I Will Not Fear

Author: Melba Pattillo Beals
Genre: Memoir/Inspirational

​In 1957, Melba Beals was one of the nine African American students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

But her story of overcoming didn't start--or end--there.

While her white schoolmates were planning their senior prom, Melba was facing the business end of a double-barreled shotgun, being 

threatened with lynching by rope-carrying tormentors, and learning how to outrun white supremacists who were ready to kill her rather than sit beside her in a classroom. Only her faith in God sustained her during her darkest days and helped her become a civil rights warrior, an NBC television news reporter, a magazine writer, a professor, a wife, and a mother.

In I Will Not Fear, Beals takes you on an unforgettable journey through terror, oppression, and persecution, highlighting the kind of faith we all need to survive in a world full of heartbreak and anger. She shows how the deep faith we develop during our most difficult moments is the kind of faith that can change our families, our communities, and even the world.

Encouraging and inspiring, her story offers hope that faith is the solution to the pervasive hopelessness of our current culture.

Reviewer: Laura J. Davis

There are so many words of wisdom in Melba Pattillo Beal's book, I Will Not Fear, that I hardly know where to start in my review.

The author has had an extraordinary life that might have left others either defeated or at the very least estranged from God. But Beals had a godly grandmother who, from the very beginning never let her forget that God was on her side.

As I read the horrors she was forced to endure at the hands of racists I felt many emotions. Anger, a sense of injustice, frustration at the callousness of people who, for reasons I still cannot understand, were afraid of someone's skin colour. I will never understand that as long as I live, this prejudice against people of any colour or race puzzles me. We are all God's children. We are all made the same way and our blood is all red. While the people of Little Rock, Arkansas showed how small minded and ignorant they were, nine teenagers showed them what strength, courage and good character looked like. For Melba, it was her time to shine for the Lord and she relied heavily on Him every step of the way and He never failed her.

I highly recommend I Will Not Fear. Get your teenagers to read it. Discuss it with them. Have a book group and discuss it. Invite your neighbours. This book is a keeper.

Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.

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Reviewer: Rebecca Maney

"You're not doing this for yourself. You are doing this for generations yet unborn."

Martin Luther King's encouragement to a young Melba Beals was the difference between despondency and determination. Melba's experience as one of the nine students integrating into an all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas had gone beyond the nightmare stage, she was afraid for her life. One of her greatest assets was a godly grandmother who told her more than once, " God is as close to us as our skin, and it's up to us to call on Him if we need help."

Enduring this harrowing experience molded Melba into the kind of woman who went on to complete several post graduate degrees and was honored as a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal. Her unwavering faith was truly amazing, "to God be the glory". 

"I knew my boys would have to learn what Grandma had taught me, which is to walk by faith and not by sight alone. . . . . . . no matter what threatening evidence appears to be true, we need not fear because God is always beside us."

Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.

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