Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00645MVJ8 | Format: EPUB
Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High Description
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.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 12 hours and 40 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Tantor Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: November 7, 2011
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00645MVJ8
Warriors Don't Cry is the moving story of the nine Black teenagers who dared
to integrate Central High School. The story is told by one of the
teenagers, Melba Pattillo.
Ms. Pattillo begins the story in 1954 when the Supreme Court of the United
States in Brown v. the Board of Education held that separate but equal
schools were inherently unequal and ordered school districts to desegregate
with all deliberate speed. She recalls that white people in Little Rock
were outraged and while walking home on the date the decision was handed
down an angry white man attempted to rape a 12 year old Melba. Such a
chilling response to the order to integrate is an eerie prelude to the
ordeal Melba and the eight others endured in their effort to integrate
Central High School.
Following Brown the Little Rock School District came up with a plan to
integrate which limited integration to Central High School and delayed the
process of integration until September 1957. Arkansas Governor Faubus came
out against any type of integration and when it came time for Melba and the
others to integrate Central in September 1957, Governor Faubus sent out the
Arkansas National Guard and the Arkansas State Troopers to block the
students from entering. President Eisenhower in turn sent the United States
National Guard to Central High School to enforce the order of the Court.
This crisis of federalism was another interesting story line in the book
chocked full with drama.
Once inside the school with the assistance of the federal National Guard,
the treatment the Black students received was disgusting, unbelievable and
heartbreaking.
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