Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High
By: Melba Pattillo Beals / Narrated By: Lisa Reneé Pitts
Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
Unbelievable! Filled with rage, violence. Filled with love, innocence.
Melba just wanted to be a young girl, no different from anybody else. The only thing was, when asked the question, she answers that she would kind of like to go to Central High School—just to see what it’s like inside.
She has no idea that she’ll become one of the first group of black students to challenge segregation, to go to CHS, to be the object of hate, to be the bearer of an entire group of people’s hopes. And she’s not even 16 when she’s enrolled and is subjected to unbelievable cruelty.
Teachers are no help. The National Guard are no help. Melba and her friends are entirely on their own, suffering abuse, suffering violence, suffering in silence every single day (They have to stay silent about what’s happening so as not to further fuel the Governor’s assertion that integration will cause a firestorm. It does, but they can’t give him a reason to kick them out).
It’s horrific what children can do to other children, but Warriors Don’t Cry shows adults at their worst. How on earth could an adult do such things to children? Where is their shame? And of course, they egg their own children on.
But Melba is a fighter, and with the incredible strength and faith that comes from her grandmother, she is given the strength to endure, the strength to speak her own mind, even when there’s payback for that. I was constantly amazed by her wonderfully sharp comments, by her faith in God’s will.
All of it comes at a price, even from her own people. She can’t be just a girl. She’s not invited to parties because she might attract violence to everyone around. She’s viewed as a rabble-rouser, stirring up a hornets nest, causing all to suffer from acts of retribution. Her own mother is denied another year as a teacher unless she pulls Melba from Central High. People get death threats. She thinks the hammering of a nail in a wall is actually gunfire. So much, from both sides.
Pitts does a stellar job with the narration, making Melba sound like a young but wise beyond her years, girl—one who is afraid but who can’t help but have a bit of attitude and speak her own mind. We feel her terror, we feel her exhaustion, we even feel her dizzy crush on the boy of her dreams. Truly, after listening to this, I rather dashed off to see what else Pitts has narrated.
All in all, this is a testament to the courage of children who were willing to stand in for the dreams of an entire people. And warriors may not cry, but young girls do. They just do it behind closed doors, where no one else can see their pain and fear.
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