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
