Blog #1

     So far, I'm 6 chapters into Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals. Up until now, what we know about Melba is that she has just started the attempt to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was a horrible first day of school by anyone's standards. First of all, the nine black students who signed up to attend Central High were made to wait a year after the judge's ruling for integration. Since they didn't have to jump right into the battle after they signed up, it must have been even harder to force themselves to go to school that first morning because they didn't have the momentum from the instant adrenaline of signing up and arguing with their parents about it, etc. Nonetheless, nine of the original students showed up the first day.
     The main thing that bothers me about this first day endeavor is that the police and other figures of authority did nothing to protect the students and their families from the segregationists threatening and even attacking them. The force and manpower to hold off the hostile people was there, it just wasn't utilized. I understand that it was the norm back then to support segregation, especially if you were white, but it's still shocking to read about. I don't think I would have had the strength if I had been in Elizabeth Eckford's place that day, having obscenities screamed at me and being followed at the heels by hostile segregationists, to walk away and not give in to the fear and dread. (A sidenote: I felt really terrible for Elizabeth, who didn't know where to meet the other students because they'd had no way to get hold of her, and who was basically stranded amidst violent segregationists. However, her strength that day has immortalized her image as the embodiment of courage and influence. Go Elizabeth.)
     Another thing I noticed is how helpless the students' parents must have felt. They were letting their children put themselves in great, potentially fatal danger, and being told that from friends and neighbors. While they probably felt terrible and helpless about this fact, they must have seen in their children the strength and fight that was necessary to make a change in the world, and put that above their individual well-being. This is unfathomably difficult for a parent to do, but look what happened: the ends justified the means, in this case.
     Those are the main things I wanted to discuss about Warriors Don't Cry in chapters 5 and 6 that we hadn't discussed in class. I feel that they're important to the reader's understanding of both the difficulty and the reward of the students' battle, as well as understanding the psychology of the various characters.