Melba Beals 'Warriors Don' T Cry

How a person acquires fundamental opinions has been a controversial topic for generations. Some people claim that a person’s opinion is inborn. Others theorize that a person’s opinion is learned. However, most will agree that a person’s surroundings, environment, and history have a great impact on their worldly views. One’s environment can be described as where they live, where they spend their time, the place where they attend school or work, who they live with, and who they associate with. For every person, these are the most influential things in their life. Thus, said people and places dramatically affect how one views the world. One’s environment greatly impacts how one sees the world. It could be said that people and places have no influence

In the 1994, Melba Pattillo Beals reflected on her high school years of integration, which was back in 1957. She then published her memoir, Warriors Don’t Cry, which explicitly describes the hardships and battles she had to overcome living in a segregated time. In her novel, she writes, “Hearing the word ‘police’ terrified me, Daddy and Mother Lois were afraid of the police” (Beals 19). Melba was just a child when she was exposed to the cruel reality that colored people faced in the 1940s. Because this was a segregated time, Melba’s parents feared police. Because Melba was consistently accompanied by her parents, she, too, feared police. It was inevitable for Melba to grow up fearing policemen simply because the people in her environment feared police. However, nowadays, since the States is no longer a segregated world, colored people have no reason to fear the police, or white people for that matter, further proving the point that setting does influence how one views the world. Additionally, in the years hence the Little Rock Nine, the southern state of Arkansas’ atmosphere has changed considerably. Melba and the Nine “returned to Central High School for [their] first reunion in 1987, [and] many Little Rock residents, white and black, greeted the nine of [them] as heroines and heroes” (Beald 3). Thirty years after the Arkansas integration scandal, people began to change their views on segregation and the value of colored people. It took years, but as time passed, people treated people of color as equals and respected integration. This proves how time influences one’s views. While Melba’s memoir excellently describes how time influences opinions, this is not the only source that does