Warriors Don’t Cry: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Melba worries that integration will be halted again. At the same time, she prays for the strength to make it through the school year. The children meet at Daisy Bates’s house. The Little Rock Nine are split between two cars driven by NAACP officials. They cannot take the usual route to Central due to police warnings that segregationists might be waiting for them. Indeed, half a block away from the school’s Sixteenth Street entrance are hundreds of white people shouting racial slurs.

Inside of the school, the shouting and harassment worsens. Melba notes that the inside of the school feels like a museum. It is the largest building that she has ever entered. A petite woman with dark hair and glasses leads them to the principal’s office. Melba recognizes Mrs. Huckaby, the vice principal for girls, from previous meetings with the school board. She introduces them to Principal Jess Matthews who acknowledges the Little Rock Nine with a frown. Mrs. Huckaby hands them their schedules and instructs them to wait for their guides. Suddenly, Thelma has another attack. The students are concerned but Mrs. Huckaby rushes them out.

The students notice that none of them have the same homeroom or shared classes. When Melba questions this, a man sitting behind the long desk says, in a mean, booming voice, “You wanted integration…you got integration.” Melba finds herself alone and following “a muscular, stocky white woman with closely cropped black hair” past the first groups of students who attempt to bar her way. She is frightened and feels numb. Her fantasies of Central do not measure up to the “treacherous” reality. She runs to keep up with her guide, despite the distractions of the angry voices around her. Suddenly, she feels a slap, then spit dribbling down her face. A white woman a little older than Mother Lois blocks her path and screams “Nigger!” The woman hysterically says that the next thing black people will want to do is marry one of their children, which strikes Melba as odd, given that she is still forbidden to date and certainly would not want to marry a mean white person from Little Rock.

When Melba enters her first class, a hush falls over the room. She walks toward an empty seat and all the students sitting nearby move away. The teacher ignores her and allows a boy to heckle Melba and threaten her with violence. The next class is gym where girls are playing volleyball outside. Though the gym teacher is pleasant, the girls make a point of aiming the ball at Melba’s head, hitting her hard in one instance. While trying to escape the cruelty of the girls, she worries about the nearby mob. The gym teacher alerts Melba to a group of women jumping the school fence and shouting obscenities. Melba runs away, but a student sticks her foot out and trips her, causing Melba to fall face forward and cut her knee and elbow. A girl says, “What do you know. Niggers bleed red blood.” She tries to kick Melba, but Melba grabs her foot and twists it, as she had seen wrestlers do during the matches, and the girl falls backward.

Melba runs inside, looking for the office. She bumps into people who hit her and call her names. She begins to cry. Crippled by fear, she thinks of Grandma India saying the following, “God never loses one of his flock.” Suddenly, she sees her stocky guide again who takes her to Mrs. Pickwick’s shorthand class. Mrs. Pickwick is a petite, dark-haired woman who welcomes Melba, urges her not to sit near the window, and tells anyone who tries to heckle her that they will be sent to the principal’s office. While walking toward her seat, she sees the crowd in the street. The crowd outnumbers the police who are often powerless to stop people from running toward the school.

As Melba settles into shorthand class, her guide reappears and says that she has to go to the principal’s office. In the office, two girls in the Little Rock Nine are crying and the staff is frantic about how to control the crowd. The children are trapped inside the school. Someone suggests letting the mob have one child in order to save the others. It frightens Melba to think that the adults would be willing to let her or one of her friends hang. Then, Gene Smith, Assistant Chief of the Little Rock Police Department, enters and takes charge, leading the children out through the cellar and into a basement garage where two cars await. Smith instructs the students to keep the windows rolled up, the doors locked, and their faces away from the windows and tells the driver to move fast and not stop driving for any reason. The car speeds through the mob and gets Melba safely home. The driver tells her to get in the house right away. Melba makes him the second white man whom she will pray for God to protect.

Grandma India rushes out of the front door to greet Melba. The alarmed neighbors stand outside and ask if Melba is all right. One, Mrs. Floyd, says that, now that Melba has had her “lesson,” she need not “go back to that awful school anymore.” Grandma India ushers Melba past her and onto the couch of their living room where she can comfortably watch TV and drink Grapette soda.

Melba learns that, even after the students are safely out of the school, the mob continues to rage. Mother Lois comes home and asks if Melba is all right. Grandma India asks about the cuts on her knee, but Melba decides to tell them later so as not to cause her mother further concern. Melba learns that one reason why the Little Rock Nine were able to get into Central that morning is because the mob busied themselves with beating up black and white reporters, as well as some “out-of-towners.” Even those who reached the relative safety of police cars were showered with a hail of rocks.

Conrad rushes in next to greet Melba. His friend, Clark, had told him that she was dead. The family reads a copy of the Arkansas Democrat, which is filled with pictures of the mob. Phone calls pour in, some from concerned family and friends, and others from strangers issuing threats. One phone call is from a news reporter who asks Melba about the situation and is impressed with how articulate she is. He offers her an opportunity to write an article about her first morning at Central, which she begins writing right away. The next day, the story is published by the Associated Press and is placed on the front page of the local newspaper.

In the article, Melba talks about being glad that she went to Central that morning, despite her experience being an abnormal one for a fifteen-year-old. She writes about feeling as though she “were lost on an island” and how she longed to assure her white classmates that she would not hurt them—that she is “an average teenager,” just like them. Every time she thought about giving up, someone kind would come up and spur her on with kind words or positivity. She mentions that she did not know how dangerous the crowd was until she was told that she had to leave for her safety. Still, Melba thinks that integration is possible in Little Rock.

After Melba writes the article, she acknowledges to herself that she has not told the whole truth, but instead a version that will not interfere with the process of integration. She thinks that, maybe if she remains patient and prays, one day the white students really will welcome her and treat her like an ordinary human being.

That evening, the Pattillo family watches Governor Faubus deliver a statement from his Sea Island, Georgia retreat, urging NAACP leaders and school officials to allow a “cooling-off period” before resuming integration. In response, President Eisenhower commits to using the full power of the United States to carry out the orders of the Federal Court. Still, on Tuesday morning, the mob returns.