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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)
* * * *
* What It Means to Be Negro
By Daisy Bates (1914-1999) I was born Daisy Lee Gatson in
the little sawmill town of Huttig, in southern Arkansas. The owner
of the mill ruled the town. Huttig might have been called a
sawmill plantation, for everyone worked for the mill, lived in
houses owned by the mill, and traded at the general store run by
the mill.
The hard red clay streets of the
town were mostly unnamed. Main Street, the widest and longest
street in town, and the muddiest after a rain, was the site of our
business square. It consisted of four one-story buildings which
housed a commissary and a meat market, a post office, an ice cream
parlor, and a movie house. Main Street also divided “White
Town” from “Negra Town.” However, the physical appearance of
the two areas provided a more definite means of distinction.
The Negro citizens of Huttig
were housed in rarely painted, drab red “shotgun” houses, so
named because one could stand in the front yard and look straight
through the front and back doors into the back yard. The Negro
community was also provided with two church buildings of the same
drab red exterior, although kept spotless inside by the Sisters of
the church, and a two-room schoolhouse equipped with a potbellied
stove that never quite succeeded in keeping it warm.
On the other side of Main Street
were white bungalows, white steepled churches and a spacious white
school with a big lawn. Although the relations between the Negro
and white were cordial, the tone of the community, as indicated by
outward appearances, was of the “Old South” tradition.
As I grew up in this town, I
knew I was a Negro, but I did not really understand what that
meant until I was seven years old. My parents, as do most Negro
parents, protected me as long as possible from the inevitable
insult and humiliation that is, in the South, a part of being
“colored.”
I was a proud and happy child--all
hair and legs, my cousin Easy B. used to say--and only child
although not blessed with the privileges of having my own way. One
afternoon, shortly after my seventh birthday, my mother called me
in from play.
“I’m not feeling well,”
she said. “You’ll have to go to the market to get meat for
dinner.”
I was thrilled with such an
important errand. I put on one of my prettiest dresses and my
mother brushed my hair. She gave me instructions to get a pound of
center-cut pork chops. I skipped happily all the way to the
market.
When I entered the market, there
where several white adults waiting to be served. When the butcher
had finished with them, I gave him my order. More white adults
entered. The butcher turned from me and took their orders. I was a
little annoyed but felt since they were grownups it was all right.
While he was waiting on the adults, a little white girl came in
and we talked while we waited.
The butcher finished with the
adults, looked down at us and asked, “What do you want, little
girl?” I smiled and said, “I told you before, a pound of
center-cut pork chops.” He snarled, “I’m not talking to
you,” and again asked the white girl what she wanted. She also
wanted a pound of center-cut pork chops.
“Please may I have my meat?”
I said, as the little girl left. The butcher took my dollar from
the counter reached into the showcase, got a handful of fat chops
and wrapped them up. Thrusting the package at me, he said,
“Niggers have to wait ‘til I wait on the white people. Now
take your meat and get out of here!” I ran all the way home
crying.
When I reached the house, my
mother asked what had happened. I started pulling her toward the
door, telling her what the butcher had said. I opened the meat and
showed it to her. “It’s fat, Mother. Let’s take it back.”
“Oh, Lord, I knew I
shouldn’t have sent her. Stop crying, now, the meat isn’t so
bad.”
“But it is, Why can’t we
take it back?”
“Go on out on the porch and
wait for Daddy.” As she turned from me, her eyes were filling
with tears.
When I saw Daddy approaching, I
ran to him, crying. He lifted me in his arms and smiled. “Now,
what’s wrong?’ When I told him, his smile faded.
“And if we don’t hurry, the
market will be closed,” I finished.
“We’ll talk about it after
dinner, sweetheart.” I could feel the muscles tighten as he
carried me into the house.
Dinner was distressingly silent.
Afterward my parents went into the bedroom and talked. My mother
came out and told me my father wanted to see me. Daddy sat there
looking at me for a long time. Several times, he tried to speak,
but the words just wouldn’t come. I stood there, looking at him
and wondering why he was acting so strangely. Finally he stood up
and the words began tumbling from him. Much of what he said I did
not understand. To my seven-year-old mind he explained as best he
could that a Negro had no rights that a white man respected.
He dropped to his knees, in
front of me, placed his hands on my shoulders, and began shaking
me and shouting.
“Can’t you understand what
I’ve been saying?” He demanded. “There is nothing I can do!
If I went down to the market I would only cause trouble for my
family.”
As I looked ay my daddy sitting
by me and with tears in his eyes, I blurted out innocently,
“Daddy, are you afraid?”
He sprang to his feet in an
anger I has never seen before. “Hell, no! I’m not afraid for
myself, I’m not afraid to die. I could go down to that market
and tear him limb from limb with my bare hands, but I am afraid
for you and your mother.”
That night when I knelt to pray,
instead of my usual prayers, I found myself praying that the
butcher would die. After that night we never mentioned him again. * * *
* *
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)
* * * *
*
updated 3
October 2007 |
