In Melba Pattillo Beals’ Warriors Don’t Cry, she recalls her adolescent years as being one of the nine African American students that chose to attend an all-white high school. In this memoir, she brings to light all of the horrible attacks they underwent. As a young girl, Melba became aware of the separation between whites and blacks, and strived to rise above that. She had a very religious family and black people during this time period learned to accept that they were less-privileged because of their skin color. She went to visit some relatives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was astonished when white people were nice, or simply even smiled at her. This motivated her to enroll in an all-white high school behind her family’s backs. Once her mother found out, she was furious because of the dangerous and negative attention that would be drawn to them.
In 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that the “separate but equal” law was now considered unconstitutional. Melba sees little to no transformation and prayed for an opportunity to somehow make a change. After several meetings, NAACP officials registered nine black students to the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. These students were
…show more content…
As a matter of fact, the very first day that they tried to enter Central High, they did not even make it into the school. Thousands of people knew about this major event, and angry mobs rioted the surrounding areas of the school. There were white people making nasty threats and frightening comments, and did anything to prevent those nine children from entering that school. Even the governor called for National Guardsmen to block the students from entering. Although the students went through anguish just to simply get an education, they held their heads high because they knew they were making