Melba Pattillo

Melba Joy Pattillo (later married into the name of Beals), was born December 7, 1941 (the day of Pearl Harbor). There were many complications with her birth causing her to have a damaged scalp. The doctor told her nurse to use Epsom salt, once every hour on the hour to cure her cut, but the nurse did not inform Melba's parents. Two days later Melba's mother returned to the hospital. Melba had a terrible infection on her scalp. She later found out that the nurse had not told her about the treatment. When she asked the nurse why she had not told her, the nurse replied with a racial slur. Her mother treated the infection with the Epsom salt and it went away. Around her seventh birthday Melba's parents divorced.

Melba's mother Louise Pattillo was an English teacher at a local college. She was one of the first black students to integrate the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1954. She later became a doctor. Her mother (Melba's grandmother), was a very wise resource if Melba had any problems. She, though, is a extraordinarily strict Christian. Melba's father William was rather intimidating, standing 6 feet tall. He worked on the railroad. Her younger brother Conrad always liked having Melba as a sister. He helped her get through her tough times at Central High.

May 17, 1954 Melba was a 12 year old seventh grader. The Supreme Court of Topeka, Kansas ruled in "Brown vs Board of Education" that segregation was unconstitutional. Melba's teacher passed around a slip of paper for the children to sign up on if they wanted to go to a non-segregated school. 17 children signed up but 8 had backed out because of violence from other white children. "I thought about all 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 theater" (Beals, 1994). The school where Melba went to school was in Little Rock, a city of 107,300 whites, 30,000 blacks.

Raging segregationists would call all hours of the night and threaten Melba and her family. Newspapers started giving out information on the 9 children, like where they live and where they go on a daily basis. As a result of these actions the violence got even worse. When the students started going to Central, the school was so violent towards them that Eisenhower had to send the 101st airborne soldiers to Little Rock for protection. On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery. Melba knew that "our people were stretching out to knock down fences of integration" (Beals, 1994). Rosa Parks' actions and the huge response from her community gave Melba hope for change, except Governor Orval Fauvus' refusal to allow segregation in schools.

One day Melba was walking through a stair well when a white student threw a stick of dynamite at her. Her 101st airborne protector named Danny told her to duck and the dynamite barely missed her face. After the violence lessened Melba started to excel in English, although she was not allowed to be in any extracurricular classes such as the newspaper or year book. She went on and finished high school in Santa Rosa, California. Her schooling was much easier now with the integration law being in effect for so long already. She graduated college in San Francisco. When she got older she became a journalist for NBC and published two books, Warriors Don’t Cry and White is a State of Mind. Melba currently lives in California and has three children. She is a motivational speaker and a published writer.