Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

Melba Pattillo Beals

Oct 2011 · Tantor eBooks

About this ebook

 The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, brought the promise of integration to Little Rock, Arkansas, but it was hard-won for the nine black teenagers chosen to integrate Central High School in 1957. They ran a gauntlet flanked by a rampaging mob and a heavily armed Arkansas National Guard—opposition so intense that soldiers from the elite 101st Airborne Division were called in to restore order. For Melba Beals and her eight friends those steps marked their transformation into reluctant warriors—on a battlefield that helped shape the civil rights movement.
Warriors Don't Cry, drawn from Melba Beals's personal diaries, is a riveting true account of her junior year at Central High—one filled with telephone threats, brigades of attacking mothers, rogue police, fireball and acid-throwing attacks, economic blackmail, and, finally, a price upon Melba's head. With the help of her English-teacher mother; her eight fellow warriors; and her gun-toting, Bible-and-Shakespeare-loving grandmother, Melba survived. And, incredibly, from a year that would hold no sweet-sixteen parties or school plays, Melba Beals emerged with indestructible faith, courage, strength, and hope.

Ratings and reviews

This was a very good book, it had a good sense of history in it kind of made me feel bad for the protagonist, which is rare for someone like me. I definitely recommend this book to schools and just for personal reading.

Iloved the book especially since i knew her and her family.I was around in some of the stories in SF.

loved it

About the author

 Melba Patillo Beals earned a bachelor's degree from San Franciso State University and a graduate degree from Columbia University and worked as a reporter for NBC. Warriors Don't Cry was an ALA Notable Book for 1995 and won the 1995 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award.