Bates, Daisy 1914(?)–
Daisy Bates 1914(?)–
Advisor to “Little Rock Nine”
Publisher, civil rights activist
Daisy Bates is best known for her involvement in the struggle to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. As an advisor to nine black students trying to attend a previously all-white school, she was a pivotal figure in that seminal moment of the civil rights movement. As a publisher and journalist, she was also a witness and advocate on a larger scale. Her memoir of the conflict, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, is a primary text in the history of American race relations. Bates endured numerous hardships, but in the ensuing years her unstinting labors on behalf of equality opportunity have earned her numerous laurels.
She was born Daisy Lee Gatson in Huttig, a tiny Arkansas town dominated by a sawmill. “Huttig might have been called a sawmill plantation,” she maintained in her book, “for everyone worked for the mill, lived in houses owned by the mill, and traded at the general store run by the mill.” Growing up there, “I knew I was a Negro, but I did not really understand what that meant until I was seven years old.” At that time, she went to buy some meat for her mother at a store and was rudely snubbed by the butcher. “Niggers have to wait ‘til I wait on the white people,” he brusquely informed her.
The incident had a strong impact on young Daisy, but her rage at discrimination turned to horror when she learned, somewhat later, that the parents she had known all her life were in reality friends of her real parents; her mother, it turned out, had been murdered while resisting rape by three white men. The men were never brought to justice, and Daisy’s real father left town. “Young as I was, strange as it may seem,” she wrote, “my life now had a secret goal—to find the men who had done this horrible thing to my mother. So happy once, now I was like a little sapling which, after a violent storm, puts out only gnarled and twisted branches.”
At the age of 15, Daisy became the object of an older man’s attentions. L. C. Bates, an insurance salesman who had also worked on newspapers in the South and West. L. C. wooed her for several years, and they married in 1942, setting up housekeeping in Little Rock. Though the low pay and lack of job security had been a constant for him as a journalist, he longed to leave the insurance business and run his own newspaper. The Bateses decided to act on this dream, leasing a printing plant that belonged to a church publication
At a Glance…
Born Daisy Lee Gatson, Huttig, AR, c. 1914. Married L. C. Bates (a journalist and insurance salesman; died 1980), 1942. Education: Attended Shorter College and Philander Smith College, both in Little Rock, AR.
Publisher and activist, 1942-87, With L. C. Bates, published, edited, and wrote for Arkansas State Press newspaper, 1942-59; chairman, state conference of branches, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1952-59; published book The Long Shadow of Utile Rock,1962; worked for Democratic National Committee and government anti-poverty programs, c. early 1960s; community activist, Mitch-ellville, Arkansas, 1968-72; retired, 1974; reopened State Press as part owner, 1984; sold paper, 1987; Elementary School in Little Rock named for Bates, 1987; carried Olympic torch, Atlanta, G A, 1996.
Selected awards: Diamond Cross of Malta, Philadelphia Cotillion Society, 1958; honorary Doctor of Laws degree, University of Arkansas, 1984; National Book Award for reprint edition of The Long Shadow of Little Rock,1988.
Addresses: Home—Little Rock, AR.
and inaugurating the Arkansas State Press. The first issue appeared on May 9, 1941.
The paper became an avid voice for civil rights even before a nationally recognized movement had emerged, and enjoyed a substantial readership--and thus a healthy flow of advertising revenue. The paper regularly published articles that reported and condemned police brutality against black citizens, and took up the cause of black veterans of World War II, who met with harassment and violence--sometimes even murder--upon returning to the South. Yet the paper’s fearless editorializing on the subject of a black serviceman’s slaying at the hands of a white police officer upset local whites, especially area business owners. Faced with a sudden loss of advertising money, the paper appeared poised to disappear. “The picture was discouraging,” Daisy recalled in her memoir. “So much so that I was tempted to pack up and leave Little Rock.” Even so, she and her husband “decided to stick to our guns.”
“Crusading Role”
The State Press continued to publish pieces attacking police brutality. “The Negroes supposedly fighting a war in the name of freedom had through our paper found a voice to express their feelings,” she asserted. Henceforth, emboldened by the support of readers and brave advertisers, the paper “expanded its crusading role on an ever widening front. It fought to free negroes from muddy, filthy streets, slum housing, menial jobs, and injustice in the courtrooms.” Thanks in part to such crusading, conditions in Little Rock improved for a time, and it “actually began to gain a reputation as a liberal southern city.” In 1945, the State Press was able to buy new printing equipment.
Daisy attended classes at nearby Shorter College in business administration, public relations, and “other subjects related to the newspaper field.” She also studied for a time at Philander Smith College. Though she loved flying and took classes at a flight school, Daisy was forced to give up this hobby when it adversely affected her insurance premiums. She served as the paper’s editor-in-chief during L. C.’s vacation, and both before and after his return continued to pursue controversial stories. A1946 piece about a labor dispute, which sided with striking workers and criticized a local judge, led to their arrest and conviction on contempt of court. The Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the conviction.
After the war, throngs of black soldiers returned to the South, facing discrimination, harassment, and violence. Bates noted in her book that brutality against returning soldiers was a great motivator in the growth of the civil rights movement, and that membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) grew radically during this period. L. C. and Daisy Bates had been members virtually since their arrival in Little Rock; in 1952, Daisy became the leader of the state conference of NAACP branches. She was already co-chairing the state conference’s Committee on Fair Employment Practices, but took to her new duties with aplomb. Two years later, in a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional; the decision was sparked by a multitude of lawsuits filed against segregated schools and coordinated by the NAACP.
“To the nation’s Negroes,” Daisy Bates observed in her book, “the Supreme Court decision meant that the time for delay, evasion, or procrastination was over.” While acting governor Francis A. Cherry expressed his intention to comply with the law, he was defeated by an avid segregationist—Orval Faubus, who vowed resistance to federal mandates on the issue. But Daisy Bates and other activists, who had long watched black studies languish in inferior schools while all-white schools enjoyed infinitely greater resources, determined to press the issue. Nine black students were slated to attend Little Rock’s Central High; they became the focal point for one of the most intense chapters of the civil rights movement.
Advisor to “Little Rock Nine”
Despite all legislative efforts by the segregationists to prevent the “Little Rock Nine,” as the students were known, from attending Central High, the school’s integration was slated to begin in the fall of 1957. Daisy Bates became their advisor and protector. White mobs met at the school, threatening to kill the black students; these mobs harassed not only activists but also northern journalists who came to cover the story. Soon, Bates recollected, “hysteria in all of its madness enveloped the city. Racial feelings were at a fever pitch.”
The city council instructed the Little Rock police chief to arrest Bates and other NAACP officials; she and the local branch president surrendered voluntarily. They were charged with failing to provide information about members for the public record, in violation of a city ordinance. In such a charged environment, of course, publicizing such information would have endangered the members in question. Though Bates was charged a fine by the judge, NAACP lawyers appealed and eventually won a reversal in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite such provisional victories, the physical safety of Bates, the students, and other activists was constantly threatened. “It took many weeks for me to become accustomed to seeing revolvers lying on tables in my own home,” she remembered in The Long Shadow of Little Rock.“And shotguns, loaded with buckshot, standing ready near the doors.” The students endured constant intimidation, and Bates saw herself hanged in effigy by segregationists. She was later threatened in her car by a white man, and bombs were thrown at the Bates house. The U.S. government answered her desperate telegrams by explaining that such incidents were a matter for local authorities.
Ultimately, the Little Rock Nine were able to attend Central High, and many of them went on to impressive careers. The price for the L. C. and Daisy Bates was high, however; an orchestrated boycott of advertisers caused the newspaper’s revenue to dry up quickly, and they were forced to shut it down in 1959. L. C. accepted an NAACP post the following year, which he retained until his retirement in 1971. Daisy, meanwhile, traveled to New York and spent two years writing her book. It was published in 1962 with a foreword by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. “This is a book which I hope will be read by every American,” Roosevelt declared; adding in her conclusion that the volume “should shock the conscience of America and bring a realization of where we stand in the year 1962 in these United States.”
Daisy Bates moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for the Democratic National Committee. She participated in the anti-poverty programs of the Lyndon Johnson administration, but was incapacitated by a stroke in 1965. The following year saw her donate a number of her papers, photographs, and other historical documents from the Little Rock crisis to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
In 1968, she moved to the town of Mitchellville, Arkansas, living in a mobile home and participating in a number of efforts to improve living conditions for the area’s mostly black residents. As a result of her tireless work with the city’s Self-Help Project, new water and sewer systems were installed in the town, roads were paved, and a community center—with swimming pool—was completed in 1972. When budget cuts by President Richard Nixon threatened the project, she protested bitterly. She retired two years later.
Revived Paper, Reaped Honors
L. C. Bates died in 1980, but Daisy held out hope that the State Press would circulate once more. At last, in 1984, this longtime dream became a reality. “I said to myself, ‘If you’re going to do it, do it now or forget it,’” she told Ebony.“One of the reasons I hadn’t done it is I didn’t have enough money on my own to finance it.” A satisfactory arrangement was made in collaboration with school superintendent Dr. H. Benjamin Williams and the Rev. Robert Willingham. This partnership—which gave her two-thirds ownership—allowed the paper to buy a new typesetting machine. The paper’s first run sold out. “It’s been fantastic, an awakening to me,” she exclaimed. “And we are trying to address new issues. We’re even getting requests from Vietnam veterans who want us to help them.” One of the Little Rock Nine, Ernest Green, served as the paper’s national marketing director; he had previously held a position in the administration of President Jimmy Carter.
Times had changed, of course, and in addition to a smaller staff, the paper addressed different social realities. In keeping with her lifelong mission to instill pride, Daisy Bates saw that the paper used the phrase “Afro-American” instead of “black.” She reasoned in Ebony that the former designation “gives you a heritage, a background of which to be proud.” The year 1984 also saw her receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; the institution would ultimately be the home of the Daisy Bates Collection.
In 1986, the University of Arkansas Press republished The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which became the first reprinted edition ever to earn an American Book Award. The following year she sold the newspaper, but continued to act as a consultant. Little Rock paid perhaps the ultimate tribute, not only to Bates but to the new era she helped to initiate, by opening the Daisy Bates Elementary School. She periodically made public appearances with the Little Rock Nine, and swore in the Chicago Tribune,“I’ll always continue to fight.” On her eightieth birthday, some 1,400 people gathered to celebrate her; and in 1996, wire services carried a photo of the wheelchair-bound activist carrying the Olympic torch in Atlanta, Georgia. The city’s Journal-Constitution reported that she was met by a “mob scene,” albeit one very different from those she had described in her harrowing book: “Friends, family and admirers, black and white, cheered, yelled encouragement and shed tears.”
Sources
Books
Bates, Daisy,The Long Shadow of Little Rock, McKay, 1962.
Periodicals
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 26, 1996.
Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1993; February 20, 1994.
Ebony, September 1984, pp. 93-94.
Jet, September 21, 1987, p. 22.
Other
Additional information was provided by notes on the Daisy Bates Papers from the internet site of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
—Simon Glickman
Bates, Daisy
Bates, Daisy 1912–1999
Daisy Bates was born Daisy Lee Gatson in Huttig, Arkansas, on or around November 12, 1912. In her autobiography, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, she described Huttig, located at the very bottom of the state, as a “sawmill plantation,” where “everyone worked for the mill, lived in houses owned by the mill, and traded at the general store run by the mill.”
Tragedy struck the Bates family when Daisy was only a child. Her birth mother was raped and murdered by three white men, and her father, fearing for his safety, fled town. Orlee and Susie Smith, two family friends, adopted Daisy. It was not until she was older that she would learn the truth about her mother and father.
Growing up in Huttig, a town of less than 1,000 persons, Bates said she did not really understand what being black meant until she was seven. She went to the store to buy some meat for her mother and was told by the butcher, “Niggers have to wait ‘til I wait on the white people” (1987 [1962], in chapter “What It Means to Be Negro”). Bates developed a deep-seated hatred of the white race living in the Jim Crow South. Her adoptive father, bothered by his daughter’s rage, counseled her not to hate white people just because they are white. “Hate can destroy you,” he told her. “If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliations we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum—and then try to do something about it, or your hate won’t spell at thing” (http://ut.essortment.com/whoisdaisybat_ogp.htm.)
When Bates was a teenager, her father’s friend, Lucius Christopher (L.C.) Bates, an insurance salesman and former journalist, came calling. He pursued her for several years before they finally tied the knot in 1942. Bates and L.C. moved north to Little Rock. L.C. dreamed of returning to his journalistic roots so he and Daisy leased a printing plant and started the Arkansas State Press.
The State Press’s circulation reached 10,000 in its first few months of publication. It soon grew into the largest, most influential black newspaper in the state. It publicized violations of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling, as well as gruesome instances of police brutality, and it fought to free blacks from slum housing, menial jobs, and injustice in the courtrooms.
In 1952 Daisy was elected president of the Arkansas NAACP. As state president, she participated in litigation to pressure the Little Rock School Board to abide by the Brown decision and integrate. “To the nation’s Negroes,” she wrote in The Long Shadow, “the Supreme Court decision meant that the time for delay, evasion, or procrastination was over.”
Facing increasing pressure from black parents, the NAACP, and a Supreme Court ruling, Virgil Blossom, superintendent of the Little Rock Public School District, announced a plan to begin the desegregation process with Little Rock Central High School in September 1957.
Seventy-five black students initially registered for admission into Central High, but school officials chose the nine whom they thought were the most emotionally mature. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be known, were Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls Lanier, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed-Wair, and Melba Pattillo Beals. Bates served as an adviser and mentor to these students. She provided protective custody for them and was their leading advocate. She had no children of her own, and the Little Rock Nine were affectionately referred to as “Daisy Bates’s children.”
The Little Rock Nine were initially slated to enter Central High on Tuesday, September 3, 1957. The night before, Governor Orval Faubus called up the state’s National Guard to surround Central High and prevent the students from entering. He did this, he claimed, in order to protect citizens and property from white supremacists that were headed in caravans toward Little Rock. If the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter Central High, Faubus said, “blood would run in the streets.” The Nine did not, in fact, attend Central High on September 3, the first day of school. On September 4, Bates phoned them and instructed them to meet a few blocks from Central and walk to school as a group. Elizabeth Eckford did not have a phone in her home, however, and never received the message. She attempted to enter Central High by herself, through the front door. As the Arkansas National Guard looked on, she was met by an angry white mob who berated her and threatened to lynch her. Ironically, it was two whites who stepped forward to assist her. They helped her get on a city bus and away from the school without injury. The rest of the Little Rock Nine were denied entry by the National Guardsmen.
The National Guard troops finally left Central High on September 20, after a federal judge had granted an injunction against Faubus’s use of National Guard troops to prevent integration. On Monday, September 23, school resumed. There were no troops, but Central High was surrounded by policemen. A white mob, numbering close to 1,000, gathered in front of the school, waiting to spew more hatred at the black students. But instead of entering through the front door, the police escorted the Nine through a side entrance. When the mob learned that the Nine had made it inside, they began to attack the police and charge towards the building. For their own safety, the Nine were removed from school before noon.
With a crisis on their hands, Congressman Brooks Hays and Mayor Woodrow Mann asked the Eisenhower administration to intervene. “Hysteria in all of its madness enveloped the city,” Bates later wrote, and “racial feelings were at a fever pitch.” On September 24, Mann sent a telegram to Eisenhower requesting federal troops. Eisenhower obliged, and federal troops were dispatched that day. He also federalized the Arkansas National Guard, which removed Faubus’s power over them. On September 25, the Little Rock Nine entered Central High School under the protection of 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army.
The Little Rock Nine were not the only ones who were tormented during the Central High Crisis. In August 1957, a rock was thrown through the picture window of the Bates home. A note attached to the rock read, “Stone this time. Dynamite next.” Two days later, an eight-foot cross was burned on the Bates’s lawn, accompanied by the message, “Go back to Africa. KKK.” On July 7, 1958, a bomb was set off in front of the Bates home, but no one was injured. Bates said it took many weeks for her to become accustomed to seeing “revolvers lying on tables in my own home” and “shotguns loaded with buckshot, standing ready near the doors.”
The Bates family was also forced to shut down the State Press. After Daisy became involved in the civil rights struggle, white businesses stopped advertising in the paper, and it had to stop publishing because of lost revenue. L.C. Bates joined the paid staff of the NAACP in 1960.
Only three of the Little Rock Nine eventually graduated from Central High. Ernest Green became the school’s first black graduate in 1958. Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls Lanier graduated in 1960. Minnijean Brown Trickey was expelled from the school in February 1958, after several incidents, including one in which she dumped a bowl of chili on one of her tormentors. Throughout their time at Central High, Bates remained deeply concerned about their welfare, often intervening with school officials during conflicts.
After the success at Central High, Bates worked in voter registration campaigns for the Democratic National Committee, and President Lyndon Johnson appointed her to help administer his antipoverty programs. She revived the State Press in 1984, only to sell it three years later.
After Daisy Bates passed away on November 4, 1999, the state of Arkansas permitted her body to lay in state in the rotunda of the capitol. The third Monday in February has been established as an official state holiday in her honor, the Daisy Gatson Bates Holiday, making Arkansas the first state to honor an African American woman with a named holiday.
SEE ALSO Civil Rights Movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bates, Daisy. 1987 (1962). The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
Drew, Keith. 2004. “Eckford: Central High in 1957 ‘Was Not … a Normal Environment.”’ CNN.com, May 17. Available from http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/05/17/eckford.transcript/index.html.
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Available from http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
Fradin, Dennis Brindell, and Judith Bloom Fradin. 2004. The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine. New York: Clarion.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. 2001. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Clayborne Carson. New York: IPM/Warner Books.
Library of Congress. 2004. “‘With an Even Hand’: Brown v. Board at Fifty.” Available from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown.
Little Rock Central High School. “The Little Rock Nine.” Available from http://www.centralhigh57.org.
Ordorica, Daniel. “Women and Jim Crow: A Geographic Perspective.” Available from http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/history.htm.
Philadelphia Tribune. 2006. “Bates, an integration forerunner: Daisy Bates is often-forgotten hero of the ‘Little Rock Nine.”’ Jan. 16: 1H–2H.
National Park Service. “We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement—Daisy Bates House.” Available from http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/.
National Park Service. “We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement—Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.” Available from http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/.
University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections. Daisy Bates Papers. Available from http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections.
Greg Johnson
Bates, Daisy
Bates, Daisy
November 11, 1914
November 4, 1999
Daisy Lee Gaston Bates is best known for her leadership in the struggle to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. A native of Arkansas, she knew well the realities of education under segregation. The black schools in her local school system, like others under segregation, suffered from inadequate facilities and lack of access to textbooks and supplies. This experience had a profound effect on her, and it moved her to action, as it did so many others in the civil rights era. In 1941 Daisy Gaston married L. C. Bates, a journalist from Mississippi, and the two published the weekly Arkansas State Press. Through the paper they addressed major issues facing African Americans, making it a popular and effective community instrument.
As president of the state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Bates, with other activists, sought to move the school systems to comply with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Although Little Rock had designed a program for integrating its schools, it had failed to act on the plan. One of the tactics Bates employed to draw attention to this was photographing African-American children attempting to gain admission to white public schools. This tactic was bolstered by an NAACP lawsuit against the school board for failure to implement a desegregation plan. Finally, the school board agreed to integrate Central High School in the fall of 1957.
Bates spearheaded the movement to organize students to register for Central. While almost eighty students were willing to register, the school board placed obstacles in the way and dissuaded parents, bringing the final number to nine. None of these was among the group of students involved in the NAACP court case against the Little Rock board. It was clear that there would be violence surrounding the opening of school when, two weeks before the semester began, a rock was thrown through the window of Bates's home. A note attached to the rock read, "Stone this time. Dynamite next."
Bates took responsibility for transporting the nine students to Central High. However, under the pretense of maintaining order, Gov. Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the nine from entering the school. The immediate situation was resolved when President Dwight D. Eisenhower brought the Arkansas National Guard under federal control to protect the students and their right to attend Central High School. The "Little Rock Nine" finally began the school year on September 25, 1957. It was the beginning of what would prove to be a very difficult year.
Bates and other state NAACP officials were arrested the following month for violating a statute that required organizations to furnish the county with membership and financial information. The statute was designed to hinder the operations of civil rights organizations. Bates was convicted and fined one hundred dollars, but her conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.
Following the integration of Central High, Daisy Bates continued to be active in Democratic Party politics, voter registration, and community projects and continued to be a voice in the ongoing struggle for civil rights until her death in 1999. In tribute to her achievements, a nonprofit group bought Bates's Little Rock house in 1998 with the intention of transforming it into a civil rights museum. In 2001 Bates was honored when Arkansas declared a state holiday in her name.
See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Bibliography
Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow of Little Rock. New York: David McKay, 1962.
Huckaby, Elizabeth. Crisis at Central High School: Little Rock, 1957–1958. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. New York: Viking, 1987.
judith weisenfeld (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005