Melba pattillo beals husband
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Melba Pattillo Beals
Melba Pattillo Beals was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. Her parents were divorced when she was seven, and her mother and grandmother — both strong, intelligent women — had a great impact on her life. Beals' mother, Dr. Lois Pattillo, was an English teacher, and one of the first black students to integrate the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1954.
Beals was 12 years old on May 17, 1954 — the date the Supreme Court ruled in "Brown vs. Board of Education" that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Just over a year later, on May 24, 1955, the Little Rock school board adopted a plan to limit integration to Central High School, but claimed this would not occur for another two years.
When the time came to sign up for Central High, Beals raised her hand and put her name on the sheet. "I thought about all those times I'd gone past Central High, wanting to go inside... I reasoned that if schools were open to my people, I would also get access to other opportunities I had been denied, like... sitting
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Beals, Melba Patillo 1941–
Communications consultant and author
At a Glance…
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As a 15 year-old, Melba Patillo Beals courageously volunteered to be one of the nine black children who began the integration of public schools in Arkansas. In 1957 these children, who would become known as the “Little Rock Nine,” attended that city’s Central High School amid protests so heated and violent that President Eisenhower sent Army troops to protect them. In 1994 Beals published her first-hand account of these events in Warriors Don f t Cry, a memoir titled after advise given to the young girl by her grandmother. The book served as a vivid recollection of Beals’s terrifying experiences and a testimony to the power and resiliency of the individual amid overwhelming adversity.
Melba Portillo Beals was born in 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas and was raised in a middle class black neighborhood. Her mother, who supported the family as a school teacher, and her grandmother, who read Gandhi
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2000
Dominican|Social Change
Amid the howling mobs and fiery storm of the 1957 battle to integrate Little Rock Central High School, Melba Pattillo Beals and eight other young warriors risked their lives to change history. The U.S. Congress voted Beals and her “Little Rock Nine” companions the Congressional Gold Medal for their contribution to the Civil Rights movement. Only 318 Americans have received this award.
Warriors Don’t Cry is Beals’ chronicle of the school integration battle. Warriors won the 1994 American Library Association Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, was named a Notable Book of the year by the American Booksellers Association, and received the coveted Robert F. Kennedy Award for books that reflect RFK’s “concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and evenhanded justice, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity.”
Another focus of Ms. Beals’ life has been her work with Aid to the Adoption of Special Children (AASK). During her twenty-yea
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