March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine

by Melba Pattillo Beals, Frank Morrison (Illustrator)

"Beals' recollection of white oppression and her rise above it will haunt readers. A must-read for teens." —School Library Journal

From the legendary civil rights activist and author of the million-copy-selling Warriors Don't Cry comes an ardent and profound childhood memoir of growing up while facing adversity in the Jim Crow South.

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African-Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions. Why couldn’t she drink from a "whites only" fountain? Why couldn’t she feel safe beyond home—or even within the walls of church? Adults all told Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place.

But Beals had the heart of a fighter—and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

Combined with emotive drawings and photos, this memoir paints a vivid picture of Beals’ powerful early journey on the road to becoming a champion for equal rights, an acclaimed journalist, a best-selling author, and the recipient of this country’s highest recognition, the Congressional Gold Medal.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Memoir, Middle Grade, Historical, African American

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 2, 2018

About the author

Melba Pattillo Beals made history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African-American students involved in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The world watched as they braved constant intimidation and threats from those who opposed desegregation of the formerly all-white high school. She later recounted this harrowing year in her book titled Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School.

Melba Pattillo was born on December 7, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Beals grew up surrounded by family members who knew the importance of an education. Her mother, Lois Marie Pattillo, PhD, was one of the first black graduates of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1954 and was a high school English teacher at the time of the crisis. Her father, Howell Pattillo, worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. She had one brother, Conrad, who served as a U.S. marshal in Little Rock, and they all lived with her grandmother, India Peyton.

While attending all-black Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, she knew her educational opportunities were not equal to her white counterparts’ opportunities at Central High. In response to this inequality, Pattillo volunteered to transfer to the all-white Central High School with eight other black students from Horace Mann and Dunbar Junior High School. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be known, faced daily harassment from white students. Beals later recounted that the soldier assigned to protect her instructed her, “In order to get through this year, you will have to become a soldier. Never let your enemy know what you are feeling.” Beals took the soldier’s advice, and, while the rest of the school year remained turbulent, all but one student, Minnijean Brown, was able to finish the school year. Barred from entering Central High the next year when the city’s schools were closed, Pattillo moved to Santa Rosa, California, to live with a sponsoring family who were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for her senior year of high school.

In 1961, Pattillo married John Beals. They had one daughter but divorced after ten years of marriage. She subsequently adopted two boys.

Beals graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in journalism and earned an MA in the same field from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She has worked as a communications consultant, a motivational speaker, and as a reporter for San Francisco’s public television station and for the Bay Area’s NBC affiliate.

Beals was the first of the Little Rock Nine to write a book based on her experiences at Central High. Published in 1994, Warriors Don’t Cry gives a first-hand account of the trials Beals encountered from segregationists and racist students. The book was named the American Library Association (ALA) Notable Book for 1995 and won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award that same year. White is a State of Mind, her 1999 sequel to Warriors Don’t Cry, follows Beals from her senior year in high school to her college and family days in California.

Beals was awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1958, along with other members of the Little Rock Nine and Daisy Bates, their mentor. In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented the nation’s highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal, to the members of the Little Rock Nine. As of 2010, Beals lives in the San Francisco area and works as an author and public speaker.

Reviews

[Moonkiszt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melba Patillo, as one of the Little Rock Nine, shares her story, and starts with this paragraph from her book Warriors Don't Cry:

Black folks aren’t born expecting segregation, prepared from day one to follow its confining rules. Nobody presents you with a handbook when you are teething and says, “Here’s how you must behave as a second-class citizen.” Instead, the humiliating expectations and traditions of segregation creep over you, slowly stealing a teaspoonful of your self-esteem each day.
—Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals
(Simon & Schuster, 1994)

(Beals, Melba Pattillo. March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine . HMH Books. Kindle Edition. )

An easy read as it relates to words, with a middle grade school focus, the subject matter is anything but easy. It is downright disturbing. I was reviewing this to see if my group is ready for this, and found myself captured by the story of which I, as a white adult raised in middle-class America, knew next to nothing. She is really more of my mother's generation. Still. How could I not know some of this? And as for my group. . . they are not ready for this yet. But soon the older ones will be.

As one of the first group to go into her integrated high school, white adults shouted that someone ought to lynch one of the nine. Meanwhile the students they would attend school with took it into their own hands to actually hang and effigy of an incoming student on one of the trees on the front lawn. If that isn't a scary way to attend school, I can't think of one. . .if that was a white student effigy there would be law suits and therapy for years ahead to get the situation remedied. The pictures of these very moments in Melba's life are in the book, and I shake my old gray head when I think back to my history classes, teaching me about Dr. King and how everyone loves him, and how "color blind" we now were (early to mid-70's). I believed that. Figured that was all taken care of. No more name calling, everyone mixing and mingling. I went out with non-whites all the time. As time goes by, and I look back at Marley's finger, or is it death's finger in this #BLM Carol playing out in my head, where the hell was I, were my parents? I'm so grateful for the opportunity to revisit, rethink, revise "truths" that have squeezed me tight into some rather unreasonable (and unjustified) opinions. Hallelujah for a chance to change my mind.

5 stars for speaking truth to unrighteous dominion.

[Berit Lundqvist · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly horrifying description of how it was to grow up as a black person in Little Rock, Arkansas during the 50’s and 60’s.

Melba Patillo Beals was one of the Little Rock Nine. This is the story of her childhood, before she was accepted to Central High School, an all-white school, and wrote herself into the American history books.

There are some really awful parts in the book, e.g. A lynching in a church, an abduction and an almost-rape, but there are also warm and loving descriptions of family life and strong women.

However, two things bothered me. Firstly how the author applied grown-up thoughts to little Melba. Obviously a 3yo or 4yo can’t come up with those Lines of thoughts that are attributed to little Melba. Anyone who have ever met a kid of that age knows this.

Secondly, how religion makes people passive. Don’t ask for anything. Just bear you sufferings without complaining. God will give you justice if you just pray. Just wait, and then wait some more. Opium for the people, indeed.

[Stephanie Fitzgerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars
I must admit, I was a bit disappointed by this one. I expected it to have a lot more information about “The Nine” integrating Central High School. That was only briefly covered in the last few pages, however.

[Richie Partington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richie’s Picks: MARCH FORWARD, GIRL: FROM YOUNG WARRIOR TO LITTLE ROCK NINE by Melba Pattillo Beals, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2018, 224p., ISBN: 978-1-328-88212-7

“Across the lines
Who would dare to go
Under the bridge
Over the tracks
That separate whites from blacks”
-- Tracy Chapman (1988)

“Grandma grabbed me bodily and slammed me down onto the seat beside her. ‘Don’t look,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘Turn your head and look down at the floor. Better yet, close your eyes now, child, and keep them closed till I tell you to open them.’
At that moment, some of the parishioners began to cry out, ‘Have mercy, Jesus!’ and ‘Take our brother home. Please don’t let him suffer. Take Harvey home.’ Then I heard the boots of the men walking down the aisle of the church toward the pulpit. When they got three-fourths of the way down, I heard the sound of a rope being thrown over one of the beams that went across the church ceiling from right to left. I peered through Grandma’s fingers as they covered my eyes. When the Klansman reached upward to grab the other end of the rope, his mask slid down a little from his face, Grandma whispered in startled words, ‘Oh, no, is that Officer Nichols? Is he one of them?’ Grandma was shocked because she had worked for the Nichols family and could easily identify him. She kept her head down and pushed harder on mine.”

Most children in America learn something about the history of American segregation: Colored water fountains and bathrooms; ramshackle schoolhouses; back of the bus; balcony of the movie theater; no eating at the lunch counters. But merely learning these unpleasant facts does not mean that a young person knows what it was really like to be black and live under Jim Crow and the constant terror of the Klan.

Reading Melba Pattillo Beals’s harrowing account of growing up in 1940s and 1950s Little Rock provides a real understanding of what it was like to have no rights, no power, and to be endangered and under siege every single day. To see the murderous racism and Jim Crow laws through her eyes is to understand why, as a little girl, she began ticking off the days until she could escape Little Rock, Arkansas.

Learning “The Rules” and always following them is what kept you alive. It is stunning to see how Melba’s mother and beloved Grandma had to react to a random white adult unjustly yelling at or slapping Melba: the black adults apologize and grovel, having no more power than the little girl. And for another example of how people were kept “in their place,” we read about a white shopkeeper angrily telling young Melba not to touch anything because nobody will want to buy something after she’s touched it.

As a teenager, Melba Pattillo became well-known as one of the Little Rock Nine, nine black students who volunteered to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. Local reaction to the integration was so violent that President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to get the students safely into and out of the school. Two decades ago, Beals wrote a best-selling memoir of that experience, Warriors Don’t Cry.

In MARCH FORWARD, GIRL, we experience Melba’s earlier life, and that daily terror of the Ku Klux Klan. We see the little girl who was so frustrated by life under the Klan and Jim Crow that she eventually volunteered to put her life on the line.

Again and again, readers will come to realize that segregation and racism during those days wasn’t just about the inconvenience of needing to use the water fountain marked “Colored.” Instead, it was about constant humiliation and danger, about one’s life being as precarious as that of an ant walking across a windowsill.

In reaction to the forced integration, then-Arkansas Governor Faubus closed all of the high schools in LIttle Rock. But the real reason that Melba Pattillo Beals finished high school in northern California is that she was forced to escape Little Rock because “the KKK circulated flyers offering ten thousand dollars dead and five thousand dollars alive for each of us [members of the Little Rock Nine].”

For all that I’ve studied about American history and the Civil Rights Movement, I found MARCH FORWARD, GIRL to be unique and enlightening in its perspective. Young readers may come to understand that during the (relatively recent) lifetime of their parents and grandparents, many white Americans had the privilege to treat black Americans any way they wanted to. When they see what white Americans wanted to do with that privilege, they may come to a new understanding of current affairs.

For example, the book provides evidence to illuminate the historic sources of the visceral hatred many harbored toward our black President. Those angry white students at Central High in 1957 who opposed integration, along with their families and contemporaries, are still alive and voting. They and their descendents are continuing the tradition of supporting state policies that make it more difficult for blacks to vote.

Race remains such a divisive issue in America today. MARCH FORWARD, GIRL is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com

[Mary Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Courage. What courage it takes to be patient and wait for the right moment to march forward. And to march forward with dignity and restraint while those around you try to strip it away from you. Courage is a gift, not just for yourself, but for all those with whom you come in contact.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melba Pattillo Beals tells stories from her childhood leading up to entering Central High School as one of the Little Rock Nine. What is important about this book is that Melba talks about the harassment and discrimination she experienced on both a large and a small scale. She witnessed a lynching in her church at the age of 5, and was kidnapped and nearly raped at the age of 11. Hearing these first-hand accounts is very powerful and can have more of an impact, I believe, than reading that x number of people were lynched in a given year (though that can be staggering as well). Melba also stresses how the fear and humiliation she and her family experienced were a daily presence. She wasn’t allowed to touch anything at the store. She often got mud on her nice shoes because she had to move off the sidewalk to let white people pass. These are examples, and there are plenty of them in just one girl’s story, of how Jim Crow laws affected her personally as a child.

I had some gripes with this book, mostly the editing. The narrative jumped around and was sometimes jarring, confusing, or repetative. The photo captions and the photo placement bothered me. I would have rather the captions identified what was in the picture, instead of trying to repeat what was in the narrative. Often a photo on a page did not have anything to do with what was written there.

That aside, I definitely was impacted by this book. Melba’s stories are raw and candid and told with compelling details and dialogue. She does not gloss over what happened or how she felt about it. Readers will be unsettled and disturbed, as they should be.

[Renata · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really great memoir for younger readers that does an excellent job of putting into words the cumulative emotional damage that all the seemingly small pieces of growing up in the Jim Crow South would have on a young black girl, and it also highlights how incredibly heroic the Little Rock Nine and other young civil rights heroes were.

[Linda Lipko · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent book written by one of the little rock nine students. At the time of segregation, the disparity of educational systems was abhorrent. In particular, as a child, Melba writes of the fear of the dark when the KKK came out to scare, and lynching of innocent.

Highly recommended.

[Lindsey Casselman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me absolutely sick. It’s disgusting how terrible black people have been treated throughout history. The author mentions at the end that she does not hold a grudge against white people… I would if I were her. Highly suggest reading to educate yourself of the history of blacks in the south.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic memoir. The intended audience is upper elementary and high school, but I encourage adults to read it as well. Beals’ stories of growing up in Jim Crow Little Rock are visceral and immediate; the reader feels her anger and fear along with her, in the pit of the stomach.

[Amanda Brenner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feelings in a few thougts:

-Melba Pattillo Beals is known as being one of the “Little Rock Nine” – 9 black students that enrolled in an all-white school in 1957. The enrollment of these students was a test to the Supreme Court Decision in Brown v. Board of Education that ruled segregation in schools was unconstitutional.
-Apparently this book is marketed as a middle grade book, but it felt more YA to me. I feel there are events included that are too sensitive for a MG reader. I would say this book would be more suitable for those 13+ unless they are a mature reader there is a scene where a lynching in a church takes place, and another scene where Melba shares her abduction by the KKK where it is implied women are being raped & killed – there are no graphic details, but things are implied
-This book is Melba’s autobiography of her life BEFORE becoming one of The Little Rock Nine. Melba details what it was like growing up in racial turmoil.
-I really felt for Melba’s struggle to hide her true self in order to fit in with her peers – unfortunately most people in her life wanted to keep their heads down instead of fighting for what was right. I could definitely sympathize with her frustration.
-I am now very interested in reading her other book that accounts more about being part of the Little Rock Nine – Warriors Don’t Cry

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a memoir about Melba Pattillo Beals' childhood and is intended for readers age 10 and up. She talked about growing up in the 1940s and 1950s under heavy segregation laws and the threat of Ku Klux Klan violence against blacks who didn't submit. She mainly remembers the fear and humiliations and recounts some of her worst memories. She also talked about a few encounters with kind whites and a brief visit to St. Louis, where things were so different that she didn't want to leave. The book ended with her being chosen to attend the previously all-white high school in Little Rock as one of the Little Rock Nine. The brief epilogue talked about the year she spent in that school.

She writes from her viewpoint as a child, so we only get hints of the a wider context of what was going on. A young reader might be left with the impression that the author's childhood impressions and worst memories represent what daily life was like for all Southern blacks. It's good for people to learn what Melba feared and endured, but her memoir only briefly explained the context of why things got that way, how things were changing, and that life was different in other areas.

I received an ARC review copy of this book from the publisher through Amazon Vine.

[TammyJo Eckhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have even half a heart, I challenge you to read this book and not feel sad, not feel angry, not feel shocked regardless of your political leanings or age. Melba Pattillo Beals gives us her childhood background that helps explain her role in the Little Rock Nine. Her memories are intense yet not whole as we should expect of childhood memories created in an environment of fear and deprivation. This means that there were gaps questions I had while reading that are not answered.

She uses the language of the ages she is discussing so that even a child, tween, or teen might understand. The target readership is children so her language choices make sense. That said, this may be a book that parents or older siblings will want to read with a younger child because it is very likely to stir up intense feelings and a lot of historical questions.

While the gaps and language of Beals' childhood are understandable, the last few chapters, the Epilogue, and the Note to Readers, needed to offer more information, more details, even if she has covered the Little Rock Nine and her experiences elsewhere. I wish her editor had pushed her to include more, even just another 10 pages could have answered a lot of questions and given more emotional context.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melba Pattillo Beals was a very little girl when she came to realize that people of color were treated differently from white folks in Little Rock -- and not in a good way.

In this volume, aimed at middle grade students, Beals writes clearly and honestly about what life was like before Brown v. Board of Education for people of color in the deep South. Separate facilities that were never really equal. A lynching within the walls of her church. Her abduction by the KKK at age 11 -- and the kind woman who helped her escape. The unwritten rules that governed behavior for people of color vis a vis white people.

Beals eventually becomes one of the Little Rock Nine, integrating Central High School under the force of Federal law and protection. Her honesty about the experiences she had growing up in the deep segregated South were disturbing and enlightening. In view of today's political climate, I feel as though this book should be mandatory reading in classrooms across the country.

[Clara Biesel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melba Pattillo Beals, (famous for being one of the black students entering a previously all white school after integration was mandated in Little Rock) tells the story of her growing up in Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s. This book is written for young people, (I think??) but I'm left a little bewildered with what age is a good age to share this kind of information. Chapters that especially stuck out to me include the story of how at home and safe she felt in her church until the KKK came and lynched a man in the congregation in front of everyone, including 5 year old Melba, whose grandmother could cover her eyes, but not her ears.... And another chapter when she, as an eleven year old is picked up by the Klan and thrown into the back of a truck, taken to a celebration where the whole truck full of black women were being raped (possibly also murdered?) and she only narrowly escapes-- and has to massively change her appearance afterwards so that she's never recognized and punished for running from their abuse.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Melba Pattillo Beals was one of the Little Rock Nine, high school students whose parents sued Little Rock Central School District to attend the White high school. While she covered her experiences at the school in her previous book, Warriors Don’t Cry, this book explains how she got to be one of the Little Rock Nine in the first place. Her family was involved politically before they sued for Melba into attend school. She was taught by her parents about the Jim Crow system and experienced it herself. She doesn’t regret it but never imagined how she would be treated. A very good book and geared for YA readers.

[Maria Ritten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am having some of my students read this and since it is written for young adult readers I think they'll like it a lot! I enjoyed the book and liked that it told a story in a way that is accessible for younger readers, but not sugar-coated. I wish there were additional chapters about Melba's experience integrating Central High School rather than only a little bit, but it was a great read regardless!

[Jessica Fellows · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. What an eye opener the horrible atrocity’s children were witness to living through in the south during those times. For children to be terrified to leave their home, to be terrified to have their lights on in the home at night it’s horrible. For her to witness a hanging ☹️ to have to run for her life at 11 from the KKK. So sad and amazing that she survived.

[Hilmg · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Oops…I was among the last of 16 students selected to go to Central High. I just needed to find a way to tell my parents and Grandmother.” 1957

Consequently, harrowing circumstances that lead to immense growth & a vastly different living situation which finally provided the right of safety, of dream building.”

[Naomi Tinsmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that the main theme of this book was channeling fear to turn into power, for example, the kids where so scared of the white people when they were little and then they grew up to be strong individuals.

[Kim Stock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating and heartbreaking read about her life before being a part of Little Rock 9. I had no idea she signed herself up to integrate without telling her family and it was because her grandmother taught her you have to go where you aren’t welcome to create change. Highly recommend this book to teachers and students!

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please see my review under C. Wong on Amazon. com.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an easy book to read. It shouldn't be. It powerfully conveys the many injustices, and the abject fear, of life under Jim Crow segregation.

[Sky · Rating 5 out of 5]

An honestly horrifying description of what it was like to live as a black person in Little Rock, Arkansas during the 1950's, while the Jim Crow laws were still being enforced.

As I read, the paragraph at the beginning of the book began to make more and more sense to me.
"Black folks aren’t born expecting segregation, prepared from day one to follow its confining rules. Nobody presents you with a handbook when you are teething and says, 'Here’s how you must behave as a second-class citizen.' Instead, the humiliating expectations and traditions of segregation creep over you, slowly stealing a teaspoonful of your self-esteem each day."
—Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals
(Simon & Schuster, 1994)

This paragraph really anchored the story and how it went. After reading the entire book, I think this paragraph means that black people aren't born knowing how they will be treated in society during the time they are alive. They aren't born knowing that they are automatically devalued in the society in which they are in. Instead, policies and laws are enforced to limit what they can and cannot do to a certain extent, meanwhile the same laws and policies are giving other racial groups certain privileges that every person should have. This paragraph also talks about the negative impact these experiences can have on one's self-esteem and mental health.

[Adam Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: A young adult memoir of Melba Pattillo Beals about her early years before integrating Little Rock's Central High. March Forward, Girl is a prequel to Warriors Don't Cry. 

Last year I read Melba Pattillo Beals' memoir of her life after Central High, I Will Not Fear. At some point, I read that Beals' best-known book, the memoir of her Central High desegregation experience, Warriors Don't Cry, was among the list of books that were being challenged as inappropriate to be taught in schools. So, as I was looking for that book, I also put her most recent book, March Forward, Girl, on my to-read list. I thought March Forward, Girl covered the Central High but was pitched to a younger audience than Warriors Don't Cry, but it is more of a prequel. I am not great at evaluating what age would be best for reading, but my inclination is that March Forward, Girl is targeted to children that are roughly 10 to 13.

March Forward, Girl was written just a few years ago, and Melba Pattillo Beals is now 80 years old. The book opens with her coming to understand racism as a very young child. Born on December 7, 1941 (the day of the Pearl Harbor attack). Melba, as a child, understood more than what her parents and other adults thought that she did.

It seemed to me that the grownups must have thought they could say anything out loud in front of me and I wouldn’t really understand what they were talking about because I was so little. They were wrong. I took in every word, and I spent all my waking hours listening closely to the adult talk, trying to figure out their words, what they meant, and why they never spoke up, and pondering my world. How did I get here? How long did I have to stay? I imagined there must be places beyond Arkansas where my folks were treated better...Early on, I could tell that the white people in Little Rock believed we had to do whatever they wanted us to do. I told myself that it must be that God liked them better than us. They treated us like they owned us.

While March Forward, Girl was not published by a Christian publisher as I Will Not Fear was, it is still significantly concerned with her theological wrestling of what it means to be enduring pain and racism and to believe in God. Where was God in the midst of her pain? As I read March Forward, Girl, I thought about how Christians who are not paying attention to the world's problems and working toward their solutions are keeping people from God. Melba Pattillo Beals eventually came to a deep faith in God. But those early years, she struggled to understand her Grandmother's faith.

A personal memoir like this is a critical way to give context to history. She talks about hating to go to the stores because Black people were not allowed to touch items in most stores. They had to tell the clerk what they wanted, and the White clerk would gather them because items that Black people had touched would not be considered salable to White people. And Black patrons would only be helped if there were no other White people in the store. White people immediately moved to the front of any line, so it may take an hour to get a few items at the grocery store since Black patrons both could not pick up items on their own and had to wait until all White patrons had been served.

The experiences that Melba Pattillo Beals recounts of her childhood are not just inconveniences and or segregated stores and water fountains. She also tells about members of the Klan coming into their church service and lynching a man in the middle of the sanctuary. And of her walking home from the pool one day and being kidnapped by a group of men and taken to a Klan rally where they intended to rape her (she was too young to realize that this was what was being intended.) However, a White woman at the Klan rally eventually realized that she was only 11 but looked older and helped her escape.

It is these more serious examples that I think likely are why some White people are objecting to this memoir and Warriors Don't Cry. But these events were experienced by a child who is the books' target age. And I think we do need these first-person accounts, and we need to know that the people that experienced them are still alive. There was a Fresh Air interview from 2018 when the book came out. And an Oprah episode from 1996 brought together several students from Little Rock High forty years later.

March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine by Melba Pattillo Beals Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

[SundayAtDusk · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her second memoir about her childhood growing up in Jim Crow Arkansas, Melba Pattillo Beals focuses on the years before she became one of The Little Rock Nine. She does an excellent job, too, describing not only events, but her feelings about being treated like a second-class citizen in Little Rock. As a child, she was often both deeply angry and deeply frightened about how blacks had to kowtow to whites to stay safe, to not get lynched. When she visits her great-grandmother's church one Saturday, the KKK actually come into the church with a black man and hangs him from one of the beams. No one tries to stop them, because they know they will then be killed, too. Events like that made the author realize at a very young age that her parents and grandmother could not always protect her from harm.

There were feelings of happiness and belonging, too, of course. Ms. Beals was very close to her grandmother, as well as her parents, younger brother and extended family. Only, her father moves out before she reaches her teen years, which leads to even more fears about her family's safety. During one Christmastime visit, however, he brings a television set as a gift, which both raises the author's awareness of life outside of Arkansas, as well as gives her new things to worry about--nuclear war and the knowledge no black family she knew had a bomb shelter. And obviously no white family was going to share their shelter with a black family, when they wouldn't even share their water fountains, restrooms, pools, theaters, etc.

There's also a harrowing night when Ms. Beals decides to leave an event and start walking home alone, where she is picked up by Klan members, along with some black women and men, and taken to a Klan gathering. It's obvious to an adult reader what is happening to the black women who are being dragged off by Klansmen, but a child reader may not understand, just as the author did not understand as an 11-year-old. No harm comes to her, though, because a Klanswoman actually helps her escape, when she realizes she's not even a teenager, but just a young child large for her age. That's the most frightening event in the book, next to the church lynching, and parents need to be aware their children will be reading those disturbing stories, since the age recommendation of this book is 10 and up.

Older children need to be aware of such events in the past, however, because many seem to think those Jim Crow days happened on another planet or something. It's good so many children personally don't know what it's like to be so hated and so badly treated just because of the color of their skin; yet they still need to learn about what did go on in the past; learn about how courageous, young individuals like Melba Pattillo Beals tried to change their lives and the lives of others for the better. It's astounding what the Little Rock Nine put up with when they attended Central High, and all the sacrifices they made to go to an all white school, where they were targets of such unbelievable hatred.

Finally, my only concern about this memoir is the final page, entitled "Note To Readers", which contains a photograph of the author with the white couple in California, George and Kay McCabe, who took her in at age 16, when Central High closed down due to the integration. The page was intended as both a loving thank you to the McCabes, as well as an assurance to young readers that Ms. Beals does not have "a grudge against white people in general". There's nothing at all wrong with the page's intention, except there's no talk whatsoever in the book about what happened to the author's own family back in Arkansas after she left. That page made it seem like she may have forgotten her own family back home in hateful Arkansas and just joined another family in sunny California. That's not the case, I'm sure, but it would have been nice to read, if only briefly, how the eventual death of Jim Crow affected the lives of her grandmother, parents and brother.

(Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)

[George Crowder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think anything can dethrone Warriors Don’t Cry as my favorite of Ms. Beals' books, but March Forward, Girl comes close. Written in language accessible to young people, it's just as captivating to adults--an amazing memoir of a segregationist childhood and Ms. Beals' reflections about that experience.

There are many specific touches that are affecting: young Melba’s struggle to rationalize faith in an omnipotent God who would allow such a horrific, unfair system to exist; the daily ritual of drawing the shades and blacking out the windows at dusk; the potent threat a handsy white milkman presents to her family; the observation that no white man ever rendered aid to the black community under any circumstance. These capture the imagination and make the narrative crackle with life for the reader.

I thought nothing would top the church lynching, absolutely petrifying from the moment the door is bolted from within and from without. But when eleven-year-old Melba falls into the hands of the Klansmen, it has the nightmare feel of a horrific fairytale. Even as she escapes, Grandma and Mother Lois must contrive to disguise and protect her from the Klansmen who will not stop searching for her. The unending threat to her existence they posed is something that’s hard to imagine. It is amazing to me that, after all that, she would dare go into the jaws of death as one of the Little Rock Nine.

One of the things I really appreciate is the way Ms. Moore's trilogy of memoirs gives such a gripping, complex portrait of different stages in her life experience. They reinforce one another without retelling the same story. The initial section of White Is a State of Mind continues the story of Warriors Don't Cry, the chronicle of the year nine black children walked into the lion's den to integrate Little Rock's Central High. It provides a fascinating account of the manner in which the Arkansas government refused to accept the end of school segregation—a stubborn determination which helps explain why the battle for civil rights is far from over. It seems truly a two-steps-forward-one-step-backwards march.

These experiences must be shared and heard by all Americans, just as the horrors of the Holocaust should be acknowledged and remembered. For no one said it better than William Faulker: "The past is never over. It's not even past."

[Valerie McEnroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melba Pattillo Beals is best known for being one of the nine students who integrated Central High in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957. As a very young girl she was always listening to the adults around her. She was conscious of the segregation that hit her full on when she ventured out of her neighborhood. Even at age 3, she couldn't help but ask questions. How could her skin color bring out such hatred in white people? Why did her family always become fearful at night? Why did she have to ruin her shoes by stepping off the sidewalk when passing a white person? She gives many examples to try to help white people understand what it was like. In the end, she concedes that you can never fully understand something you did not experience first hand.

There are several encounters that she describes in extra detail.
1) Shopping: She couldn't touch anything. A clerk would bring the merchandise to the counter. If a white person walked up, she had to step aside. She couldn't try on clothes or return anything.
2) Lynching: She and her church congregation sat motionless while the KKK stormed in and hung a man for being "uppity."
3) Abduction: She was abducted off the side of the road and taken into the woods where a KKK group was waiting. It's assumed she would have been raped if a white woman had not helped her escape.

This is a fantastic book to inform kids about the harsh reality of segregation. After reading this book, you will understand that it was her destiny to be one of the early martyrs for integration. My students love The Lions of Little Rock, and I can't wait to add this nonfiction memoir to the collection. It's highly readable. The only reason I dropped a star is that the pivotal moment in her life is barely mentioned. Her year at Central High is covered in less than ten pages. I couldn't believe it. There had to be lots and lots of details about that year that I wanted to know about. Still an excellent book.

Librarian's note: "Nigger" is used several times. Obviously, it's used to show how it demoralized black people. Just mentioning it because some parents are sensitive about their kids reading words like that, even in a historical context.

[Cindy Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

From an early age, Melba Pattillo Beals chafed against the rules African Americans had to follow in the Jim Crow South. Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, she only felt safe when at home with her mother and grandmother, surrounded by friendly neighbors and friends. Beals tells her story in a gripping memoir for young readers, March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine.

When she had to venture out she faced discrimination and prejudice everywhere. Drinking fountains, bathrooms, lunch counters were marked “Whites Only.” Blacks were not allowed to touch merchandise in grocery or department stores; instead they had to point to what they wanted or hand a list to a clerk.

At night, her family drew the blinds and kept quiet, afraid that members of the Ku Klux Klan would seek them out for some infraction. Beals saw the injustice of it all, but her mother and grandmother cautioned her to keep quiet. The time would come, they told her, when she could push for equality.

That time came during the integration of Little Rock schools, when she and eight other students from her community attended the all-white school despite threats on their lives.

At times Beals’s story is hard to read — she witnessed a lynching and narrowly escaped from the Klan — but she tells it with such candor that I found it hard to turn away from the truth of her experience. Her descriptions of the good times in her youth, events with the church community, time spent at her grandmother’s side, and accounts of daily activities, paint a vivid picture of what life what like in the 1940s.

I thoroughly enjoyed March Forward, Girl and only wish it would have covered more information about Beals’s experience as one of the Little Rock Nine. Even so, I highly recommend it for mother-daughter book clubs and young readers aged 10 to 13.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Abi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melba Beals, ones of the brave Little Rock Nine, recounts her childhood leading up to her decision to be one of the few students to integrate Central High. She starts with reflecting on her childhood from a young age, before she was in school. And she talks about how even at a very young age, she recognized that she was not treated the same as the white people in town. As she gets older, she continues to struggle with the discordance of her treatment because of the color of her skin. Beals discusses how she struggled to understand the rules she had to follow and why, she also discusses her fear of the KKK. Beals even tells the harrowing story of the time she was captured by a KKK member and only barely escaped with her life when another woman (also in the KKK), took pity on her and helped her flee. Throughout her childhood, Beals' grandmother was her life line. Her grandmother was always giving her advice, and encourage her to learn and understand the world around her. Beals was a particularly observant and curious child, who understood more of the world than most would expect from her. And this all leads up to her being part of the group that integrated Central High, which she only tells very briefly in the epilogue, but was clearly a very brave and difficult thing to do everyday for a year.

I really loved this memoir. Beals really shows the impact of segregation and how not equal it was. I feel she does a really good explaining her emotions around segregation, and being honest about a child's feelings, while also taking on the current lens of being a civil rights activist. I was consistently impressed by how observant Beals was and that she was brave enough to ask "Why?" and did not accept things as they were. I will never understand what she went through or how hard it was to grow up black in the segregated south, but this book does a really good job of giving insight into what it was like and the constant fear and frustration that was felt.