Warriors Don't Cry Quotes

“The task that remains is to cope with our interdependence - to see ourselves reflected in every other human being and to respect and honor our differences.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“The effort to separate ourselves whether by race, creed, color, religion, or status is as costly to the separator as to those who would be separated.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Until I am welcomed everywhere as an equal simply because I am human, I remain a warrior on a battlefield that I must not leave. I continue to be a warrior who does not cry but who instead takes action. If one person is denied equality, we are all denied equality.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry

“They where like so many of the adults around us, content to pretend that all was well....but we knew better”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Suddenly one of the huge front doors swings open. A black teenager impeccably dressed in morning coat and bow tie emerges ... 'Good morning, I am Derrick Noble, president of the student body. Welcome to Central High School.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Then I remember I'd always been told, 'If a fellow's got so little manhood he'd hit a woman, it's up to that woman to relieve him of what few morsels of his masculinity remain.' I bent my knee and jammed my foot backward, up his crotch.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“When she began graduate school, our people [blacks] couldn't attend classes with whites at the University of Arkansas. After much grumbling and dickering, white folks had begun to allow small departments to integrate, class by class.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“I have only found the strength to visit five times in thirty years because of the uneasy feeling the city gives me. Three of those visits have been since Bill and Hillary Clinton took over the governor's mansion, because they set a tone that made me feel safer here.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Even when the battle is long and the path is steep, a true warrior does not give up. If each one of us does not step forward to claim our rights, we are doomed to an eternal wait in hopes those who would usurp them will become benevolent. The Bible says, WATCH, FIGHT, and PRAY.” * * * Although”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry

“She [Melba's mother] would tell us the story of the lone black man who was trying to integrate the law school. In the classroom, he was forced to sit confined by a white picket fence erected around his desk and chair.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Until I am welcomed everywhere as an equal simply because I am human, I remain a warrior on a battlefield that I must not leave. I continue to be a warrior who does not cry but who instead takes action. If one person is denied equality, we are all denied equality. —Melba Pattillo Beals”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry

“By the beginning of March, I had sunk into the state of mind you get into when you know you have to take castor oil and there's no way out. I just did what had to be done, without discussing it or thinking about it. I would get up, polish my saddle shoes, bathe, get dressed, dump my bowl of oatmeal into the toilet so Grandma India would think I'd eaten it -- but my nervous stomach wouldn't have to eject it -- and go to the war inside that school. I listened to shouts, to ugly names, while I smiled and said, 'Thank you,' I waited for a ride, came home, did homework, got to bed, and started over again the next day. I felt kind of numb, as though nothing mattered any more.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“My mother was one of the first few blacks to integrate the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1954.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Mother [Lois Marie Pattillo] began meeting with a few others from our community who were also determined to be admitted to the graduate school of education at the university.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Grandma entertained us with reading or checkers or chess so we wouldn't bother Mother as she studied for her night-school exams. She was determined to complete her master's degree.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“steam in an erupting volcano. “We”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry