23 October 2017 MARCH FORWARD, GIRL: FROM YOUNG WARRIOR TO LITTLE ROCK NINE by Melba Pattillo Beals, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2018, 224p., ISBN: 978-1-328-88212-7

“Across the lines

Who would dare to go

Under the bridge

Over the tracks

That separate whites from blacks”

-- Tracy Chapman (1988)

“Grandma grabbed me bodily and slammed me down onto the seat beside her. ‘Don’t look,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘Turn your head and look down at the floor. Better yet, close your eyes now, child, and keep them closed till I tell you to open them.’

At that moment, some of the parishioners began to cry out, ‘Have mercy, Jesus!’ and ‘Take our brother home. Please don’t let him suffer. Take Harvey home.’ Then I heard the boots of the men walking down the aisle of the church toward the pulpit. When they got three-fourths of the way down, I heard the sound of a rope being thrown over one of the beams that went across the church ceiling from right to left. I peered through Grandma’s fingers as they covered my eyes. When the Klansman reached upward to grab the other end of the rope, his mask slid down a little from his face, Grandma whispered in startled words, ‘Oh, no, is that Officer Nichols? Is he one of them?’ Grandma was shocked because she had worked for the Nichols family and could easily identify him. She kept her head down and pushed harder on mine.”

Most children in America learn something about the history of American segregation: Colored water fountains and bathrooms; ramshackle schoolhouses; back of the bus; balcony of the movie theater; no eating at the lunch counters. But merely learning these unpleasant facts does not mean that a young person knows what it was really like to be black and live under Jim Crow and the constant terror of the Klan.

Reading Melba Pattillo Beals’s harrowing account of growing up in 1940s and 1950s Little Rock provides a real understanding of what it was like to have no rights, no power, and to be endangered and under siege every single day. To see the murderous racism and Jim Crow laws through her eyes is to understand why, as a little girl, she began ticking off the days until she could escape Little Rock, Arkansas.

Learning “The Rules” and always following them is what kept you alive. It is stunning to see how Melba’s mother and beloved Grandma had to react to a random white adult unjustly yelling at or slapping Melba: the black adults apologize and grovel, having no more power than the little girl. And for another example of how people were kept “in their place,” we read about a white shopkeeper angrily telling young Melba not to touch anything because nobody will want to buy something after she’s touched it.

As a teenager, Melba Pattillo became well-known as one of the Little Rock Nine, nine black students who volunteered to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. Local reaction to the integration was so violent that President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to get the students safely into and out of the school. Two decades ago, Beals wrote a best-selling memoir of that experience, Warriors Don’t Cry.

In MARCH FORWARD, GIRL, we experience Melba’s earlier life, and that daily terror of the Ku Klux Klan. We see the little girl who was so frustrated by life under the Klan and Jim Crow that she eventually volunteered to put her life on the line.

Again and again, readers will come to realize that segregation and racism during those days wasn’t just about the inconvenience of needing to use the water fountain marked “Colored.” Instead, it was about constant humiliation and danger, about one’s life being as precarious as that of an ant walking across a windowsill.  

In reaction to the forced integration, then-Arkansas Governor Faubus closed all of the high schools in LIttle Rock. But the real reason that Melba Pattillo Beals finished high school in northern California is that she was forced to escape Little Rock because “the KKK circulated flyers offering ten thousand dollars dead and five thousand dollars alive for each of us [members of the Little Rock Nine].”

For all that I’ve studied about American history and the Civil Rights Movement, I found MARCH FORWARD, GIRL to be unique and enlightening in its perspective. Young readers may come to understand that during the (relatively recent) lifetime of their parents and grandparents, many white Americans had the privilege to treat black Americans any way they wanted to. When they see what white Americans wanted to do with that privilege, they may come to a new understanding of current affairs.

For example, the book provides evidence to illuminate the historic sources of the visceral hatred many harbored toward our black President.  Those angry white students at Central High in 1957 who opposed integration, along with their families and contemporaries, are still alive and voting. They and their descendents are continuing the tradition of supporting state policies that make it more difficult for blacks to vote.  

Race remains such a divisive issue in America today. MARCH FORWARD, GIRL is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why.

Richie Partington, MLIS

Richie's Pickshttp://richiespicks.pbworks.com

https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/

richiepartington@gmail.com