From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Melba Pattillo Beals (Born December 7, 1941) is a journalist and member of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who were the first to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Beals was not yet 14 years old when in May, 1955, she volunteered to go to Central High, an all-white school. Two years later, she was enrolled as a student at Central High. At the age of fifteen, Melba Pattillo saw her life change drastically. Though she made it through high school, it wasn't easy. White students spat at and mocked the integrating students. The Nine also faced mobs that forced President Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne Division to protect their lives after the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, used troops to block the Nine's entry to the school. At least one white student, a senior, helped her avoid dangerous areas during the school day, but for the most part, she and the other black students faced daily hostility and persecution.

In an interview for the 1987 public television documentary on the Civil Rights movement, Eyes On The Prize, Beals said that when she arrived home on the last day of the school year, she was so upset over the way she had been treated that she burned her schoolbooks, and admitted that she wasn't looking forward to going back to school in the fall. As it turned out, she didn't have to; the Little Rock school system chose to shut down operations in the fall of 1958 to resist integration, leading other school districts across the South to do the same.

To finish school, Beals moved to Santa Rosa, California, with help from the NAACP, living with foster parents George and Carol McCabe while she completed her senior year at Montgomery High School. She then attended San Francisco State University, earning a bachelor's degree.

At age seventeen she began writing for major newspapers and magazines. She later earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. While in college, she met John Beals, a white man, whom she later married. She had one daughter, Kellie and twin sons, Matthew and Evan.

To date, she is the only one of the Little Rock Nine to write a book. Warriors Don't Cry chronicles the events of 1957 during the Little Rock crisis, based partly on diaries she kept during that period. She also wrote White is a State of Mind, which begins where Warriors left off.

In 1958, the NAACP awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal to Pattillo Beals and to the other members of the Little Rock Nine, together with civil rights leader Daisy Bates, who had advised the group during their struggles at Central High. In 1999, she and the rest of the Nine were awarded the highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal. Only three hundred others have received this.

Today, Beals lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and teaches journalism at Dominican University, where she is the chair of the communications department.

Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High. New York: Pocket Books, 1994. (ISBN 0-671-86638-9)

Beals, Melba Pattillo. White Is a State of Mind: A Memoir. Putnam Adult, 1999. (ISBN 0-399-14464-1)