Minnesota civil rights icon Matthew Little doesn’t travel much these days. But last January, at age 87, he went to Washington, D.C., to witness what he never thought would happen in his lifetime: the inauguration of an African-American president.
“It’s impossible for me to put words to the feeling I got when I looked up and saw [Barack Obama] taking that oath,” he says. “It was a feeling deep inside I never had before. Having been standing in line almost three hours, the temperature in the teens, I almost froze to death. But, at that moment, I warmed up.”
Corny as it may sound to pit sentiment against the freezing Potomac weather, stand in Little’s shoes. He fought all his life to see that such a thing could happen. “It is,” he says, “a culmination of everything I’ve worked for.”
Little graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in 1948 and moved to the Twin Cities, a bachelor of biological science. He tried getting jobs in his field, which, back then, were rarely available to blacks. So he tried to find other work. He waited tables, applied (and was denied the chance) to work as a firefighter and worked at the post office until, eventually, he became a landscaper.
But he was sick and tired of seeing his and his people’s dreams deferred. In 1954 he joined the board of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP and began a lifelong dedication to that organization.
The rest is history. Little became Minneapolis chapter president and, later, president of the Minnesota chapter. Though he was no longer interested in fighting fires, he remembers as one of his greatest accomplishments, the federal suit he filed to integrate the Minneapolis Fire Department. He also took U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the city to state court, on the premise that residents were being discriminated against because of their color, forced to subsist in dilapidated housing. In 1963, he took his first trip to Washington, D.C., with a Minnesota contingent to join the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream. “It was so mesmerizing,” Little recalls. “In every respect. Not only the message but his oratory. He spoke beautifully.”
After returning to the Twin Cities, he organized activists for the landmark Freedom Rides, which, like the Washington event, heralded a turning of the tide against institutional racism.
These were tough times for the NAACP moderates. They were battered on the radical left by Black Panthers rhetoric, on the entrenched right by Goldwaterites. How was Little able to move forward with his mission? “I considered myself a pragmatist,” he says. “It was important to get things done, not to rebel for the sake of rebelling. And, certainly, not to cave in to conservatives.”
He helped create the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission, became a charter member and, for good measure, was instrumental in persuading the Minnesota Vikings to hire Dennis Green, the franchise’s only black head coach to date. How’d he pull that off? “Being a sports fan and head of the NAACP at the time,” he recalls, “[I saw that] there were more and more black players. But nobody black was in charge of anything. I was able to get hold of [General Manager] Mike Lynn.” He convinced Lynn to recruit nationwide for a qualified black coach and to hold tryouts for black cheerleaders.
Little says that since his stay as a young man in the segregated U.S. Army “the world has changed a lot … in regard to what African-Americans can do that they could not do during that time. A lot of mechanical things have evolved, but the measurement I utilize is the accessibility of African-Americans to things that were completely unavailable to them at that time. Things like well-paying jobs, quality education, not having to worry about a lynch rope.”
Not to mention the presidency of the United States.
He may be a living legend, but Little is an unassuming soul who has no need to blow his own horn. He says he’d probably have been happier sitting on a back porch watching the grass grow instead of confronting institutionalized racism. But when it’s time to step up, it’s time to step up, he says. So, he did.
And he’s not through. After 35 years in the fray, he now writes on political, social and educational issues in his column Little by Little for weekly newspaper Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the state’s oldest black-owned business.
For Little, it’s all been about a sense of community, which includes not just black populations. “It’s up to us to keep alive our own family, to resolve [what] threatens our being part of the wider community.”
His daughters Kinshasha Kambui and Titilayo Bediako, have done their share of grassroots activism, spearheading the WE WIN Institute, highly respected for its success in educating and mentoring youth. Kambui also was community liaison on Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak’s staff.
“The legacy my father [leaves] me and my children is one of hard work and community service,” she says. “[He] taught me that there is nothing that I cannot accomplish if I keep my eye on the prize and I am willing to work for it. At 87 years old, [he] is still active in the community through his board work and [shows] me how to be an elder with grace, kindness and vigor.”
Little takes his prominence with a grain of salt, calling himself “another guy in the crowd. It was [circumstance] that led me to be involved. [When that happens] a person automatically rises to that point, to solve problems.”
Not automatically. Little has put in a lifetime of work to raise the status of his people. Renowned Twin Cities historian and scholar Mahmoud El-Kati dubs him “the dean of [Minnesota’s] civil rights community, a man of great integrity. He expresses the values of civil rights—empowerment, respect and inclusion—that’s the essence of that struggle. Matt is the quintessential figure.”
Little was elected five times to Minnesota’s State Executive Committee, four times a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and another four times to the post of president elector to cast one of the state’s 10 electoral votes for U.S. president. Among a long list of his awards are the Human Rights Award from the League of Minnesota Human Rights Commissions, as well as the state Democratic Party’s Hubert Humphrey Award and the Minneapolis Urban League Outstanding Civic and Service Award. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Minnesota.
After such a distinguished career, why doesn’t he, indeed, go sit on that porch and watch the grass grow? “I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. There is still too much to be done.” As long as there is a fight to be won, says Little, “I have to get into it.”
Back to Articles
