I Will Not Fear: My Story of a Lifetime of Building Faith Under Fire

Melba Pattillo Beals is a recipient of this country's highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for her role, as a fifteen-year-old, in the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  A retired university professor with a doctorate in International Multicultural Education, she is a former KQED television broadcaster, NBC television news reporter, ABC radio talk show host, and writer for various magazines, including Family Circle and People.  Beals's Warriors Don't Cry has been in print for more than twenty years, has sold more than one million copies, and was the winner of the American Library Association Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and the American Booksellers' Association Award.  She lives in San Francisco and is the mother of three adult children.

In 1957, Melba Beals was one of the nine African American students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

But her story of overcoming didn't start - or end - there.

While her white schoolmates were planning their senior prom, Melba was facing the business end of a double-barreled shotgun, being threatened with lynching by rope-carrying tormentors, and learning how to outrun white supremacists who were ready to kill her rather than sit beside her in a classroom.  Only her faith in God sustained her during her darkest days and helped her become a civil rights warrior, an NBC television news reporter, a magazine writer, a professor, a wife, and a mother.

My Thoughts:
I Will Not Fear is the stirring story of one of the Arkansas Nine - Melba Beals.  Beals' book reads like pages from her personal diary.  Each chapter ends with a personal truth Ms. Beals learned through particular circumstances highlighted in the chapter.  The tone of the book comes across as if the reader is sitting across from Beals, coffee cup in hand listening to her amazing story of faith overcoming fear.  There are parts of her story that are very hard to read.  As a white woman, born and raised and living in the South, I felt great shame and cried while reading Beals' story, particularly while reading the account of her birth.  The world needs more Grandma Indias!  The book is a beautiful account of victory over fear in the many forms that came Beals' way.  Both inspiring and heartbreaking, I Will Not Fear should be required reading in our schools.

*I received a complimentary copy of the book.  All opinions are my own.

Happy Reading Ya'll,
Jennifer