Born: 7 December 1941, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Melba Joy Patillo
This biography is shared with kind permission from the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas, and was written by the National Park Service. All rights reserved. This entry was added in 2026; please check the Encyclopedia of Arkansas page for the most up-to-date version.
Melba Pattillo Beals made history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African American students involved in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The world watched as they braved constant intimidation and threats from those who opposed desegregation of the formerly all-white high school. She later recounted this harrowing year in her book titled Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School.
Melba Pattillo was born on December 7, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Beals grew up surrounded by family members who knew the importance of an education. Her mother, Lois Marie Pattillo, PhD, was one of the first Black graduates of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1954 and was a high school English teacher at the time of the crisis. Her father, Howell Pattillo, worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. She had one brother, Conrad, who later served as a U.S. marshal in Little Rock and as a trooper with the Arkansas State Police, and they all lived with her grandmother, India Peyton.
While attending all-Black Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, she knew her educational opportunities were not equal to her white counterparts’ opportunities at Central High. In response to this inequality, Pattillo volunteered to transfer to the all-white Central High School with eight other Black students from Horace Mann and Dunbar Junior High School. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be known, faced daily harassment from white students. Beals later 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, while the rest of the school year remained turbulent, all but one student, Minnijean Brown, was able to finish the school year. Barred from entering Central High the next year when the city’s schools were closed, Pattillo moved to Santa Rosa, California, to live with a sponsoring family who were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for her senior year of high school.
In 1961, Pattillo married John Beals. They had one daughter but divorced after ten years of marriage. She subsequently adopted two boys.
Beals graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in journalism and earned an MA in the same field from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She has worked as a communications consultant, a motivational speaker, and as a reporter for San Francisco’s public television station and for the Bay Area’s NBC affiliate.
Beals was the first of the Little Rock Nine to write a book based on her experiences at Central High. Published in 1994, Warriors Don’t Cry gives a first-hand account of the trials Beals encountered from segregationists and racist students. The book was named the American Library Association (ALA) Notable Book for 1995 and won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award that same year. White is a State of Mind, her 1999 sequel to Warriors Don’t Cry, follows Beals from her senior year in high school to her college and family days in California.
Beals was awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1958, along with other members of the Little Rock Nine and Daisy Bates, their mentor. In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented the nation’s highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal, to the members of the Little Rock Nine. Beals lives in the San Francisco area and works as an author and public speaker.In 2018, she published two books: I Will Not Fear: My Story of a Lifetime of Building Faith under Fire and March Forward Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine.
Commissioned by the Oxford American magazine and first created as a septet based upon Beals’s words in Warriors Don’t Cry, the piece No Tears Suite was performed in 2017 at the sixtieth anniversary of the Central High desegregation; the six-movement piece was expanded with orchestral parts for a 2019 premiere performance at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center that included jazz musicians alongside Arkansas Symphony Orchestra members.
For additional information:
Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow of Little Rock. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986.
Beals, Melba Pattillo. I Will Not Fear: My Story of a Lifetime of Building Faith under Fire. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2018.
———. March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.
———. Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School. New York: Washington Square Books, 1994.
———. White is a State of Mind. New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1999.
Jacoway, Elizabeth, and C. Fred Williams, eds. Understanding the Little Rock Crisis: An Exercise in Remembrance and Reconciliation. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999.
Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Visitor Center. Little Rock, Arkansas. http://www.nps.gov/chsc/ (accessed July 11, 2023).
Roy, Beth. Bitters in the Honey: Tales of Hope and Disappointment across Divides of Race and Time. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999.
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
The End of Legal Segregation
In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision outlawed segregation in public education. Little Rock School District Superintendent Virgil Blossom devised a plan of gradual integration that would begin at Central High School in 1957. The school board called for volunteers from all-black Dunbar Junior High and Horace Mann High School to attend Central.
Prospective students were told they would not be able to participate in extracurricular activities if they transferred to Central such as football, basketball, or choir. Many of their parents were threatened with losing their jobs, and some students decided to stay at their own schools.
“[Blossom said] you’re not going to be able to go to the football games or basketball games. You’re not going to be able to participate in the choir or drama club, or be on the track team. You can’t go to the prom. There were more cannots…” Carlotta Walls LaNier, Little Rock Nine
“When my tenth-grade teacher in our Negro school said there was a possibility of integration, I signed up. We all felt good. We knew that Central High School had so many more courses, and dramatics and speech and tennis courts and a big, beautiful stadium.” Minnijean Brown, Little Rock Nine, to Look (June 24, 1958)
The First Day of School
On September 3, 1957, the Little Rock Nine arrived to enter Central High School, but they were turned away by the Arkansas National Guard. Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard the night before to, as he put it, “maintain and restore order…” The soldiers barred the African American students from entering.
“I was not prepared for what actually happened.” Elizabeth Eckford, Little Rock Nine
“I thought he [Faubus] was there to protect me. How wrong I was.” Thelma Mothershed Wair, Little Rock Nine
The students arrived at Central alone on the first day. By prior arrangement, they gathered at the 16th Street entrance with several local ministers who accompanied them. Elizabeth Eckford arrived at the other end of the block by herself. She was met by a mob screaming obscenities and threats, chanting, “Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna integrate!”
“We didn’t know that his [Faubus’] idea of keeping the peace was keeping the blacks out.” Jefferson Thomas, Little Rock Nine
More than two weeks went by before the Little Rock Nine again attempted to enter Central High School. On September 23, 1957, the Little Rock Nine entered the school. Outside, rioting broke out and the Little Rock police removed the Nine for their safety.
The President Becomes Involved
On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered units of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division -the “Screaming Eagles”- into Little Rock and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. In a televised speech delivered to the nation, President Eisenhower stated, “Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of the courts.”
On September 25, 1957, under federal troop escort, the Little Rock Nine made it inside for their first full day of school. The 101st Airborne left in October and the federalized Arkansas National Guard troops remained throughout the year.
Inside the School
The Little Rock Nine had assigned guards to walk them from class to class. The guards could not accompany the students inside the classrooms, bathrooms, or locker rooms. They would stand outside the classrooms during class time. In spite of this, the Little Rock Nine endured verbal and physical attacks from some of their classmates throughout the school year. Although some white students tried to help, few white students befriended any of the Nine. Those who did received similar treatment as the Nine, such as hate mail and threats.
One of the Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown, was suspended in December for dropping chili on some boys after they refused to let her pass to her seat in the cafeteria. She was later expelled in February 1958 for calling a girl who had hit her with a purse “white trash.” After Brown’s expulsion, students passed around cards that read, “One Down, Eight to Go.”
Brown finished high school at New Lincoln School in New York City, while living with Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark. The Clarks were the social psychologists whose “doll test” work demonstrated for the Supreme Court in Brown that racial prejudice and segregation caused African-American children to develop a sense of inferiority.
The remaining eight students completed the school year at Central. Senior Ernest Green was the first African American student to graduate from Central High School.
“It’s been an interesting year. I’ve had a course in human relations first hand.” Ernest Green, Little Rock Nine, to Life (June 1958)
The Aftermath
The following year, the city’s high schools were closed to prevent further desegregation while the NAACP continued to pursue the legal case to integrate Little Rock’s schools.
When the schools reopened, Carlotta Walls and Jefferson Thomas returned to Central and graduated in 1960. Thelma Mothershed received her diploma from Central High School by taking correspondence courses to complete her studies.
The rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school educations at different schools. The Little Rock Nine have received numerous accolades and awards, from the renowned NAACP Spingarn Medal to the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.
Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals finished her high school education at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa, California. Beals earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from San Francisco State University, a Master of Arts in Communications from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in International Multicultural Studies from the University of San Francisco. She has worked as an on-camera television reporter for KQED’s Newsroom, as an NBC-TV news reporter, and as a radio news talk show host for KGO, ABC radio, San Francisco. Dr. Beals founded the Department of Communications and Media Studies at the Dominican University of California. She has written four books based on her experiences at Central High School. Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High is a firsthand account of the experience that Beals and the Little Rock Nine encountered at Central High School. Other works include March Forward, Girl, the prequel to Warriors Don’t Cry; White is a State of Mind, the sequel to Warriors Don’t Cry; and I Will Not Fear, an examination of her faith through her journey of terror, oppression, and persecution. Dr. Beals is the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Spingarn Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, and is a communications consultant and motivational speaker.