The opera is still being written, but it had its first major performance in Little Rock, at Central High School, to an audience that included some of the nine who integrated the school these 60 years ago. “In a scene in which the students explain why they volunteered to integrate the school, unaware of the dangers they would face, [Minnijean Brown Trickey] heard her own words from long ago sung back to her:
‘I sort of loosely thought,
So, well, why not?
I’m beautiful, I’m smart,
I’m talented. How hard,
How hard could this be?'”
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