Warriors Don’t Cry: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

The family decides to talk to the newspapers to let them know how the segregationists are willing to deprive the Pattillo family of food and a home. During the last few days of April, Mother Lois goes to North Little Rock to plead for her job, only to be met with refusals. Meanwhile, the family is running out of money and cannot pay bills. An administrator calls her into his office and offers her a transfer to Oklahoma as her only option. He also mentions that, if Melba withdraws from school, they could talk about renewing her contract and giving her “a handsome salary increase.” Mother Lois is certain that he is being pressured by his bosses on North Little Rock’s all-white schoolboard who are fighting integration in the district. Walking away from his office, Mother Lois remembers Link’s warning about something bad happening to the whole family.

At the end of the year, yearbooks are passed out and Central students make “fancy plans” for the end of the school year, but the black students are excluded. Melba is also excluded from graduation events at her own school which bothers her initially until she realizes that they may have simply forgotten about the Little Rock Nine due to their no longer being present.

Over the next few days, Melba is anxious for the news story about Mother Lois’s job loss to be printed. Finally, the story makes it to a newspaper and calls of support come in. At Central, some of the students mock Melba for her mother’s job loss. The segregationists also plan to prevent Ernest Green, a senior, from completing school at Central and attending the graduation ceremony. The tension at school increases and there are fewer Arkansas National Guard troops around, though Melba never feels protected by them anyway.

One day, Bishop O.J. Sherman, a powerful black clergyman, tells Mother Lois to go back to the administrator and say that the bishop would like her to have her job back. The administrator acknowledges Mother Lois’s efforts to get her job back, including riling up bishops from the black community. The next day, he enters her classroom and congratulates her on her “fine teaching abilities.” He reinstates her contract, and the family prays and thanks God for not forgetting them.

One day, Andy threatens her with a switchblade while a soldier in the National Guard looks on and issues a faint reprimand. Melba misses Danny. Andy has started chasing her from the gym to the dark hallway connected to it. Melba decides to walk a different way from gym class to elude him. Meanwhile, the segregationists insist on not letting Ernest Green graduate and Melba begins to worry for his safety. Grandma India decides to distract her with hard work, including washing the dishes and studying for her final exams.

Melba’s last day at Central feels like any other day. Early on Wednesday morning, she builds a fire in the metal trash barrel in her yard and burns her school papers. She follows Grandma India’s advice and writes and destroys the names of people at Central whom she dislikes. Grandma India also tells her that, one day, she will be grateful for the courage that the experience has given her, but Melba wonders how long she will have to wait for that feeling of gratitude.

Mother Lois announces that none of the black students will be allowed to attend Ernest’s graduation so that the authorities can more easily protect Ernest and his family if they need to. Ernest Green becomes the first black student to graduate from Central on May 27. The audience applauds all of the students, except for Ernest. When he walks across stage, they fall silent. The newspapers report that Ernest’s diploma cost half a million dollars in tax funds, but Melba knows that it cost the Little Rock Nine their “innocence and a precious year of [their] teenage lives.”

Link calls and says that Nana Healey died on the day of his graduation. He then asks Melba to move with him to Massachusetts, where he will attend college. Melba insists that she must stay and go back to Central. They wave good-bye and she knows that they will never see each other again.

On May 29, eight members of the Little Rock Nine, not including Minnijean, go to Chicago to get an award conferred by the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper. In New York, they stay in suites at luxurious hotels and meet celebrities. In Cleveland, they receive the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal.

On June 22, Judge Lemley grants Little Rock’s request to halt integration, delaying it for another three and a half years. The NAACP begins another round of appeals to get the remaining seven students back into Central. By 1958, they win their court battle, but Governor Faubus shuts down all of Little Rock’s high schools. The segregationists also start to put pressure on the black community, squeezing people financially by pushing them out of their jobs. During what would be Melba’s senior year, she waits for legislators, the NAACP, and Governor Faubus to resolve the entanglement surrounding the integration of Central.

In the autumn, Grandma India gets leukemia and dies shortly after her diagnosis. Two of the seven remaining black families with a child at Central move out of Little Rock due to mounting pressure. NAACP officials send an announcement to chapters across the country to find families who will provide the remaining five students with safe harbor and the chance to finish school. Melba moves in with the McCabes of Santa Rosa, California. Dr. George McCabe is a professor at San Francisco State University. Melba describes them, a politically- conscious family of Quakers, as unconditionally loving. To this day, she calls them “Mom and Pop” and visits them frequently.

It is not until September 1960 that the NAACP succeeds in getting Central to integrate once again. Only two black students are permitted entry—Carlotta Walls and Jefferson Thomas, who graduate from the school. In 1962, Melba attends San Francisco State University where she integrates a previously all-white residence house.

One evening, Melba meets a brown-haired soldier “wearing olive-drab fatigues.” He reminds her of Danny. His name is John and he is a blind date for Melba’s roommate but soon returns to visit Melba. Six months later, the two marry. Mother Lois is skeptical of the marriage. The couple has one daughter, Kellie, but splits up after seven years due to John’s backward ideas about women’s roles and Melba’s ambitions to be a journalist. She continues to hear from Link until she announces that she is marrying someone white, which sparks his jealousy, given his own romantic interest in Melba. Melba never hears from him again but thinks of him as “one of those special gifts from God sent to ferry [her] over a rough spot in [her] life’s path.”

Melba attends Columbia University’s School of Journalism and becomes a reporter working for an NBC affiliate in Northern California. She looks back on her experience at Little Rock as a formative one that gave her “courage and patience,” as Grandma India said it would. The experience also taught her that people are all interconnected.