Growing up as a teenager, Melba Pattillo Beals had to fight one of the most courageous wars in history. No, not a war that took place in the trenches of a battlefield, but a war that took place in the halls of an American high school—a war against color. Melba was one of nine black students who was involved in one of the most important civil rights movements in American history. These nine black …showed first 75 words of 1011 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1011 total…for the civil rights movement. It is because of their struggles and the battles fought by Melba Beals and the other eight students that desegregation finally took place in Arkansas. At the end of the school year, the black students emerged from Central High victoriously. They had survived an entire year in the hostile environment of the school. They had opened the doors for other black students in the entire country to attend white schools.