I Will Not Fear

by Melba Pattillo Beals

  At that exact moment, a shot rang out, hitting the letter slot. I grabbed Kellie, pulled her near me, and ducked under the bed. I heard more shots, then police cars and loud voices right outside. The bullet had splintered our door. I shuddered to think what would have happened had Kellie been standing there as usual. “Thank You, God, for letting my baby live,” I whispered. Now I knew we had to get out of there. The police told me it was the result of Panther gang activities. “You must have someone watching over you, someone powerful.”

  “God is the most powerful,” I responded.

  I had to do whatever it took to get away. I prayed hard and went every day to the student housing office to check on my application. Within three weeks of my doubled prayers, we moved to the San Francisco State student housing village. We would be in walking distance of the university and surrounded by other college students and their families. Every night during the first several months there, we both got on our knees and gave thanks to God for our safe and cozy new home.

  There in that village I met many people who were kind to us. Some of them would take care of us and teach us the ropes of living in the village. Others would give us rides. Soon, with help from my mother and a partial student loan, I was able to get a car, a Volkswagen Bug.

  This period in student housing was the beginning of a light at the end of our tunnel. Kellie attended the elementary school on campus, cutting out our long commute; we had more time at home together. She was able to play at playgrounds and have friends in this international community.

  I met many teachers who would become mentors. One in particular, Lynn Ludlow, began to guide me in my desire to become a journalist. He convinced me that, although my spelling was off, I was an excellent news writer. “The great James Joyce could not spell, like many of our authors.”

  I joined the San Francisco State journalism newspaper and was awarded several prizes for my reporting and writing. During the last year of our stay at the university, we were beginning to heal our wounds from the divorce. Kellie stopped looking for mail from her dad, and I removed his toothbrush from the holder. We both soaked ourselves in a new life, growing ever busier. I sought and received an internship from the local CBS television newsroom. Kellie took African dance lessons and began playing the piano.

  Not long before graduation, Professor Ludlow asked me if I knew anything about the Columbia University New York program in broadcast journalism. I did not. He said it was a program in which thirty-five minority students from across the United States would be trained in television news and granted full-time jobs in the industry when they finished. Those chosen would get a scholarship worth more than $50,000, free room and board, a graduate degree, and an opportunity to appear on national TV. I submitted my application on a Friday afternoon and didn’t think much more about it. Three days later, I was asked to fly to New York to try out.

  Indeed, by the grace of God, I was chosen. With my selection came a guaranteed job on public television as a journalist. This scholarship was a kick start for my career. I was placed in a position that would have taken me perhaps years and years to achieve. Instead of struggling to attain a job in a market (San Francisco) that ranked seventh in the nation, I would go to New York right after university.

  The following May, I graduated. We didn’t have the funds for Mother Lois to come from Little Rock; Kellie and I sat alone. As they called the names of the graduates, their families and friends applauded for them. When my name was called, there was total silence. A six-feet-six Rastafarian friend of mine stood up and shouted, “You better give Mamma your hand because she done come all this way from Little Rock, Arkansas, to earn this degree. It’s been a long road. Give it up for her.”

  The audience stood on its feet and applauded. I marched forward with tears in my eyes as little Kellie ran up to greet me.

  The path on life’s journey of single parenthood is eased by trusting in God and knowing that our child is also a child of God and He loves us both. He is with us and providing for our needs even before we know what they are.

  Ten

  Don’t Let Anyone Steal Your Dreams

  My encounters with news reporters during my Little Rock experience had sparked a desire in me to become a news reporter. The reporters in some way became the voice for us who had not been heard before. I marveled at how they took command of any event they approached and how much in charge they were as they worked to present both sides of the story in an unbiased way. I noticed how speedy and self-confident they were. They were also the first people to make me feel as though I had an opinion that counted. I had always read the news, and now I faithfully listened to the news on the radio and watched it on television.

  Most of the reporters and cameramen were white. A very few were African American, but they too had that air of assurance that they were in charge. I was drawn to their self-confidence and their conviction that what they were doing was right and honorable.

  I wondered then if I could become a news reporter. It frightened me when the African American reporters and cameramen were terribly beaten up by the mob gathered in front of Central High who was set on keeping us out even if they had to kill us.

  During my four years as an undergraduate, I had been an editor for the student newspaper. This job included collecting news stories and directing those on my team to collect and write the news as well. This job was second nature to me because I loved it so much and got along with the almost all-white student body without any drama.

  Upon acceptance to the program at Columbia University, I arranged for my mother to take care of Kellie in Little Rock. Then in anticipation of leaving San Francisco and heading to New York for the program, I got a physical exam by my physician, Dr. Zenbaum, whom I highly respected and adored. He had always been very cordial and respectful of me in every way. He had nourished me through childbirth, my divorce, and several bouts of pneumonia and had always encouraged me to attend school.

  Throughout my troubled marriage and now as a single parent struggling to regain my stability, I found he and his wife to be kind, generous, and encouraging. Certainly, he had proven himself to be someone who was supportive and caring. That was why I decided to tell him my good news.

  “I’m so happy,” I said to him. “I’ve been granted a scholarship to attend a journalism program at Columbia University.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I’m going to be a news reporter. I want to work for a local station,” I said.

  “You can’t become a television news reporter—not in this day and age. You are, after all, African American and too fat!”

  I couldn’t believe these words from the man to whom I dared reveal my secret hope, the man I’d hoped would give me words of encouragement.

  He continued, “Unrealistic dreams are a sign of mental problems. It will make you very unhappy to want something you can never have.”

  Holding on to my dignity, not wanting to display my wounded response to his pronouncement, I waited until I got out of his office to cry. What he said was very disarming. I thought, Was he right? Was there a position for a person who looked like me? Could I really do this incredible job?

  When a person of his caliber questions your ability, it scatters your dreams into a thousand pieces, and you have to re-collect them, assemble them, and hold on to the images all over again. “God, please,” I whispered, “please guide me to where You want me to be. You said no human voice could dictate my future. It will be up to You.”

  A few days later, I boarded the plane to Little Rock and took my daughter to remain with my mother while I pursued my degree. I was so grateful Mother had agreed to keep her.

  Two years passed. I had returned to California to start my position as a news reporter at KQED, the local PBS station, on their 7:00 p.m. nightly Newsroom program. When I took my place on that historic set, the people I admired were sitting on either side of me. I couldn’t believe it.

  All the pieces of my dream had come together.
Indeed, I had climbed another mountain, and it would become the main route over the bridge to equality and a primer to understanding the world. Observing and reporting and covering state, county, city, national, and international news, I learned things I could not have learned in books. I learned again to trust my dreams to no one except God on high.

  A year later, I was employed in the seventh largest television market in the nation at NBC in San Francisco. One of the secretaries informed me that Dr. Zenbaum had called to invite me to dinner at his house. I declined, as I was sure he had done so only to show his friends that he knew me. By that time, I had found another physician.

  Do not count on other humans to have faith in your dreams. It is your commitment and faith in God that turns dreams into reality.

  Eleven

  God Grants Dreams Bigger Than You Imagine

  On my first day of work, I stood outside KQED, San Francisco’s public broadcasting station. I felt as though I were falling off a mountainside. After all, the people I was about to work with were the people I had watched on my television each weekday evening in the show called Newsroom. These were respected news professionals—I was Miss Nobody. I took a deep breath and stepped over the edge, trusting that God would protect and guide me.

  The faces I had seen on my TV screen came alive as I took my place at the Newsroom desk for my first broadcast. My heart was pounding in my chest, beating loud and fast in my ears. On that first night, seated at the round table amid the expert reporters I so respected, I mispronounced the word Massachusetts. I wanted to fly away, but I survived to make it through the day and to settle into my news reporting job. As time passed, I began to feel like I too could become good at reporting.

  My time at KQED was a grand experience. The pros took me under their wings and nurtured me, sharing the skills they had acquired. Known for its liberal philosophy and diversity, this mature group enfolded me and made me feel secure. I learned so much about news gathering and reporting and life itself that I barely had enough space in my head to file my new knowledge. Above all else, they made me feel that I was their equal and my work was important.

  I prayed, “Thank You, God; I have arrived. I have reached a place in my life where financially my daughter and I are secure.” I was able to find an apartment in a great location where the landlord treated me not as a black person out of place but as a human being. I had a nice, late-model car to drive. This must be how the world really works in California, I thought to myself. All the hard work I did was worthwhile.

  I was feeling very confident. I took a deep breath. I was forging my way through competition and struggling to learn new information. I felt as if I was now far beyond the racism of Little Rock, far beyond the vivid oppression I had endured during my youth. Perhaps some of these California people understood the meaning of equality.

  Less than a year later, I was offered a job at KRON TV, NBC’s local affiliate. Stunned at the enormity of this job, I was once again in awe of all of my broadcast partners and full of gratitude for the incredible opportunity. Faith sustained me as my life whirled about as though I were in a giant mixer. Suddenly, people recognized me and asked for my autograph—I got special tables in restaurants without asking. I had to stop going to the grocery store midday and shop at 9:00 p.m. to avoid clamoring shoppers who followed me around.

  The bling and money offered me by the station were beyond comprehension. I began to feel comfortable and much more important. I found a church where Kellie and I followed the process Grandmother and Mother had engrained in me. I struggled for grounding and connection with God. I learned to deal with the headlines that tear you apart. I had become one of the first female reporters in San Francisco and the first African American granted the post of an on-air news reporter with a major network.

  I had not anticipated what it would mean to grace the world from behind a television camera. People I did not know spoke to me and expected me to speak back. I began to get requests for public appearances as I once had ten years before as one of the Little Rock Nine.

  I was the only African American female in my newsroom, and after a few months I noticed that, from time to time, the other reporters had a subtle way of making me feel less than. No one called me nigger; no white-sheeted people rode past me carrying crosses. Instead, I was not invited to newsroom parties in people’s homes, not included in newsroom social life. Invitations were whispered around the room. Discussions of celebrations held the night before leaked out and spilled over me.

  I was not often assigned stories that assured high placement in the newscast. I attributed that to both my gender and my race. I was relegated to lightweight stories assigned to what people in the industry called “the monkey on display in the window.” Each television station had one African American as evidence of their dutiful willingness to fulfill demands for equality in the news industry, and they displayed them as often as possible. Even when I found a more important story and investigated it on my own—a story that should have been labeled significant news—it was given to someone else to cover on air. I was relegated to doing the legwork—investigating.

  It took more than a year for me to recognize and define the new job oppression I faced. It had become easy for me to respond to obvious Little Rock segregation. But I didn’t know how to respond to the subtle, but no less vicious, oppression that pierced heart, soul, and mind as much as ropes and guns.

  The realization crept up on me that I was facing an institutional and entrenched form of bullying. The question was, how was I to respond? I spoke with a black female who was ten years older than I and had been a real pioneer in the industry. She confirmed what I suspected and said it resembled the path I had taken in Central High, only subtler and slightly less hazardous. “You are fighting for equality, but here oppression sneaks up on you, and before you know it, you are on your knees if you don’t protect yourself,” she said. “It is much more difficult when you are isolated and alone.”

  No one shot me down physically; they merely shot my spirit down. They attacked my spirit in ways I didn’t notice at first, nor did I realize that I wasn’t getting all I deserved. What was unclear to me was how to defend myself with dignity.

  Bullies made it clear their prejudice was not just because of my color but because of my gender as well. The fact is there were few females in newsrooms in the late 1970s. If they were in the newsroom, they were usually carrying coffee and serving some support function and were not professional news gatherers. As time passed, I was taunted by stress and fear and apprehension. Who would attack next—when and where? When would a seemingly clever line other folks laughed aloud at be the knife in my back?

  One day, I stepped into the newsroom early in the morning wearing curlers and on my way to makeup. I was preparing to sit at the news desk at the noon broadcast to introduce an important story I had covered. It had taken two years to get to this place, and I was proud because it was a step up the ladder. It was the first day I would be going “live” on air on the news desk.

  As I ventured farther into the room on this Tuesday morning, there was a group of videographers, reporters, and staff standing nearby. I peered down at the green shoulder bag that held my suit for the day. It felt as though it was slipping off my shoulder so I paused to collect myself.

  “Aunt Jemima, ain’t you got no pancake mix to fix my breakfast?” one of the cameramen I’ll call Ray suddenly called out. I stood frozen in my tracks with my heart bleeding pain. What an awful insult! The name “Aunt Jemima” has long been offensive to black women, indicating black women could only be cooks.

  Time flashed backward for a moment. It was an insult referencing slavery. Was this the side door of Central High? Who were these people who said things like that? I didn’t know what to do. Tears stung my eyes. How did other people of color respond to this? What did he expect me to do? Why did he say it? Why did he call me a name and refer to this insulting image? Had I done something to bring on this outcry? Was this the beginning, and w
as I going to become the in-house target? I was compelled to push back immediately.

  For some twenty-five times over the past year, I had ignored their insults and turned the other cheek in silence, but that was not working. I thought for a moment about the phrase someone had pasted on top of my computer: “Sweet Melba.” Up to that time, I had been labeled as cooperative, a good reporter, and most of all, conciliatory. I had never begun a row over issues that involved the question of race, nor had I responded to those who spewed insults prior to today.

  Had I relinquished my role as a civil rights warrior? Quickly I whispered, “Help me, God.” And then I knew it was time to speak up. This man’s total disrespect of me in front of many of my other colleagues had drawn a line in the sand, and I stepped over it. I had to make him pull his foot back. The question was, how? After pondering for a long moment, I fired my cannon back at him as hard as I could with firm dignity. Silence froze the room. His eyes grew huge, and his face grew red. He looked at me with an astonished expression. I turned and walked away.

  I remembered the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who said, no matter what, we should maintain our dignity. At that point, I knew I would no longer give up my dream of equality in exchange for oppression and blatant assault in order to become a news reporter. I was passionate about being a respected and equal news gatherer and news reporter. It was not only what I pleaded for but also what I demanded. I reported Ray’s behavior to the supervisor and said, “If you cannot correct this, I will have to go to the NAACP and the press with it. I know for certain that sponsors do not want this kind of publicity.

  “We can’t be included in the process if our point of view is not heard,” I said. “We must have a voice, just as you have a voice.” The Civil Rights organization labored long and hard for access to objective and fair inclusion in the news process.