Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High - Melba Pattillo Beals

Originally published more than a decade ago, this searing account of the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock--an ALA Nonfiction Book of the Year--is written by one of the black teenagers chosen to become warriors on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. nIn this compelling autobiographical account by one of the Civil Rights Movement's most powerful figures, Beals explores not only the power of racism, but also the ideas of justice and identity. nIn 1957, well before Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, Melba Pattillo Beals and eight other teenagers became iconic symbols for the Civil Rights Movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow in the American South as they integrated Little Rock's Central High School in the wake of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. n nThroughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their parents, threatened by a lynch mob's rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down. n nWarriors Don't Cry is, at times, a difficult but necessary reminder of the valuable lessons we can learn from our nation's past. It is a story of courage and the bravery of a handful of young, black students who used their voices to influence change during a turbulent time.n