Things I Know I Know

I've been meaning to write about these books in more detail, but haven't gotten to it, so here's a list of books I've finished recently:

• The Frailty Myth by Colette Downing
• Secrets Never Lie by R. Robin McDonald
• The Way You Look Tonight by Carlene Thompson
• Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals

I will mention briefly that Warriors Don't Cry is wicked excellent. It's a memoir written by one of the nine black students who integrated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Melba Patillo was fifteen years old when she went to Central High. Her mother, a school teacher, was divorced so her household consisted of Melba, her mother, her grandmother, and her younger brother. They were threatened by phone, by men with shotguns, by rocks thrown from cars and by threats of bombs. Melba and the other students were harassed every single day and their lives were often in real significant danger. The teachers and administration did little to support them, the only time they felt even a modicum of safety was when the 101st Airborne was walking them to class--protection that was pulled out as quickly as possible. None of them reported how really bad things were because they were afraid the whole thing would be shut down and the chance might never come again. And yet, those nine students (only one didn't finish the year) managed in spite of everything to go to school and to survive and they made it through the school year more or less intact.

Sometimes you read about historic decisions like black students at Central High or young women at the Citadel and you think that it's pretty much over when the students finally get their chance to walk through the door. The rest of us--those who aren't right there--move on to other things, and we don't always know what happens afterward. These young men and women, the first ones, like Melba Patillo Beals, never really get their dream, the school is never for them what it is for those who have always belonged there, it's worse, in fact, that what they left and it the opportunities it offers others (the ones who 'belong') will never be offered to them. But because they are willing to make the sacrifices they make, they change the world and the future for the rest of us.