While attending Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, an all-black high school, Patillo became aware that she was not receiving the same quality education as her peers at Central High School. Patillo then volunteered to transfer to the all-white Central High School with eight other black students from Horace Mann and Dunbar Junior High School in Little Rock. Beals was 14 years old when she chose to enroll at Central High school, an all-white school in May 1956. The nine black students faced mobs that forced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne Division to protect their lives after the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, used National Guard troops to block the students' entry to the school. Beals planned on returning to Central High for the 1958–1959 school year, but Governor Faubus shut down all Little Rock high schools that failed to resist integration, leading to other school districts across the South to do the same. Not until August 1959 did Central High reopen on an integrated basis.
Career
Beals relocated to Santa Rosa, California with help from the NAACP to complete her senior year of high school at Montgomery High School. Beals lived with the family of foster parents Dr. George and Carol McCabe. At the age of seventeen, she began writing for major newspapers and magazines. Beals attended San Francisco State University, earning a bachelor's degree. She later earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. While in college, she met John Beals, whom she later married. They had one daughter, Kellie, and later divorced. In 1971, Beals adopted twin sons, Matthew and Evan. Beals' book Warriors Don't Cry chronicles the events of 1957 during the Little Rock crisis, based partly on diaries she kept during the period. She also wrote White is a State of Mind, which begins where Warriors left off. To date, Warriors Don't Cry continues to be a #1 Amazon bestseller in the "Prejudice Books for Teens & Young Adults" genre. In 1959, the NAACP awarded the Spingarn Medal to Beals and to the other members of the Little Rock Nine, together with civil rights leaderDaisy Bates, who had advised the group during their struggles at Central High. In 1999, she and the rest of the Nine were awarded the highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal. Only three hundred others have received this. On May 22, 2009, she received her Doctoral Degree in Education at the University of San Francisco. The day marked USF's 150th annual commencement ceremony. Beals currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. She taught journalism at Dominican University of California, where she is the chair emeritus of the communications department.
