Books by and about Daisy Bates

Long Shadow of Little Rock (Daisy Bates,1998)  / Daisy Bates Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas (Grif Sockley, 2005)

The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine (Fradin, 2004) / Young and Black in America (Julius Lester,1972)

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The Death of Daddy

By Daisy Bates (1914-1999)

The summers of the following years, for the most part, were spent on our farm in eastern Arkansas where my grandmother lived with a brown hound dog, an old gray riding horse, a temperamental milk cow, and pigs fattening for winter meat. Occasionally we would take a trip to other states, or I would be sent to visit friends or relatives of my parents.

I was in my teens. On one of my visits away from home my mother sent for me. My father had been taken to the hospital. When I arrived home, the doctor told me it was just a matter of time. Daddy was gravely ill. The bottom had dropped out of my world.

One night Daddy told Mother to go home and get some sleep. “Daisy will stay with me,” he assured her.

When Mother and the nurse had left, I stood looking down at his tired dark face against the white of the bed linen. I saw the wrinkles etched deep by a lifetime of struggle, and I saw a stubborn chin and proud high forehead. I started to cry, softly. He opened his eyes. “Don’t cry Daisy,” he moaned. “I know I’m going to die, but-”

I started to protest, but his upraised hand stopped me. He knew I knew, and to deny it would make meaningless the honesty we’d always held to in our lifelong relationship with each other. He said calmly, “I’ll be better off.” I knew this was so. He had cancer.

I haven’t much to leave you, Daisy, so come close and listen and remember what I have to say to you.”

I drew a chair close and place my hand in his.

“You’re filled with hatred. Hate can destroy you, Daisy. Don’t hate white people just because they’re white. 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 a thing.”

“I’m listening to every word you say Daddy, and I’ll try to do what you say. But rest--you must rest now.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head impatiently. “I’ll decide when I need rest.”

How I loved this strong man who all his life had not been able to use his strength in the way he wanted to. He was forced to suppress it and hold himself back, bow to the white yoke or be cut down. And now that his life was ebbing, he was trying to draw on that reservoir of unused strength to give me a lasting inheritance.

“Daisy,” he resumed, “nothing’s going to change all of the sudden, and any Negro speaking out alone will suffer. But more and more will join him, and the blacks, acting together will one day . . .”

His voice grew faint. I held my breath. Starting afresh, he continued haltingly, “I remember the day of your mother’s funeral. I went to the post office for the mail. I had on my best dark suit. When I came out of the post office, there were three young white hoodlums standing on the steps. One of them said, 'Look at that dressed up ape! You live here, boy?' When I didn’t answer, two of them blocked my path and the other one said, 'I know what’s wrong, he needs something red on!' He picked up a brush from a paint bucket left there by a painter who’s been painting the brick foundation around the buildings. He painted a red streak down the back of my coat. Then they walked away, laughing. I stood there with murder in my heart. I could’ve crushed the life out of him with my bare hands. But I knew if I touched one hair on his head I could be lynched.

“On the way home I met one of the deputy sheriffs. I showed him my coat and told him what had happened. He laughed and said, 'Don’t get so upset about a little thing like that. They were just having a little fun. Turpentine will take the paint out of your coat'.”

Daddy stopped talking and closed his eyes. I just sat there, constantly patting his hard knuckles, hoping he would speak again. He did. This time his voice, still distinct, was softer than before but more labored.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you know later when you should have died. I ought to have died the day they put paint on my coat. I should have taken those guys and wrung their necks like chickens. But I wanted to live--for what, I sometimes wonder.”

I stopped patting the back of his hand, and he drifted off into sleep. Looking back at him, I sensed he would never awaken. It was now nearly daybreak. When the Catholic Sister came into the room, I greeted her warmly. It was the first time in several years that I had spoken to a white person in a pleasant voice.

I walked out into the silent streets. The grass, heavy with dew, caught the sun’s early rays. In most of the yards flowers still bloomed, and in many, red roses. I thought of another such morning years ago, and of the red rose I couldn’t bare to pick. I knew like that rose which clung to its branch in a last, flaming farewell, my father would die before the end of the day. I did not cry for I realized that he was at peace with himself for the first time in years.

As I walked along the streets taking in the freshness of the early morning air, I knew that as surely as my father was dying, I was undergoing a rebirth. My father had passed on to me a priceless heritage--one that would sustain me throughout the years to come.

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updated 3 October 2007

Daisy Bates Desegregating Little Rock 

By Julius Lester

On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This historic ruling struck at the very core of the social structure of the South and it was to be expected that many cities and states would be unwilling to put it into practice. The first big confrontation came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the fall of 1957.

Nine black students were to enter all-white Central High School. A few days before school was to open, Orval Faubus, then governor of Arkansas, ordered the National Guard to surround the school. He reasoned that violence would occur when the nine blacks tried to enter the school. However, instead of ordering the National Guard to stop any violence which might occur, he ordered the Guard to keep the blacks out of the school. This was the first open defiance of the Supreme Court decision by a top state official.

The nine black students, their parents, and advisers, had a difficult decision to make. Should the students still try to enter Central High? It was decided that they should. When the day came mobs of whites lined the sidewalk and filled the streets in front of the school. The National Guard blocked the entrances, pointed bayonets at the black students, and refused to escort them to safety through the crowd of whites. As the students tired to make their way through the mob, they were spat upon and beaten.

The central figure in the drama was Mrs. Daisy Bates, state president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Born and raised in the small town of Huttig, Arkansas, Daisy Lee Gatson married when she was eighteen years old and with her husband, L. C. Bates, moved to Little Rock. There, they decided to assume the ownership of a weekly newspaper, the State Press. Together, they slowly made the paper into the voice of blacks in Arkansas, protesting police brutality, the lack of equal rights in housing, in jobs, and in the courtroom.

In 1952 Mrs. Bates was elected president of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP. The NAACP had taken the lead in the fight for the desegregation of schools. It was involved in trying to make sure that the 1954 ruling was put into practice. Such an effort required not only the skills of lawyers, but also the commitment of many anonymous people, like Mrs. Bates, who were responsible for building strong organizations on the local level to prepare for the day when desegregation came. Just how important such preparation was did not become clear, however, until the confrontation around Central High.

When the governor said that there would be no desegregation, the blacks of Little Rock could either bow their heads or fight. Much of the burden for the decision was carried by Mrs. Bates, as a leader of the black community. The decision to fight placed the lives of all who were involved in danger. Without the kind of leadership and courage shown by Mrs. Bates, the ordeal could not have been endured.

Mrs. Bates’ life was constantly threatened and for many months. She did not leave her home without carrying a gun, or go to bed at night without armed guards posted outside her home. The newspaper which she and her husband had built was forced out of business by whites. Yet Mrs. Bates and the blacks of Little Rock persevered. Her book, The Long Shadow of Little Rock is more than a personal story. It is the story of countless blacks who, in extraordinary times, have had to show extraordinary courage

Commentary on Daisy Bates’ How My Mother Died By Amin Sharif   Daisy Bates is representative of the kind of unselfish black woman raised under the Old South tradition of racism and segregation. Not a feminist, nor a womanist--Daisy was a Race woman who placed the needs of her people before her own. In her How My Mother Died, we are given a unique portrait of how complicated life was for every black man, woman, and child in the early and middle decades of the 1900’s.