From Indignation to Inspiration

She calmly recounted the time when an angry white mob, waving nooses and chanting racial epithets, chased her out of high school.

She spoke of the daily humiliations--getting kicked, pushed down stairs and spit upon--that she and her fellow black classmates suffered at the hands of white segregationists.

But as Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the nine black students who integrated Little Rock (Ark.) Central High School in 1957, shared her story Sunday before a hushed audience at the Crystal Cathedral, she displayed no anger or bitterness toward the people who struck terror in her heart.

Rather, her message was one of hope and inspiration.

“I was once the little girl who sat on the back of the bus and who drank from colored drinking fountains,” said Beals, 54. “When people tell me we [as a society] have not moved forward, I say, excuse me, but we have moved forward.”

As she signed copies of her memoir “Warriors Don’t Cry,” parishioners stood in awe of her, amazed to meet a woman who at the age of 15 sacrificed so much for a cause.

“She doesn’t have any hatred in her heart,” said Aida La Roza of Marina del Rey, after listening to Beals speak. “Today, with all the problems we have with race relations, it’s nice to have somebody like her emphasizing the positive things.”

Her Orange County visit comes nearly two months after the 40th anniversary celebration of the day the “Little Rock Nine” attempted to enter the all-white high school.

Unlike the reception they received in 1957, when then-Gov. Orval E. Faubus sent National Guard Troops to block their entry, this September the nine former students were greeted as heroes by hundreds of admirers, including President Clinton.

But Beals, a modest woman with expressive, warm eyes, shies away from the hero label.

Raised in a God-fearing family, Beals was always told by her beloved grandmother, India, that “dignity is a state of mind, just like freedom.”

When she was given the opportunity to enter Central High School, Beals never imagined her presence would cause such a violent reaction.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’ll go there, they’ll meet me and what’s not to like?’ ” Beals told the audience Sunday.

As she neared the school on the first day, walking hand-in-hand with her mother, Beals said she thought the large crowds gathering were a part of a welcome parade for the new students.

But that naive impression was shattered quickly as an angry white mob surrounded her and her mother, grabbing at them, and tantalizing onlookers with the promise of a lynching.

“I only said, ‘God have mercy. Please help me,’ ” Beals told the audience.

At that moment, in what seemed like divine intervention, the white man leading the pack tripped and fell on a branch in the road, tripping up the rest of the group and giving Beals and her mother time to escape.

While the situation remained tense, Beals attended school for a year, but by the following year, the experiment was over.

The Ku Klux Klan, she said, placed a bounty on the heads of her and the eight fellow African-Americans who dared to attend the school, forcing Beals to leave Arkansas for California.

Taken in by a white family who lived in the Bay Area, Beals did not visit her home state again until 1987 when then-Gov. Bill Clinton invited the original group of students for a commemoration.

Beals, who is a communications consultant in the Bay Area, said it has taken her many years of reflection to come to terms with the past and to write her memoir.

“I felt an urgency about writing it,” she said in an interview. “I had to feel mature enough about the issue and with enough distance to be able to write this without castigating anybody.”

Thirteen-year-old Tabi Muhu, waiting in line to buy a book Sunday, said Beals’ message of forgiveness and self-pride impressed her.

“She fought and overcame all the prejudices around her,” said Muhu, of Anaheim. “You have to hold your head up high, no matter what people say about you.”