Melba Pattillo Beals, PhD, is the author of the bestselling book Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High and the recipient of both the 1995 American Library Association Nonfiction Book of the Year Award and the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. She was given a Congressional Gold Medal for her role, as a fifteen-year-old, in the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
