Growing up as a teenager, Melba Pattillo Beal's had to fight one of the most courageous wars in history. No, not a war that took place in the trenches of a battlefield, but a war that took place in the halls of an American high school "a war against color. Melba was one of nine black students."" Warriors Don't Cry-, basically a collection of events in Melba Pattillo Beal's life. The whole book revolves around her experiences as she integrated in to the all white school central high.
Melba grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas a town in which was in the south and was experiencing major segregation in the fifty's, from rest rooms to schools. She starts out in the book telling how no black child is born knowing about segregation and that there is a whole race that is supposed to be superior to them. I strongly agreed with those views in which she expressed, because it is very hard to explain certain things to small children, they ask a lot of questions and something so subordinate is just unethical.
The author endured a lot of racism when she was young; one example is when she entered the bathroom which was labeled white women. They treated her as if she was an animal. This one event made me very angry when I read it, not just because I am black, but because these where human beings expressing this type of hate towards there fellow man. I feel racism was so unnecessary and just reading this book made me very angry, but I try to suppress my feelings.
Arkansas was going through a reconstruction period, but barriers were put in front of the reconstruction by many groups such as Mrs. Thomason's segregationist group and even the Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus. The governor even went to the length of using the National Guard to keep the school segregated. The Rule of Law was being directed on what was wrong and right by the white majority that it is why it took two years to integrate central high.
