Melba Pattillo Beals
| Melba Pattillo Beals | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Melba Joy Pattillo December 7, 1941 |
| Alma mater |
Columbia University San Francisco State University |
Melba Joyner Pattillo Beals (née Pattillo; born December 7, 1941) is a journalist and member of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who were the first to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Melba Pattillo Beals grew up in a family who all valued and knew the importance of education. Her mother, Lois Marie Pattillo, a PhD, was one of the first black graduates of the University of Arkansas in 1954 and was a high school English teacher at the time of the Little Rock Nine integration of Central High School. Her father, Howell Pattillo, worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Melba also has a brother, Conrad Pattillo, who served as a U.S. marshal in Little Rock, and they all lived with her grandmother, India Peyton at the time of the crisis. While attending Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, an all-black high school, Melba was aware that she was not receiving the same quality education as her peers at Central High School. Pattillo then volunteered to transfer to the all-white Central High School with eight other black students from Horace Mann and Dunbar Junior High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Melba was not aware at this time what she was up against. Volunteering for this cause meant putting herself at risk and in danger of others in the community and at school. In an interview with the San Francisco Examiner in 1997 Melba says, "Mostly what I think about when I think back is how sad for somebody (to go through that) when they're 15," "Because when you're 15 you want to be loved and accepted, and I just wasn't ready for the kind of response I would get coming to school". Beals recounted that the soldier assigned to protect her instructed her, “In order to get through this year, you will have to become a soldier. Never let your enemy know what you are feeling.” Beals took the soldier’s advice and endured what she could of the rest of the school year. She did not get to finish her school career there, because the governor, Orval Faubus closed all of the Little Rock schools the following year to block integration.
...
Wikipedia