When Melba Pattillo Beals, along with eight other teenagers, transferred to the all-White Little Rock Central High School in 1957, she did not know that she would become a significant part of history. The time was during Little Rock’s plan for gradual desegregation and integration. Beals and the other eight students became known as the “Little Rock Nine.”
On Sept. 4, 1957, the nine students were met at Central High School by the Arkansas National Guard troops. It took more than two weeks before they could join their classmates by way of a federal court order. Yet, they had to navigate the constant barrage of verbal and physical abuse, which resulted in them being escorted by military guards to class. Despite the daily harassment, the Little Rock Nine persevered and completed the year at Central High with credit given to the 101st Airborne Division, dispatched by President Eisenhower. It should be noted that the abuse extended to the family members of these nine students. In a 1998 Scholastic interview, Beals explained, “None of these people imagined there would be raging mobs. … People would threaten to kill us and keep us from going to school. My dad was being tortured on his job, as were the parents of the other Little Rock Nine. Of the nine sets of parents, five of those lost their jobs over this school issue, including my own mother. Stress doesn’t begin to describe what my family was feeling.”
The following year, a voter-led shutdown of Little Rock schools occurred in an effort to prevent integration. The NAACP moved Beals to Santa Rosa to continue her education and live with Dr. George and Carol McCabe, a White Quaker family. The McCabes became Beals’ second family and she enrolled at San Francisco State University the following year. Beals eventually moved to San Francisco and completed her undergraduate degree.
When asked why she went to Central, Beals responded: “We didn’t go to Central to ‘integrate.’ I would not risk my life to sit next to White people. We went to Central for opportunity. We didn’t understand integration; we didn’t even know the word ‘integration.’ True, we would learn the meaning of that word as the year progressed, but we wanted to go to Central High first and foremost because of access, because of resources, because of books and good furniture. Because it was seven stories high and four square blocks in diameter. By its very dimensions, it was at least 14 times larger than my high school, and what it offered was at least 14 times higher in its quality. My grandmother had this saying: ‘If you are not in the kitchen when they’re slicing the pie, you will not get a share of it.’”
Beals went on to marry and start a family. Later, she attended Columbia University on a prestigious scholarship in journalism. After returning to the Bay Area, she worked as a news reporter for the KQED Newsroom, an NBC affiliate and KRON-TV. In 1993, Beals adopted two twin boys. After earning a PhD from USF in international multicultural education, she joined the journalism department at Dominican University.
Beals has written four books including “Warriors Don’t Cry,” a memoir in which she wrote about attending Central High during the 1957-58 school year: “It would turn out that our determination to remain in school, despite having to tread through a jungle of hatred and human torture from segregationists, would help to change the course of history and grant access to equality and opportunity for people of color.”
History Watch is written by Lane Dooling, marketing and social media coordinator at the Marin History Museum, marinhistory.org. Images included in History Watch are available for purchase by calling 415-382-1182 or by email at info@marinhistory.org
