Melba Patillo Research Paper

Warriors don’t cry What would you do if u were forced to complete a year of high school not only worrying about what people thought about you, but also having to worry about staying alive? Melba Patillo was forced to live with this overwhelming pressure throughout her junior year when on May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas saying that public schools for whites and blacks were illegal. So when Melba’s teacher asked if anyone who lived within the Central High district would like to go to Central with white children Melba was more than eager to volunteer and explore all those opportunities she had missed out on. Three long years later when it came to the 1957 fall term Melba would be attending
the all white Central High School as a junior. Though without her three most important supports which were her family, Link and her belief in God she wouldn’t have been able to make it through her junior year.
Melba’s family supported Melba through her unbearable junior year at Central High by giving her the necessary strength needed to stick through it and giving her advice that helped her survive through the dangerous halls of Central high School. Her family suffered along with Melba having to endure the constant telephone threats, being shunned by the whole community and even went as far as to costing Melba’s mom her job and not to mention having to worry about if Melba would come home from school alive. Whenever Melba felt like giving up and leaving Central High so she could go back to her old school, Horace Mann her Grandma picked her right back up and changed her mind. “One little setback –and you want out,” she said. “Naw, you’re not a quitter.”(55) Or when Melba began to be overwhelmed with all the suffering and just wished she were dead her Grandma once again influenced her to see things her way. “Whenever you think about going away from this earth, think about how you’d break my heart and your brother’s heart. You might as well take your mother with you because she’d be beside
herself.”(238) Melba’s Grandmother was always there to pick her back up in her most vulnerable and weakest moments and to show Melba that she was surrounded by people who deeply loved her. Her family was also there when Melba needed advice that would help her to survive at Central. When Melba couldn’t control her anger any longer and wanted to fight back her mother convinced her that the best way to fight back was to make it through the year at Central. “And if you make it through the year, you’ve hit them with the biggest blow of all” (210). Considering if Melba did fight back she would be doing what the segregationist wanted her to do so then she could be expelled. Melba’s grandma also gave Melba advice that helped ease the amount of suffering she was forced to endure at Central by responding to student’s harassment in an unexpected manner. “Suppose you’d have told those boys who did this, ‘Thank you,’ with a smile. Then you’ve changed the rules of the game. What they want is for you to be unhappy. That’s how they get pleasure” (242). This advice as did all of Melba’s grandmother’s advice worked to her advantage and gave Melba a feeling of being in charge of herself and having power. The second support that sustained Melba through the battle at Central High was Link. Link risked his own life trying to protect Melba from all the dangers surrounding her. Link was the only person who could really protect her inside Central High considering even the Arkansas National Guard never really put in the effort to protect her and the 101st Airborne Division couldn’t stay with her throughout the whole year and had boundaries on how far they could go to protect her. Plus her family couldn’t help inside the school as her mother soon came to realize. “I think Mother finally realized that Link was doing something for me they could not do-feeding me vital information that could help me survive.”(pg266). Link had the advantage of knowing what the segregationist were planning to do to get them out of Central because his father made him go to the segregationist meetings and he had the advantage of knowing what the kids at school were going to do that day to torture them because they were all his friends. So he could warn Melba about what to expect and the places to avoid. So Link betrayed the trust of his family and friends to help Melba. “He was torn between the loyalty to his family and friends and his sense of guilt and responsibility for what was happening to the eight of us.”(pg 266) Link risked a lot in helping Melba not only by risking his reputation at school and the approval of his family, but by risking his own safety. “If you don’t get out of here, you’re gonna get us both killed” (pg.250). Link didn’t only serve as someone to solely help Melba survive at Central, but also became a friend. “After a while having him as my friend got to be fun for both of us” (pg. 266). So Link also benefited from helping Melba by making a new friend and Melba finally gained what she had been searching for the whole year, someone to talk to and acknowledge her as person. Link was this person for Melba the person who helped ease her feelings of loneliness and isolation. Link also served as one of the supports that gave Melba that extra strength to help survive the day at Central. “His wink or pleasant expression sometimes came just at the moment I needed to know I was alive and valuable (pg. 254). So just when Melba would feel like she was completely invisible and worthless Link was there to acknowledge her and show her that he cared. The third and most significant support that helped Melba succeed at completing a year at Central High was her belief in God. Melba’s belief in God was by no doubt one of the most significant supports that gave her the motivation and strength she needed to make it through a year at Central. When Melba felt afraid for her safety and even her life she looked to God to help make it through the situation alive. “I could hear Grandma India’s voice saying, God is always with you, even when things seem awful. I felt a surge of strength and a new wind.”(pg.51). Melba used this advice for almost every situation where she was caught in the middle of a dangerous or near death experience. When she felt weak and needed to think fast to stay alive and escape she looked for that strength to keep going from God who gave her the necessary confidence to get through it. Melba’s belief in God also served as one of the main reasons that motivated her to keep going to Central and not give up. “Her staying there means she has made a promise that she intends to keep, because she told God she would and she doesn’t want to let herself and God down”(pg.196). There were many times in which Melba wanted to return to her old and normal life and leave Central, but decided against it because she didn’t want to let God down. Melba’s experience is different from my experience in that she had an enormous amount of pressure on her and had so much more significant issues to worry about.
She not only worried about the things kids today worry about like being accepted by your peers and doing well in school, but above all of this had to worry about just staying alive. Melba was just like any typical teenager her age with the same concerns, but unlike other kids her age had to get through school while being constantly judged and harassed while being completely alone and isolated from everyone else. Though unlike other girls her age she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders and was forced to become an adult and mature during that year at Central. Instead of thinking about boys and what she was going to wear to school the next day she had more significant things on her mind like integration. The ways in which I’ve seen racism at work in my own school is people of different nationalities being judged on their level of intelligence based on their nationality. The ways in which I feel like a warrior are that like Melba when I commit to something I like to stick with it even through the hard moments when I want to desperately quit. The key areas of support I think will help me most in the coming year is the support of my family and friends motivating me in to do well in school and supporting me through whatever else I decide to commit to. What I learned from Melba was that I
shouldn’t take the life I’m living for granted because the life that I’m living is the life that she always longed to return to. I also learned that it takes somebody with a lot of strength to maintain their composure and react without violence in the face of being harassed and constantly degraded as a person and how much more difficult it is to just sit and endure it than it is to use violence.