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