In the novel Warriors Don't Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals' purpose for writing is to educate readers on the atrocities that the black race faced in trying to integrate white public school systems in the late 1950s after the Supreme Court ruling that "separate but equal" was an unconstitutional policy in the Brown vs Board of Education case in 1954. Beals' main goal is to be able to display accurately for the reader, an inside look at integration and the segrated society of the United States, especially in the south from the eyes of a teenager, a girl who wasn't even old enough to drive at the time, taking on the burden of the entire black community in America upon herself and those eight other students, to change the course of history. The beginning of the novel explains the current conditions of Little Rock, Arkansas. Beals, in an effort to display the hopelessness of the black guild and how the standard for normalcy had been created by those in powerful positions within the government, like: "I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that white people were definitely in charge, and there was nothing we could do about it." (17) The author is able to thouroughly convey that the situation in which the town of Little Rock was currently in was one of great injustice and that there was no other alternative than to "use children as tender warriors" (310) to shoulder the responsibility of countering immense ignorance and violence, regardless of the mental. physical and emotional injuries that were endured including a loss of innocence, to try and finally bring justice to the areas of the United States that were still segregated and to finally obtain freedoms and opportunities in education that had never before even been a possibility. Beals demonstrates that even with one of the most powerful entities in the world and the extreme consequences that a deserving people would face because of their quest for basic civil rights with integration, the power of the individual mind can warrior through anything, from hostile mobs that only wish to kill and destroy any sign of progression, all the way to the seemingly impossible task to convert a society into acceptance.