Melba Patillo Beals was born on December 7, 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas, on
the same day that Japanese troops bombed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor (now called
Pearl Harbor Day). The first-born child of Lois and Will Patillo, Beals was born
with a scalp infection, which caused significant complications. Her health was
further compromised by the fact that she was African American; white nurses and
doctors did very little to help her. Luckily, Beals’s mother spoke to a janitor who
had overheard a doctor recommending Epsom salts to clean the infection. Beals’s
mother got the Epsom salts, and Beals survived.
At the time that Beals was born, black and white people in many parts of
America (especially the southern states) lived in a legally segregated society.
After the Civil War, the “Jim Crow” Laws were put into place to thwart the
advancement of black people, and during the time that Beals was a child, these laws
severely restricted the rights of black people. Beals’s mother was a teacher, and
her father worked for the railroad. Though they were better off than many other
blacks in Arkansas, they were still subject to the same injustices as the rest of
their community. As Beals describes in this book, most black people lived in
constant fear of making white people angry and facing brutal, violent retaliation
for even the smallest offense. For example, Beals witnessed her father stand
powerless as the milkman sexually harassed her mother. Yet Beals’s mother, Lois,
fought through the prejudices at the University of Arkansas and managed to obtain a
master’s degree in education. Though Lois encouraged her husband, Will, to finish
his degree as well, he felt unable to do so. By the time Beals was eleven, Will had
moved out of the house.
Aside from her parents, the strongest influence in Beals’s life was her
grandma, India. India was deeply religious, and she taught Beals to look to the
Bible for guidance. She also taught Beals to rely on God for strength, a lesson that
would help her later when she became one of the first black students to enter Little
Rock’s all-white high school in the fall of 1957.
In 1954, when Beals was twelve, the Supreme Court made a momentous decision in
the lawsuit Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The lawyer, Thurgood
Marshall, who would later become the first black justice on the Supreme Court,
argued on behalf of a young African-American girl named Linda Brown, who was
prevented from attending a nearby all-white elementary school. Marshall was also the
chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), and he argued that segregation, the idea validated by the “separate but
equal” finding in Plessy vs. Ferguson, was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the abolition of
slavery, stated that all citizens of the United States were guaranteed the same
rights, including the same rights to public education and protection under the law.
The Supreme Court found that segregation was indeed unconstitutional, and
civil rights activists began to work toward integration and equal rights for white
and black people. Their largest battle was the effort to integrate the schools in
southern communities. Three years later, in Little Rock, Arkansas, nine black
students were sent to the all-white Central High School to force integration. This
group was known as the Little Rock Nine, and Beals was one of them.
Beals spent one terrible year at Central High School, facing death threats,
violence, and hatred. The governor of Arkansas at the time, Orval Faubus, sent
troops to prevent the Little Rock Nine from entering the school. President
Eisenhower decreed that Faubus was defying federal law and sent federal troops down
to force the integration. Their battle continued throughout the school year. The
next year, Faubus shut down the Little Rock schools so that he would not have to
allow desegregation, and Beals was eventually sent to live with a family of white
Quakers in California. Two more years passed before black students were allowed back
in Central High School. After graduating from high school, Beals relocated to
California, where she went to college and married a white man named John. Beals
dreamed of becoming a journalist, and John wanted a housewife, so they eventually
divorced. They had one child, Kelli. Beals got a master’s degree in journalism from
Columbia University; she later became a reporter for NBC, and then a communications
consultant and an author.
