Little Rock Nine speaker captivates Delegate Assembly
CSBA honors Melba Pattillo Beals
Published: May 20, 2014
Marking the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, CEO & Executive Director Vernon M. Billy welcomed to the Delegate Assembly stage on May 17 Melba Pattillo Beals, Ph.D.—one of the nine students who bravely integrated Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957. The occasion offered a unique opportunity for school board members in the audience to reflect on student equity and the impact effective governance has on student success.
For over an hour, Delegates sat in rapt attention as Beals recounted her experience of attempting to integrate the Arkansas school. The verbal and physical abuse the Little Rock Nine endured ultimately won them the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor, as well as cemented the right for all ethnic minority students to attend the same schools as whites across the country.
In a light-hearted moment during the account, Beals told how she naively forged her mother’s signature on the consent form needed to become one of the students who would integrate Central High. “I did not want to trouble her with that, so I signed it,” she said, but realized that once the names of the nine students were announced, “From that point on my life had changed.”
But having no intention of being a heroine, Beals said she felt confident in her ability to make good grades and innocently attempted to attend until she had no choice but to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. “This was a stage by stage operation which felt at times like a careening train that was inevitable. Nothing we could do to stop it.”
It soon became clear that no one—from the school board to the white students to others in the white community—wanted the nine black students in the school. Beals herself was shot at in her own living room, and narrowly escaped a mob by speeding away from the scene as she attempted to enter the school. On that occasion, as angry men threw themselves on the hood of her car, banging on the windows, she says she understood: “Segregation and integration are bigger words than I thought. … Now what am I going to do?”
The nine students were prevented from returning to Central High for a time thereafter while the 1954 Brown decision was confirmed in district court. During this time Beals met Thurgood Marshall, an imposing figure who became very important in her life. “Whereas my parents talked about freedom, these men from the NAACP – these attorneys – walked it. The way they walked ahead taught me that somewhere I’m free. … They were determined to make the ’54 decision reality for all of us.”
The students’ return to Central High forced them past a mob that gathered every day to taunt and scream at them. “There were 1,900 white kids in Central High School, and we were nine,” Beals said. The principal spitefully sent each of the nine a different way in the two-block-long building that comprised the school. “You can say the Lord’s Prayer 13 times from the first to the third floor. I ought to know because I did it every single day for nine months,” Beals said.
Soon the 101st Airborne Division was assigned by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to escort the students to school in an armored station wagon, with jeeps with machine guns in front and behind and helicopters overhead. Surrounded by soldiers who escorted them through the mob, the Nine for the first time spent a full day at Central High. “My life depended on these white men in green uniforms,” Beals said.
To those who might think that level of armed protection sounds extreme, Beals said it’s not when you consider there were 1,900 students who, among their bad deeds, shot acid into her eyes and threw flaming paper towels into the bathroom stall with her. During that period, she often sang a favorite song of her grandmother, “I am a warrior … and I will not cry,” which inspired the title of her book about the Central High experience, “Warriors Don’t Cry.”
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling that affirms a ban on race as a factor in college admissions bowled her over, Beals said. “To let that particular regulation slip away while we’re looking the other way, I was bowled over. I thought this can’t possibly happen. But it did.”
The day the Brown decision came down in 1954, Beals said she was assaulted by a white person angry at the prospect of an integrated society. “So the [court's] ruling recently saying that race should not be any criteria for admission into school—but of course you owe me that. You owe me that for all those years you took away my ability to be schooled by virtue of the color of my skin.”
Segregation is far from over; in fact, it’s getting worse by recent reports. So “you all had better get busy,” she appealed to the school board members in the audience. “I know by looking at you and feeling your energy when I walked into the room, you’re here to work. Because the contribution that a school board member can make to the formulation of what a school district will be like … is just unimaginable.
“A great chunk of the hope for our school systems … is in your lap,” she continued. “The question of how money is going to be spent within the school systems these days is going to be a major [over]riding question which is going to determine the future of everything that goes on. So you are very, very, very important to me. Look in the mirror and see the future of these school systems—they rest with you.”