Melba Pattillo Beals Biography
Melba Pattillo Beals is a journalist and educator from Little Rock, Arkansas. She was a part of the Little Rock Nine, a group of black students who were the first to racially integrate Little Rock Central High School.
Melba Pattillo Beals Age
Beals was born Melba Joy Patillo Beals on 7 December 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America. She is 82 years old as of December 2023.
Melba Pattillo Beals Education
Beals earned a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University. Columbia University later awarded her a master’s degree in journalism. She obtained her Doctorate in Education from the University of San Francisco on May 22, 2009.
Melba Pattillo Beals Family- Parents
Beals, who was born on December 7, 1941, was raised in a family that valued education. Her mother, Lois Marie Pattillo, graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1954 and worked as a middle school English teacher. Howell Pattillo, her father, worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. During the Clinton administration, Beals’ brother, Conrad S. Pattillo, served as U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Melba Pattillo Beals Husband
She met John Beals in college and eventually married him. They divorced after having one daughter, Kelli. Beals adopted twin sons, Matthew and Evan, in 1992. Beals is from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Melba Pattillo Beals Career
In order to finish her senior year of high school at Montgomery High School, Beals moved to Santa Rosa, California, where she lived with the McCabe family, who were foster parents. She moved there with the assistance of the NAACP. At the age of seventeen, Beals started writing for major newspapers and magazines. Her book Warriors Don’t Cry, which is partially based on diaries she kept during the Little Rock crisis of 1957, is still the #1 best-selling book in the “Teen & Young Adult Nonfiction on Prejudice” category on Amazon.
Beals, the other Little Rock Nine members, and civil rights activist Daisy Bates—who had counseled the group during their battles at Central High—were given the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1959. She received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award, together with the other nine members of the group in 1999. This has only been sent to three hundred other people. She was a journalism instructor at Dominican University of California, where she currently serves as the department’s emeritus chair in communications.
Melba Pattillo Beals Net Worth
Melba has an estimated net worth of 500 thousand dollars.