Keynote Speaker

As a keynote speaker, Ms. Beals addresses a variety of issues. She can tailor her topics to the special needs of your group or organization.

Melba Beals' speaking topics include but are not limited to:

1. Warriors Don't Cry.

Each of us is in one way or another a warrior on the path assigned to live our own lives. Sometimes extraordinary measures are required of us just as they were required of me when I integrated Little Rock's Central High School. As the winner of many awards for what are called my courageous deeds, I believe that within each of us is the same brave core, the same blithe spirit that served me when I so desperately needed it to survive. Warriors can't afford to cry, they can't take the time. They must believe in a gift, a divine and inherent right to accomplish whatever is necessary to complete their task. Schedule this speech.

2. White is a state of Mind: Freedom is Yours to Choose.

This is the title of my sequel to WARRIORS DON'T CRY, published by Putnam, March 1999. Whether thin or fat, tall or short, black or white or Latin or Asian, to assign the reason for one's limitation to a physical feature is a handicap. The fact is that the freedom to achieve, to have, to be is all vested in one's state of mind. If you can visualize it, you can do it. In this speech, I provide the audience with inspiration, energy and insight to accomplish those tasks left undone. There is no "I can't because..." There is only I can. Schedule this speech.

3. The Hero and Heroine in each one of us.

People call me a heroine because I was one of the nine Black students to integrate Central High in the face of a rampaging mob of segregationists who vowed to kill me rather than allow me to attend school with their white children. I think of myself as an ordinary person who found the inner strength to stretch and face the monumental challenge set in front of me.

The same strength that guided me through an integration firestorm exists IN EACH ONE OF US. Each of you is a heroine and hero each time you stand up for what you believe in or step beyond the boundaries you might have imposed upon yourself or allowed someone else to impose. Schedule this speech.

4. What other people think of you is none of your business.

"NIGGER UGLY NIGGER STUPID!" These are just a few of the poison words fired at me in Little Rock, Arkansas, at age fifteen.

I found myself caught up in the national controversy between the then-Governor Faubus, the Supreme Court and President Eisenhower. I was one of nine children integrating Central High in 1957. I wanted what most teenagers wanted to be accepted, to be liked, to be popular, to be one of the group. But that was not a possibility in an atmosphere where the President had to send the 101st Airborne Division to guard me against violent mobs seeking my destruction.

During that year of isolation, as I struggled to survive the abuse heaped upon my head, I discovered that what others thought of me could not define what I thought of myself. Only what God thought of me could be true. That knowledge became the wellspring of nurturing courage which helped me survive. This same wellspring is within each of us. We can never let others define who we are. Schedule this speech.

5. Seeing equal: As we come face to face with another human being we need first to see that he or she is God's special idea. Although radically different in appearance or expression, our heavenly Father values each of us equally.

We can sometimes be seduced by that initial rush of negative thought that someone can be less than, or wrong, or even inhuman because their skin color is different, they are clothed in an unfamiliar garment, speak with an accent, have a unique way of worshiping, or differ in their point of view. It is these thoughts that become the walls that shut down our smiles and divide.

It is when we lose sight of our oneness with humanity and with God that we lose ourselves. SEEING EQUAL enables each one of us to see our own equality. Schedule this speech.

6. Celebrating our civil rights: facing our failures.We can overcome once more.

As a little girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, who rode in the back of the bus, drank from a water fountain marked "colored," and attended separate and unequal schools, no one can tell me I haven't come a long, long way.

Despite the negativity spawned by public resurrection of the desire to abate affirmative action, the desire of some Blacks to have segregated schools, and the unraveling of sacred progress won with the loss of limb, body and soul, WE CAN OVERCOME. These new obstacles can be the red flags which awaken us which mobilize us and remind us of what the goal is and why we seek to reach it. Schedule this speech.

7. We can renew the hope in Dr. King's dream. Yesterday's promise of equality must be made good today.

BULLETS FLY WHEN YOUNG FOLKS LOSE HOPE. All of our young people: the ones who now vow they are gang members, the Cryps, the Bloods, even the most hardened criminals and ne'er-do-wells of all descriptions, were once third-graders. What teacher looked into their eyes and discouraged them? Who told them because their skin was a different color or their eyes were slanted or their hair was different that they did not deserve to have hope and desire? At what point did they realize they were excluded from the mainstream, left out of the pursuit of the American Pie, UNEQUAL?

Integration is just another word for equal distribution of wealth. Sharing our resources, our education and our jobs is what Dr. King's dream was about. All young folks need is someone to listen to them and to see them as equal.

We once sought equality among the races because of an urgent demand of those being oppressed, because it was fashionable, and it was the right thing to do. Today we must understand we seek equality in order to survive as the human race. Schedule this speech.

8. Integration then and now: Separate but equal wasn't considered acceptable education yesterday, but what about today?

In 1957, one of the driving forces behind the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas schools was the notion of how very separate and unequal the Black population was. By virtue of that separation, they were deprived of jobs, homes and the pursuit of happiness. We had experienced the fact that segregation is just another word for "being without, doing without and not wanting."

Back then, many thinking white people made the connection between equal education and building America. They understood we couldn't harbor an underclass and remain a world power. But somewhere along the way in the blind rush for junk bonds and corporate takeovers, desires for personal happiness, and in the myths about acquiring more toys, that dream got lost. It got lost in the rush of greed, for integration has always been just a polite word for sharing the wealth. Schedule this speech.

Melcon Communications
P.O. Box 2237
Sausalito, CA 94966
Phone: (415) 464-0718
Fax: (415) 464-0781