The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of
Education, brought the promise of integration to Little Rock,
Arkansas, but it was hard-won for the nine black teenagers chosen
to integrate Central High School in 1957. They ran the gauntlet
between a rampaging mob and the heavily armed Arkansas National
Guard, dispatched by Governor Orval Faubus to subvert federal law
and bar them from entering the school. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower responded by sending in soldiers of the 101st Airborne
Division, the elite Screaming Eagles - and transformed Melba
Pattillo and her eight friends into reluctant warriors on the
battlefield of civil rights. May 17, 1994, marks the fortieth
anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which was
argued and won by Thurgood Marshall, whose passion and presence
emboldened the Little Rock struggle. Melba Pattillo Beals
commemorates the milestone decision in this first-person account of
her ordeal at the center of the violent confrontation that helped
shape the civil rights movement. Beals takes us from the lynch mob
that greeted the terrified fifteen-year-old to a celebrity
homecoming with her eight compatriots thirty years later, on
October 23, 1987, hosted by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in the
mansion that Faubus built. As they returned to tour the halls of
the school, gathering from myriad professions and all corners of
the country, they were greeted by the legacy of their courage - a
bespectacled black teenager, the president of the student body at
Central High. Beals chronicles her harrowing junior year at Central
High, when she began each school day by polishing her saddle shoes
and bracing herself for battle. Nothing, not eventhe 101st Airborne
Division, could blunt the segregationists' brutal organized
campaign of terrorism that included telephone threats, insults and
assaults at school, brigades of attacking mothers, rogue police,
restroom fireball attacks, acid-throwers, vigilante stalkers,
economic
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