Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of
the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High. 1995. 266pp. Lexile
1000. Available in paperback.
In this gripping autobiography Melba
Pattillo Beals recounts her experiences as one of the nine
African-American students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock,
Arkansas, in 1957. She vividly describes the violence against her, the other eight, and her family including physical
and verbal attacks by other students, cruel telephone calls, threats, and more. A
modern hero, Beals tells her story
without bitterness, in well-crafted prose gracefully adapted from a longer
book in this meaningful inside look at the
Civil Rights movement through the eyes of a teenager.
Reading Std #8: Delineate and evaluate argument and specific claims in a text, assessing reasoning & evidence. Compare this book with the PBS “Eyes on the Prize” segment on Southern School Desegregation, which includes an interview with Beals. Available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/03_schools.html#video. An excerpt is available here: http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/iml04.soc.ush.civil.beals/.
