Carlmont High School hosted Civil Rights activist and member of the Little Rock Nine Minnijean Brown Trickey, local Congresswomen Jackie Speier and Barbara Lee and Stanford professor Gavin Wright, to discuss the 50 year anniversary of the Civil Rights Act Oct. 29.

Speier moderated the panel of speakers, who discussed their experiences and the history of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the progress yet to be made. They urged the audience to get involved in the continuing fight for equality.

“We can’t let death stop us…We said ‘we will die for this.’ I don’t want you to die for anything, but I do want you to take a stand,”  Brown Trickey said. “You must not allow yourselves to be desensitized to violence to be persuaded not to vote.”

Sequoia students and staff were present, including seniors Alicia Menendez Brennan and Nina Rosenblatt, who met Brown Trickey on Sojourn to the Past.

“I hope students understand how important it is to act now,” Menendez Brennan said. “It’s no longer old-fashioned marching in the street for archaic things that don’t matter anymore; it’s relevant social activism that can really make a difference for us now, and I think that’s the importance and the urgency that’s lost on our generation.”

The event, which was organized by three Carlmont Economics and Government teachers, aimed to inform and inspire the community with the testimonies of those who played influential roles in the Civil Rights Movement.

“People sometimes say ‘you were lucky to be living at that time, the issues were so clear, the right and wrong was so clear.’ In a way that’s true, [but] they didn’t seem so clear at the time,” Wright said.

Wright spent a summer in the ‘60s living in North Carolina and educating the African American community about voting rights and has since dedicated his career to studying economics, with a focus on the Civil Rights Movement.

Brown Trickey will come to Sequoia on Friday to speak about her experiences and emphasize the importance of kindness and the power of language.

“Minnijean is magical and compelling, and she reminded me of the power of words, personal stories and human connections,” said Sequoia English teacher Emily DeVoe. “I hope to brainwash my impressionable young students just as Minnijean suggested.”