When Dr. Terrence Roberts stepped into CEC last week, the room shifted. It’s not often that Blair students get to hear directly from someone who shaped American history. Not through a textbook, but through lived experience. As a member of the Little Rock Nine, Dr. Roberts helped desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957, an act of courage that continues to define the Civil Rights Movement.
From the perspective of a student sitting in the audience, what stood out wasn’t just the history itself, but the calm clarity with which Dr. Roberts spoke about it. He didn’t dramatize his experiences or frame himself as a hero. Instead, he invited us to think about systems, choices, and the quiet but powerful ways people can resist injustice.
For many of us, hearing him describe what it felt like to walk into a school where he wasn’t wanted made history suddenly feel close. Uncomfortably close. He spoke about being 15, around the same age many of us were when we entered Blair, and facing threats most of us can hardly imagine. But his message wasn’t focused on fear; it was focused on awareness.
What resonated most for students was Dr. Roberts’s insistence that history isn’t something we learn and then leave behind. He reminded us that assumptions about fairness, equality, and truth are constantly being challenged and that young people today carry the responsibility of questioning the world they’re inheriting.
He also encouraged us to think critically about the narratives we accept. “Pay attention,” he urged. “Ask questions.” In a time when information moves fast and opinions often replace facts, his words felt especially relevant. Dr. Roberts made it clear that the work of understanding justice begins long before a person speaks up, it begins with noticing what others ignore.
After the talk, the conversations among students reflected what he hoped to spark: curiosity, reflection, and even discomfort. Many of us walked away realizing that courage today isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it means being willing to have hard conversations with each other. Sometimes it means refusing to let silence erase someone’s experience. And sometimes it simply means listening, really listening, when a living witness to history stands in front of us.
Dr. Roberts’s visit reminded the Blair community that learning isn’t only academic. It’s ethical. It’s personal. And for students sitting in that auditorium, it felt like a challenge to carry forward the awareness he has spent his life trying to foster.
