Warriors Don't Cry - Abridged by Melba Pattillo Beals (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published more than a decade ago, this searing account of the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock--an ALA Nonfiction Book of the Year--is written by one of the black teenagers chosen to become warriors on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement.

Book Synopsis

In this essential autobiographical account by one of the Civil Rights Movement's most powerful figures, Melba Pattillo Beals of the Little Rock Nine explores not only the oppressive force of racism, but the ability of young people to change ideas of race and identity.

In 1957, well before Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Melba Pattillo Beals and eight other teenagers became iconic symbols for the Civil Rights Movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow in the American South as they integrated Little Rock's Central High School in the wake of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education.

Throughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their parents, threatened by a lynch mob's rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down.

Warriors Don't Cry is, at times, a difficult but necessary reminder of the valuable lessons we can learn from our nation's past. It is a story of courage and the bravery of a handful of young, black students who used their voices to influence change during a turbulent time.

About the Author

Melba Pattillo Beals 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.