March Forward Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine

In MARCH FORWARD GIRL, Melba Beals looks back on a childhood spent in racially segregated Little Rock, Arkansas. From the age of 3, Melba remembers knowing she lived in a place where she was not welcome, that there were places where the color of her skin meant she could not go there and things she could not do. Raised in a loving home that valued books and education (her mother was studying for a master's degree), she was constantly questioning the segregated world around her: Why couldn't she try on clothes in a department store? Why did adults allow themselves to be treated so badly by their white employers? By elementary school, Melba was spending hours thinking about how to move forward without endangering herself or her family. How to keep the "rules" laid down by her grandmother: Don't look white people in the eye, don't do anything to attract their attention, don't speak unless spoken to, don't smile or talk too loud, and never, never walk in front of them. She knew that breaking those rules could mean swift retaliation from the Ku Klux Klan, who could burn down a family home, rape a girl, or lynch a man simply for looking at a white woman. Despite the KKK and the "rules," when volunteers are recruited to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, eighth-grader Melba doesn't hesitate, and begins her freshman year as one of only nine African American students. At Central, she must walk through angry mobs to enter the school and endure threats and sometimes assaults from other students. Freshman year would be her only year at Central, as things proved so dangerous (the KKK posted a dead-or-alive bounty on the nine students) that she finished high school in California.