Warriors Don't Cry
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Warriors Don't Cry trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Warriors Don't Cry is Melba Pattillo Beals's memoir of the 1957-58 school year, when she and eight other Black teenagers walked into the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was fifteen when it began. The book sets her teenage voice beside her adult one, and it does not soften what happened in those hallways or what it cost her family at home. This quiz follows the book from her childhood under segregation to the mobs outside the school, the soldiers sent to protect the students, the classmates who tormented her and the few who helped. It also covers the history around the story: the court rulings, the politicians, the other members of the Little Rock Nine, and what became of Melba after she left Arkansas. It is written for students reading the memoir in class, for teachers who want a quick check on comprehension, and for anyone interested in the civil rights movement. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz works as a review as well as a test.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Warriors Don't Cry, which food lands on two boys in the cafeteria clash that gets Melba's close friend suspended?
Chili
Chili from a dropped lunch tray earned the girl a six-day suspension, and a second clash weeks later made her the only one of the nine to be expelled.
Q 02Which president sent federal troops to escort Melba Pattillo and the Little Rock Nine into Central High in 1957?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower called the mob's actions disgraceful and ordered in 1,200 soldiers; in the memoir, federal officials bring his promise of protection to Melba's door at night.
Q 03In Warriors Don't Cry, what does a boy throw into Melba's eyes in a Central High hallway, nearly blinding her?
Acid
Acid would have cost Melba her sight if her Army bodyguard had not flushed her eyes with water straight away.
Q 04Melba Pattillo Beals, author of Warriors Don't Cry, was born on the very day of which 1941 event?
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor filled the news the day she was born, and a forceps injury to her scalp nearly killed her when nurses neglected the care a doctor had ordered.
Q 05Which civil rights leader sat in the audience when Central High graduated its first Black student in May 1958?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. sat with the graduate's family and went almost unnoticed; he was in the state to give a college commencement speech in Pine Bluff.
Q 06Which governor ordered state soldiers to keep Melba Pattillo and eight other Black students out of Central High in 1957?
Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus went on television to say he was preventing violence, and after federal soldiers arrived he told viewers the city was now an occupied territory.
Q 07Which member of the Little Rock Nine walked alone into a jeering crowd at Central High after missing a change of plan?
Elizabeth Eckford
Elizabeth Eckford's family had no telephone, so she never heard that the meeting place had moved; she ended up on a bus bench with the mob around her.
Q 08Which Army division escorted Melba Pattillo and the rest of the Little Rock Nine into Central High in September 1957?
101st Airborne
The 101st Airborne, nicknamed the Screaming Eagles, came from Fort Campbell, and the Army went on to give each of the nine a guard for the walk between classes.
Q 09In Warriors Don't Cry, what is the first name of the grandmother who tells Melba that warriors don't cry?
India
India Peyton lived with the family, and she called Melba a quitter when the girl wanted to return to her old school after the first day's mob.
Q 10Which NAACP lawyer, winner of the 1954 school desegregation case, inspires Melba when they meet in Warriors Don't Cry?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall sat with the nine at the federal court hearing that September, and ten years later he became the Supreme Court's first Black justice.
Q 11Which 1954 Supreme Court ruling against segregated schools opens the way for Melba's transfer in Warriors Don't Cry?
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education came down on May 17, 1954, and in the memoir a white man attacks seventh-grader Melba on her walk home that day in revenge for it.
Q 12In Warriors Don't Cry, which of the nine is expelled from Central High after retaliating against harassment?
Minnijean
Minnijean, Melba's closest friend among the nine, moved to New York to finish school, living with the psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark.
Q 13Which member of the Little Rock Nine, a senior that year, became Central High's first Black graduate in 1958?
Ernest Green
Q 21Before volunteering for Central High, Melba Pattillo attended which all-Black school in Little Rock?
Horace Mann
Horace Mann was where a teacher asked who in Central's district wanted to transfer, and Melba raised her hand without asking her mother or grandmother first.
Q 22The McCabes, the California family who take Melba in at the end of Warriors Don't Cry, belong to which faith?
Quaker
Quaker parents George and Carol McCabe answered an NAACP call for families willing to shelter the students, and Melba finished high school from their home.
Q 23In Warriors Don't Cry, what does Melba's mother nearly lose when officials press her to pull Melba out of Central High?
Her teaching contract
Ernest Green went on to serve as an Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter, and a 1993 Disney Channel film retold his year at the school.
Q 14Which state NAACP president opened her home as the meeting place for Melba and the Little Rock Nine in 1957?
Daisy Bates
Daisy Bates and her husband also published a weekly Black newspaper, and the nine faced the press at her house while the governor fought them in court.
Q 15Which president presented Melba Pattillo Beals and the Little Rock Nine with Congress's highest civilian award?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton, a former governor of Arkansas, handed each of the nine a Congressional Gold Medal in November 1999, forty-two years after soldiers turned them away.
Q 16In Warriors Don't Cry, what does Melba's mother throw to her as men chase them from Central High on the first day?
The car keys
The car keys went to a girl with no driver's license, yet Melba reached the car first and drove them both away from the men, one of whom carried a rope.
Q 17Melba Pattillo Beals based much of Warriors Don't Cry on which record she kept as a teenager in 1957?
Her diaries
Her diaries let her set her teenage voice beside her adult one, and when the memoir came out in 1994 it was the first book by any of the nine.
Q 18After Central High was shut, Melba Pattillo finished her senior year of high school in which California city?
Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa was home to the McCabes, a white family who answered an NAACP appeal for households willing to take in the nine after the governor closed the schools.
Q 19In Warriors Don't Cry, which soldier is assigned as Melba's bodyguard and teaches her to stay alert in the halls?
Danny
Danny tells Melba she must think like a soldier to survive the year, and he breaks protocol to urge her to take care of herself the day before Thanksgiving break.
Q 20In Warriors Don't Cry, which white Central High senior secretly warns Melba about the segregationists' plans?
Link
Link lends Melba his own car so she can escape a boy who is threatening to kill her, even though his own father is a white supremacist.
Her teaching contract was renewed only after she took the story to the press and a powerful Black bishop stepped in on her behalf.
Q 24In Warriors Don't Cry, Melba's father Howell Pattillo earns his living working for which kind of employer?
A railroad
A railroad job on the Missouri Pacific is why Melba was born in a white hospital that also treated Black rail workers, where nurses neglected her care.
Q 25In Warriors Don't Cry, what is the name of Melba's younger brother, who shares the family home during the crisis?
Conrad
Conrad grew up to wear a badge himself, serving as a state trooper and as a federal lawman in the city where his sister had needed armed guards.
Q 26In Warriors Don't Cry, what is Mr. Higgenbottom, which Melba's grandmother keeps beside her on night watch?
A shotgun
A shotgun earned the nickname once threatening phone calls began reaching the house, and she sat up with it at night to guard the family.
Q 27In Warriors Don't Cry, which northern city is Melba visiting when she learns she has been picked for Central High?
Cincinnati
Cincinnati showed Melba a freer life: she was served in a nice restaurant, browsed a department store and was invited to dinner by a white neighbor.
Q 28In Warriors Don't Cry, who is the only guest to show up at Melba's sixteenth birthday party?
Vince
Vince, the boy who took Melba on her first date, came alone because her old friends feared they would be killed for being seen with her.
Q 29In Warriors Don't Cry, what does someone lob at Melba in a Central High stairwell while soldiers guard the school?
A stick of dynamite
A stick of dynamite is where her bodyguard's lessons pay off: he had drilled her to stay as alert as a soldier expecting an attack.
Q 30During their year at Central High, Melba Pattillo and the Little Rock Nine were barred from taking part in what?
Extracurricular activities
Extracurricular activities were closed to them, so no clubs, teams or choir, and the nine did not share a single class with one another either.