Melba Pattillo Beals - Warriors don't cry

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Melba Pattillo Beals - A short Biography

3. Warriors don’t cry
3.1. Contextualizing the Story
3.2. Summary
3.3. Character Chart
3.4. Analysis of Important Characters
3.5. Interpretation of Chosen Quotations
3.6. Style of Writing
3.7. The Author and the Book
3.8. Public Reaction

4. Personal Statement on Warriors don’t cry

5. Bibliography

1. Intoduction

I am writing this paper for a course at university, which is called “The Struggle is Always There: The Tradition of Black American Protest”. My paper focuses on one particular event of the American Civil Rights Movement (1955 - 1968), which is the school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas, after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Besides some minor sources, this paper is mainly based on the book by Melba Pattillo Beals Warriors don’t cry, which is a true story of a 15 year old black girl from Little Rock, who was among the first Afro-American students to integrate the city’s Central High school.

That is why I will pay more attention on the book (content, characters, style of writing, etc.) itself than on the historical event of school desegregation. I will also highlight the author’s personality and the importance of the book for the author and the public through some chosen quotations. I will conclude this paper with a personal statement on how I experienced reading this book.

To sum it up, this paper is about the author Melba Pattillo Beals, the most important characteristics of the book (also in connection with the author) and the effects of the book on the reader.

2. Melba Pattillo Beals - A Short Biography:

Melba Pattillo was born on December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor Day) in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the daughter of Will (railroad worker) and Lois (English teacher) Pattillo. Her parents divorced when she was seven years old and therefore she grew up with her mother, her grandmother India and her little brother Condrad. Especially these two women had and still have a great influence on her life.

In 1957, at the age of fifteen, she was one of the nine black students (‘Little Rock Nine’¹ ) who were chosen to integrate the Central High school (CHS) of Little Rock. This school year soon proved to be the most terrible and most brutal time of her life. During that time at CHS she and her eight black fellow students had to fight for their lives every single day because segregationist students still refused desegregation laws and did not want to socialize with black people.

Schools in Little Rock were closed in 1958 and when they were reopened one year later, there was still such a strife that Melba was sent to a white Californian family. This family showed her what it meant to be equal by treating her like she was their own daughter and their by unconditional love. In 1959 she finished high school in Santa Rosa. In 1960 she attended the mostly white San Francisco State University where she later earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

At University she also got to know John Beals, a white student. Six month after their first meeting they married. She also gave birth to a daughter, Kellie, shortly afterwards. Seven years later they divorced because of personal differences. John wanted her to be a decent wife taking care of the house and the children, but Melba wanted to be a news reporter.

Melba Pattillo Beals made her dream come true when she graduated from Columbia University’s School of Journalism and finally became a news reporter, which had been her dream since 1957, when she was in steady contact with the media. She became a reporter on NBC television. Besides various articles in magazines and newspapers, she also published two books: Warriors don’ cry (1994), which will be looked at in great detail in this paper, and White is a State of Mind (1999). (Beals, Scholastic)

3. Warriors don ’ t cry - A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock ’ s Central High

3.1. Contextualizing the Story: (1954 - 1959)

In May 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unlawful in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. This decision stated that all schools in the USA should be integrated “with all deliberate speed” (Levy, 89). But although this decision was obligatory for all state governments, only two southern states began desegregation in this year - Texas and Arkansas.

The city of Little Rock, Arkansas, which in 1957 became the scene of such a horrible course of events, was up till then a rather liberate and progressive city towards race relations. Its Medical School accepted black students as soon as 1948. In Little Rock some blacks were allowed to join the police force and there were neighborhoods where black and white people lived peacefully next to each other. Most public institutions (libraries, parks, toilets, buses) were shared by blacks and whites and about one-third of the eligible black population of Arkansas was registered to vote. Hence, Little Rock’s schools seemed well prepared to integrate. But still the school board stated in its Little Rock Phase Program, which was introduced in spring of 1955, that only Little Rock’s Central High school should be integrated in 1957. But soon white segregationist groups objected to this program, arguing that blacks had proper schools and that there was no need to share schools. Their biggest fear was that black children could socialize and mix with their children.

These segregationist groups also had a rather powerful person by their side, the then governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus, too a reputed segregationist. This was the beginning of the quarrel between the governor and the NACCP, especially with local leader, Daisy Bates. This ongoing debate had its peak in summer of 1957, only weeks before the “chosen” nine (out of 75) black students were to integrate CHS. In the end Daisy Bates won and the state had to follow the federal orders to integrate CHS on September 4, 1957. In the meantime hundreds of white people gathered outside the school to inhibit integration. The mob which one of the nine students had to face on this day became a symbol of the harassment and attacks all of the black students had to endure for a whole year. It was only possible for them to attend CHS with the support of President Eisenhower and more than thousand soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division and the Arkansas National Guards.

During the school year segregationist students and organizations did not stop to fight against those nine students, who could not count on any help by soldiers or teachers inside the school. Nevertheless, eight of them made it to the end of the year (one girl was expelled) on May 27, 1958 and one of them became the first black student to graduate from CHS.

Even after that ‘victory’ for the black population, the white still wanted to stop integration. Governor Faubus decided to close all public schools in Little Rock in 1958, which made it impossible for more than 600 white and most of the black students to attend any school. The Supreme Court ruled that the closing of schools was unconstitutional and that schools should reopen and integrate in fall of 1959. (Williams, 92-119).

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¹ Thelma Mothershed, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Ernest Green, Minnijean Brown, Carlotta Walls, Terrence Roberts, Gloria Ray and Melba Pattillo