she illustrated how national narratives mislead the public. She said America is a developing, not a developed, democracy and it won't fully develop if we continue to cling to false social narratives.

When asked about the fear of change, Trickey asked the audience to raise their hands if they had cell phones and used computers. Almost everyone in the audience raised their hands.

"Everyone loves change but we just pretend that we don't," she said. "We must be the change that you want to see in the world."

The event was sponsored by Lambda Pi Eta and funded in part by student activity fees.

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