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- 'They Didn't Want Me There': Remembering The Terror Of School Integration (38 min)
NPR WHYY Fresh Air, January 15, 2018. Host Dave Davies interviews Melba Pattillo Beals, who was one of nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
- Melba Pattillo Beals author website
In 1957, Melba Beals was one of the nine African American students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. While her white schoolmates were planning their senior prom, Melba was facing the business end of a double-barreled shotgun, being threatened with lynching by rope-carrying tormentors, and learning how to outrun white supremacists who were ready to kill her rather than sit beside her in a classroom
- Melba Pattillo Beals interview for PBS Learning Video (6 min)
This interview with Melba Pattillo Beals recalls her experience as one of the nine African American students who attended Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Against a backdrop of white resistance and racial violence, Beals and eight other students desegregated Central High School under armed federal escort. Beals was frequently assaulted and harassed by whites while a student at Central High. This resource is part of the Civil Rights collection.
- Videos in the C-SPAN Library
Melba Pattillo Beals is a Member for the Little Rock Nine with five videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a 1994 Booknotes. Two appearances with Bill Clinton (2), Terrence J. Roberts (2), Ernest Green (2).
- Warriors Don't Cry - C-SPAN's Brian Lamb interviews author Melba Pattillo Beals
October 28, 1994. C-SPAN, host Brian Lamb. Melba Pattillo Beals discussed her book, Warriors Don’t Cry, which details her experiences as part of the first integrated class of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In her book, the author recalls how she and eight other black teenagers integrated the school as a result of the Brown v. Board of Education segregation case decision. President Eisenhower had to enforce integration in the school with National Guard troops in September 1957.