At 84, Minnijean Brown-Trickey says she has "done it all." Long before her work as an anti-racist educator and environmental campaigner in Canada, she demonstrated enormous courage as one of the Little Rock Nine a group of Black teenagers who integrated Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957. Minnijean Brown was 15 years old when she decided that she wanted to attend the all-white school, which was closer to her home, instead of Horace Mann High School
Combining a variety of fabrics, buttons, shells, and beads, Stephen Towns' mixed-media textile pieces draw on the rich heritage of quilts made especially by Black women in the American South. Tableaux reminiscent of family portraits and vacation snapshots lend themselves to an exploration of the power of pleasure and community during an era when the South was still racially segregated.