The author continues her story of the events following the integration of the Little Rock schools and describes her journey toward forgiveness - (Baker & Taylor)

The author of the critically acclaimed Warriors Don't Cry continues her story about what happened after the integration of the Little Rock schools and describes her long but rewarding journey toward compassion and forgiveness, a successful career, joyous marriage, and new approach to life. 22,000 first printing. Tour. - (Baker & Taylor)

In 1957, while most teenage girls were listening to Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue," watching Elvis gyrate, and having slumber parties, fifteen-year-old Melba Pattillo was escaping the hanging rope of a lynch mob, dodging lighted sticks of dynamite, and washing away the burning acid sprayed into her eyes by segregationists determined to prevent her from integrating Little Rock's Central High School - caught up in the center of a civil rights firestorm that stunned this nation and altered the course of history.
Her critically acclaimed and award-winning memoir Warriors Don't Cry chronicled her junior year in high school, the year President Eisenhower took unprecedented, historic action by sending federal troops to escort Melba and her eight black classmates into a previously all-white school.
Now, in answer to the often repeated question "What happened next?" Melba has written White Is a State of Mind. Compelled to flee the violent rage percolating in her hometown, young Melba was brought by the NAACP to a safe haven in Santa Rosa, California. This is the story of how she survived - healed from the wounds inflicted on her by an angry country. It is the inspirational story of how she overcame that anger with the love and support of the white family who took her in and taught her she didn't have to yearn for the freedom she assumed she could never really have because of the color of her skin. They taught her that white is a state of mind - that she could alter her state of mind to claim fully her own freedom and equality. - (Blackwell North Amer)

Booklist Reviews

Some 40 years ago, Beals was one of the Little Rock Nine, students who, for a time, integrated Little Rock's Central High School. When Gov. Faubus closed the schools, Beals and others who had not graduated were stranded--and threatened by both fearful blacks and hateful whites. Like some others, Beals left the state; "sponsored" by the Santa Rosa, California, NAACP, she lived with a welcoming, boisterous white family. Like her previous memoir, Warriors Don't Cry (1995), the ALA Nonfiction Book of the Year, White Is a State of Mind is a candid, involving story about a teenager who, although disappointed at missing the traditional joys of high-school seniors, realizes that her California family lives much the way her Arkansas family lived. The reader follows Beals through senior year and college, marriage and motherhood, desertion and divorce. Standing up for herself in a college classroom debate, Beals realized she was losing the ingrained fear she had learned in Arkansas; she mumbled to herself, "You don't have to be white to be free. White is a state of mind." A winner. ((Reviewed February 15, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews