[Peace] Melba Beals, Little Rock 9 - on campus Monday

[Haber, Laura]

please forward:

Melba Beals
"Integration Then and Now"
Monday, March 1 
7pm 
Illini Union Ballroom

As a 15-year-old student in Little Rock, Arkansas, Melba Patillo found
herself
enmeshed in a civil rights battle that rocked the country and changed her
life
forever. In September 1957, she and eight other black teenagers faced angry
mobs as they tried to enter the all-white Central High School to enact
Supreme
Court ordered desegregation. The Governor of Arkansas ringed the school with
National
Guardsmen and police who prevented them from entering, forcing president
Dwight
Eisenhower to send combat-ready paratroopers to enforce the law of the land
and
to protect the lives of these brave students. They spent the year attending
school amidst harassment, violence, and threats. For their courage and
self-sacrifice, the Little Rock Nine received America's top civilian honor,
the
Congressional Gold Medal. Her best-selling memoirs include Warriors Don't
Cry:
A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock Central High School
(1994) and its sequel, White is a State of Mind: Freedom is Yours to Choose
(1999). A former television reporter, Beals is a dynamic, inspirational, and
humorous speaker.

Laura Haber
Assistant Program Director of Unit One
University of Illinois
68 Allen Hall (MC 050)
1005 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801
(217) 244-2317
lhaber at uiuc.edu