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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)
* * * *
* The Death of My Mother
By Daisy Bates (1914-1999)
Shortly after my eighth birthday I was
playing with other children on a neighbor’s steps. An older
boy, whom I didn’t happen to like, came up to me and began
pulling my braids. I said I was going home. The boy said, “You
act so uppity. If you knew what happened to your mother, you
wouldn’t act so stuck up.”
Nothing’s wrong with my mother,” I
retorted. “I just left her.”
“I’m talking about your real
mother, the one the white man took out and killed.”
“That’s a story and you’re a mean and
nasty old boy!” I began to cry.
“It ain’t. I heard my folks talking about
it.”
Just then the mother of one of my playmates
came out on the porch and yelled at the boy. “Shut up! You
talk too much. I’m going to tell your mother, and you’ll get
the beating of your life."
“Honey,” she said to me, “don’t
believe nothing that no-good boy says.” Still I wondered what
if he was telling the truth?
At dinner that evening I looked intently at
my parents, all the while trying to decide whether I looked like
them. I could see no resemblance or likeness to myself in either
of them. I remembered many little things, like the day Mother
was talking to a salesman when I came in. He glanced at me, then
turned to my mother.
“Have you heard from her father?” he had
asked her.
When my mother said she hadn’t, the
salesman nodded toward me. “Does she know?”
“We haven’t told her,” my mother had
said.
During the next few weeks I kept so much to
myself that my parents decided that I must be sick. So I was
“dosed” up with little pink pills. My cousin Early B. came
to visit us. He was several years older than I, but I was always
glad to see him because he protected me from the boys who liked
to taunt and tease me.
One afternoon as we walked along the
millpond, I asked Early B. to tell me about my mother. He looked
puzzled.
“Your mother?” he said guardedly, and
pointed in the direction of my house. We could see her sitting
on the porch.
“No. I mean my real mother.”
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“Well, almost.”
“Who told you? I’ll knock his block off!
Have you told your mamma and papa?”
“No.”
We walked in silence until we stood on the
bank that divided the millpond from the town’s fishing hole.
Large logs floated in the water. The smell of fresh cut lumber
mixed with the odor of dead fish. As we stood there, Early B.
told me about my parents.
“One night when you were a baby and your
daddy was working nights at the mill, a man went to your house
and told your mother that your daddy had been hurt. She rushed
out, leaving you alone, but she met a neighbor and asked her to
listen out for you while she went to see about your daddy,
“When your daddy got home the next morning,
he found you alone. He went around asking the neighbors if they
had seen your mother. The neighbor your mother asked to look
after you told him what had happened the night before--that she
saw a man who looked like he was colored, although she didn’t
get a good look at him because he was walking in front of your
mother.
"The news spread fast around town that
your mother couldn’t be found. Later in the morning, some
people out fishing found her body.”
Early B. stopped talking and sat down on the
pond bank. I stood over him, looking into the dark, muddy water.
“Where did they find her?” I asked.
After a long silence Early B. pointed at the
water and said, “Right down there. She was half in and half
out.”
“Who did it?”
“Well,” he answered, “there was a lot
of talk from the cooks and cleaning women who worked in ‘white
town’ about what they heard over there. They said that three
white men did it.”
“What happened to my father?”
“He was so hurt, he left you with the
people who have you now, his best friends. He left town. Nobody
has heard from him since.”
“What did my parents look like?”
“They were young. Your daddy was as light
as a lot of white people. Your mother was very pretty--dark
brown, with long hair.”
Early B. friends came along and he wandered
off with them. I sat there looking into the dark waters, vowing
some day I would get the men who killed my mother. I did not
realize that the afternoon had turned into evening and darkness
had closed in around me until someone sitting beside me
whispered. “It’s time to go home, darling.” I turned and
saw my daddy sitting beside me. He reached out in the darkness
and took my hand.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“A long time,” I said.
He lifted me tenderly in his arms and carried
me home. . . .
In Arkansas, even in the red clay soil of a
mill town, flowers grow without any encouragement at all.
Everyone’s yard has some sort of flowering bush or plant all
spring and summer. And in this town of Huttig, where there was
so little beauty, I passionately loved all blooming things. In
the woods I hunted out the first of the cowslips and spring
beauties, and from the open fields, the last of the Indian
paintbrush. I was always bringing home bouquets.
All of the neighbors knew that flowers in our
yard were my garden, not Mother’s. I had no favorite and
delighted at each flower in its season. When the last rose and
zinnias had died, I knew in a few short months the old lilac
bush would start budding, for winter in Arkansas was
short-lived. But this year was different. One morning I was out
before breakfast looking for flowers to pick. All I found was a
single red rose, the dew still wet on it. I can close my eyes
today and see exactly how it looked. Unaccountably I turned,
leaving it on the stalk, and walked into the house crying.
My mother met me at the door and I saw her
face cloud with anxiety. What was the trouble? “All the other
flowers were dead,” I sobbed, “and my rose will die, too.”
That night I heard her say to Daddy, “I
can’t understand that child crying over a dying flower.”
Then I heard my daddy say, “Let her be. It just takes time.”
Later in the fall on a Saturday afternoon, my
father and I took a walk in the woods. It was a brisk day. Daddy
thought we might find some ripe persimmons. Also, some black
walnuts might have fallen from a big old tree he knew about. We
walked along sniffing the air, sharp with the smell of pine
needles, then came out in an open stretch in sight of the
persimmon grove. I was always happy on these excursions with
Daddy. I guess it just the feeling that I couldn’t be happy
now, couldn’t let myself be, that made me ask the question.
“Daddy, who killed my mother? Why did they
kill her?”
We walked a little way in silence. Then he
pointed to some flat rocks on a slope, and we made our way there
and rested. The persimmons and the black walnut were forgotten.
He began in tones so soft I could barely hear the words.
He told me of the timeworn lust of the white
man for the Negro woman--which strikes at the heart of every
Negro man in the South. I don’t remember a time when this man
I called my father didn’t talk to me almost as if I were an
adult. Even so this was a difficult concept to explain to an
eight-year-old girl; but he spoke plainly, in simple words I
could understand. He wanted me to realize that my mother
wouldn’t have died if it hadn’t been for race--as well as
her beauty, her pride, her love for my father.
“Your mother was not the kind to submit,”
he said, “so they took her.” His voice grew bitter. “They
say that three white men did it. There was some talk about who
they were, but no one knew for sure, and the sheriff’s office
did little to find out.”
He said other things about the way the Negro
is treated in the South, but my mind had stopped, fastening on
those three white men and what they had done. They had killed my
mother.
When we walked out of the woods, my daddy
looked tired and broken. He took my hand and we walked home in
silence.
Dolls, games, even my once-beloved fishing,
held little interest for me after that. Young as I was, strange
as it may seem, 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. . . . * * *
* *
 |
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
Source:
Young and Black in America
(1972), edited by Julius
Lester * * * *
*
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 1900s. Told from the perspective of an
eight year old, Daisy’s writings soon confronts the
reader with issues of race and murder-subjects one would
think would hardly enter into the mind of one so young
as an eight year old. Yet these subjects are not only
on Daisy’s mind, they forever separate her from her
childhood joy. When she is confronted with her first
incident of racism by a white butcher, Daisy finds
herself “praying that the butcher would die.” And
later, when Daisy finds out that her mother was murdered
at the hands of white men, she gives up “dolls and
games” and vows to find the men who had killed her
mother.
All of this would seem like so much sensationalism if
these issues were not handled so well by Daisy. There is
more sadness than rage in Daisy’s writing. And we
find out early on why Daisy’s response to her
mother’s death and white racism does not set her on a
path of self-destruction or pessimism. The reason for
Daisy’s stability is her father or step-father. It is
this man who established a rock solid relationship with
Daisy and who shepherds her through her early crisis. As
much as the themes of racism and violence, the theme of
love between these two—father and daughter—draws the
reader into Daisy’s complex world. In the end, it is
the love of this wise, understanding man that would
transform Daisy and make her into one of the giants of
the Civil Rights Movement. Source:
Young and Black in America
(1972), edited by Julius
Lester
* * *
* *
Charles Mingus:
Fable of Faubus
"Fables of Faubus" is a song
composed by jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus. One of Mingus'
most explicitly political works, the song was written as a direct
protest against Arkansas governor
Orval E. Faubus, who in 1957 sent out the National Guard to prevent
the integration of Little Rock Central High School by
nine African American teenagers. The song was first recorded for
Mingus' 1959 album,
Mingus Ah Um. Columbia refused to allow the lyrics to the song to be
included, and so the song was recorded as an instrumental on the album.
It was not until October 20, 1960 that the song was recorded with
lyrics, for the album
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, which was released on the
more independent
Candid label. Due to contractual issues with Columbia, the song
could not be released as "Fables of Faubus", and so the Candid version
was titled "Original Faubus Fables."
 |
The personnel for the
Candid recording were Charles Mingus (bass, vocals),
Dannie Richmond (drums, vocals),
Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone), and
Ted Curson (trumpet). The vocals featured a
call-and-response between Mingus and Richmond. Critic
Don Heckman commented on the unedited "Original Faubus
Fables" in a 1962 review that it was "a classic Negro
put-down in which satire becomes a deadly rapier-thrust.
Faubus emerges in a glare of ridicule as a mock villain whom
no-one really takes seriously. This kind of commentary,
brimful of feeling, bitingly direct and harshly satiric,
appears far too rarely in jazz." The song, either with or
without lyrics, was one of the compositions which Mingus
returned to most often, both on record and in concert.—Wikipedia
photo left:
As fifteen-year-old
Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter the school, soldiers of
the National Guard, under orders from Arkansas Governor
Faubus, would step in her way to prevent her from entering. |
* *
* * *
|
Fable of Faubus
By Charles Mingus
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!
Name me someone who's ridiculous,
Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won't permit integrated schools.
Then he's a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist
supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)
Name me a handful that's ridiculous,
Dannie Richmond.
Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower
Why are they so sick and ridiculous?
Two, four, six, eight:
They brainwash and teach you hate.
H-E-L-L-O, Hello.
Orval E. Faubus was the governor of Arkansas in 1957 and
against desegregation. He sent the National Guard to prevent
black children from attending high school in Little Rock. |
* * *
* *
Bill
Moyers Interviews Douglass A. Blackmon
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html
Douglas A. Blackmon,
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the
Civil War to World War II (2008)
|
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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updated 3 October 2007
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