Document A: Eyes on the Prize Transcript
Excerpt from the well-known 14-hour PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, made
in 1987. Henry Hampton, an African-American filmmaker, produced the film. The
“chili incident” mentioned here occurred in December 1957.
NARRATOR: At school, the black teenagers were still being harassed by a few
determined whites. Shortly before Christmas, Minnijean Brown struck back.
ERNEST GREEN [Little Rock Nine member]: For a couple of weeks, there had
been a number of white kids following us. A series of hassles, continuous—
Calling us niggers. “Nigger, nigger, nigger,” one right after the other. And Minnie
was – Minnijean Brown was in the lunch line with me. And I was in front of
Minnie, and Minnie was behind me. And there was this white kid—fella—who
was much shorter than Minnie—Minnie was about five foot ten. And this fella
couldn’t have been more than five-five, five-four. And he reminded me of a small
dog, yelping at somebody’s leg. And Minnie had just picked up her chili.
MELBA PATTILLO BEALS [Little Rock Nine member]: I could just see her little
head click. She consciously said to herself, “No, Minnijean, if you do this, you
know you won’t be here.” But then, this was the time of the year when we all
didn’t want to be there.
ERNEST GREEN: And before I could even say, “You know, Minnie, why don’t
you tell him to shut up?” Minnie had taken this chili, dumped it on this dude’s
head. It was just absolute silence in the place. And then the help—all black—
broke into applause. And the white kids—the other white kids there—didn’t know
what to do. It was the first time that anybody, I’m sure, had seen somebody black
retaliate in that sense.
CRAIG RAINS [white Central High student]: When Minnijean was kicked out of
school following the chili incident, maybe 15, 20 students brought cards and gave
them out that said, “One down, eight to go.” When school was out in May, they
still hadn’t given up the fight. They came out with a two-colored card that said,
“Ike, go home, Liberation day May 29, 1958,” which was graduation day. They
were still fighting the battle even then.
Vocabulary
the help: out-of-date term for service workers; cafeteria workers in this case
Ike: nickname for President Dwight Eisenhower
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Document B: Suspension Notice
Days after this suspension notice was written, the Little Rock school
board expelled Minnijean Brown from Central High School.
Vocabulary
probation: a period of supervision to ensure good behavior
harassment: aggressive pressure or intimidation
provocation: action to deliberately make someone irritated or angry
STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu
Document C: Look magazine
The June 24, 1958 edition of Look magazine featured a report by 16-yearold
Minnijean Brown titled “What they did to me in Little Rock” as told to
Look staff writer J. Robert Moskin.
The last day [at Central], I went to school in a happy mood. When I would
walk into the building, I used to get that “here-we-go-again” feeling.
At my locker, there was a blonde, Frankie Gregg. She would follow me up
to the third floor every morning, saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger,” all the way.
This morning, I didn’t think anything about it when she and some other kids
did the same thing. But this time, she even stepped on my heels and ran
right into me. Then she said if I did that again, she’d beat me up. I didn’t
answer her even then.
When I went into my home room, she kept yelling from the door. Finally, I
turned to the girl and said, “Don’t say anything more to me, white trash.”
Then I walked to my seat. Frankie got so mad she started screaming at me.
She threw her pocketbook and hit me in the back of the head. My first
impulse was to beat her with it, but I just picked it up and threw it down
again and walked to the office. Frankie and the guard came into the office
too.
Frankie said, “Minnijean called me ‘white trash.’” I said, “Frankie has been
calling me ‘nigger’ for a week and threw her pocketbook at me after I called
her ‘white trash.’” Frankie refused to apologize. I said I would if she would. I
guess I was supposed to apologize whether she did or not…
That night, the radio said I had been suspended… Several days later, the
school board expelled me for the rest of the term. I haven’t been back to
Central High since.
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Document D: Press Conference
During the 40th anniversary of the integration of Central High School in
September 1997, the Little Rock Nine answered journalists’ questions at a
press conference.
Reporter: One of the greatest stories of the Civil Rights Movement is the
story of you and the bowl of chili in the cafeteria. One thing I’m curious
about is, I’ve read it a couple of different ways, in terms of, whether that
specific incident was responsible for your expulsion or whether it was
something else?
Minnijean Brown: Well I think the reason for my expulsion was that I was
tall, beautiful and proud. [Applause] And I’ve had a lot of time to think about
that and I’m not going to go through the story of the chili because the chili
incident is symbolic of what happens when one is tall, beautiful and proud,
and unlike the stereotype of what a young black women should be. I’ve
tried to explain that to my kids, I was not a violent person—I was steeped
in non-violence—but I did have emotions.
Vocabulary
stereotype: a widely held but oversimplified belief
steeped in: to be surrounded or influenced by something
STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu
Document E: Sociologist
Excerpt from Beth Roy’s book Bitters in the Honey: Tails of Hope,
Disappointment Across Divides of Race and Time, published by The
University of Arkansas Press in 1999. Roy, a sociologist, interviewed
Central High School students and employees years later to understand
how people experienced the school’s desegregation.
[Minnijean’s] defiance was not contained; it spilled over to become a force
in a fierce contest of realities. One white Central student, searching for a
way to explain her hatred for Minnijean, finally burst out, “She walked the
halls as if she belonged there.”
“There was plenty of room for all of us there,” Helen [a white student] said,
more reasonably. “The school was big enough to accommodate everybody,
so who cares?” But the implication was strong that is was fine for “them” to
come to “our” school. The problem arose if “they” acted like they were there
by right, not by generosity.
My white interviewees commonly expressed this idea by reference to
concepts of “place”:
Jane: With Minnijean, I remember not feeling very empathetic that she
left. Sort of, stereotypically that she asked for it, that she didn’t know her
place, do you know what I’m saying? That kind of feeling….
“They liked us,” said Evelyn Armon, a black woman who was a school
administrator in the district for forty-nine years, “as long as we stayed in our
place.” Segregation represented an ordering of the universe, a way of
naming social hierarchies and the location within them of every individual,
whether black or white. Comments about Minnijean’s person and attitude,
definitions of her as an individual, combine with comments about her
“place” to assign her forcefully to a social position.
Vocabulary
defiance: open resistance, bold disobedience
empathetic: the ability to share another person’s feelings
hierarchies: levels with different importance and value