Melba Patillo Beals

Throughout the mid 1900s, many African American citizens were still not secured equal rights within America. An example of this is shown in 1954, in Little Rock, Arkansas, when Arkansas’s Governor Orval Faubus defied the ruling of the Supreme Court’s decision to put an end to segregated schools (“Melba Patillo Beals”1). One person who strived to make a change, and end segregated schools was Melba Beals. She and eight other of her friends, (known as “The Little Rock 9”), attended an all white school, making a huge, progressive, step forward in the Civil Rights Movement. Beals faced angry, white, mobs discriminating against her, day by day, but still managed to find the courage to go to school everyday, thus making her a worthy hero in our society and in history.

Melba Beals was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on Pearl Harbor Day, which was December 7, 1941. She had a wonderful family until seven years old, when her parents divorced (“Melba Patillo Beals”1). Her mother and grandmother were both wise women, who had a major impact on her all throughout her life. Her mother was an English teacher, and one of the first black students to integrate at the University of Arkansas. Her grandmother taught her many things about life, and always told her to have faith in God, making her read the bible often. As a child, she was often curious why white people were better than African Americans, and dreamed of going to the all white high school known as Central High School. One day, she finally had the chance, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of “Brown vs. Board of Education” which said that segregation within schools was unconstitutional. Several years later in 1955, the Little Rock school board devised a plan to limit integration, but not until 1957 (“Melba Patillo Beals”1).

As the opportunity came to sign up to attend Central High School, Beals was one of several students who signed her name on the sheet. She stated that, “I thought about all of 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 on the first floor of the movie theatre”(“Melba Patillo Beals”1). Beals finally got that opportunity on September 3, 1957 when the judge ordered integration at Central High School. She and eight of her black friends were going to change history. Although the children were excited about their first day of school, it was not all it turned out to be. Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to prevent the teenagers from entering the school, and succeeded. Both Beals and her mother scrambled through the angry mobs of white people, screaming such phrases as “go home niggers,” trying to break free and find their way home, once they were denied into the school by the National Guards with guns. Finally, President Eisenhower, embarrassed of the situation and all of the negative press it was getting, had to step in. He ordered 1,200 paratroopers with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, to escort all of the black teenagers into school, and attempt to stop the mobs (“Melba Patillo Beals: Breaking…”1).

After weeks of threatening phone calls, Beals and the eight other children were finally allowed to attend Central High School. Beals now felt safe with the soldiers there to escort her to school everyday. But getting into school was only have the battle for the teenagers, they now had to deal with the children in the school and all of the discrimination against them. All of these children knew that they had to perform excellent in school because they could have easily been kicked out at any moment for not taking advantage of the opportunity. Also, teachers at Central High had a blind eye when it came to the nine black students. One day, while Beals was being beaten by football players, she heard them utter, “We’re going to make your life hell