book review

University of Georgia Press

Chapter Title: Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (1913?–1999) The Quest for Justice Chapter Author(s): ELIZABETH JACOWAY

Book Title: Arkansas Women Book Subtitle: Their Lives and Times Book Editor(s): Cherisse Jones-Branch, Gary T. Edwards Published by: University of Georgia Press. (2018) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vhtrh3.15

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (1913?-1999)

The Quest for Justice

E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

On May 4,1956, Daisy Bates burst into the white consciousness in Little Rock.1

As president of the Arkansas State Conference of Branches of the National As- sociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Bates provided testi- mony in a deposition for a case challenging the Little Rock school board to com- mence desegregation immediately2 The school board's attorney Leon Catlett, known as the best trial lawyer in the state, questioned Bates at length about her intentions and those of the NAACP, always addressing her as "Daisy" Bates finally interrupted the questioning to say that her first name was acceptable only when used by "my intimate friends and my husband and I haven't met you before today, so I want you to refrain from calling me Daisy My name is Mrs. Bates." Obviously shocked by Bates's bold departure from his region's customary racial etiquette, which denied African Americans the courtesy titles of Mr. and Mrs. and mandated that they be called by their first names, Catlett replied, "I won't call you anything then." Bates responded, "All right. That will be fine."3

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates had spent a lifetime preparing herself for this mo- ment.4 Born in 1913 or 1914 in the south Arkansas sawmill town of Huttig to fifteen-year-old Millie Riley and seventeen-year-old Hezekiah "Babe" Gatson, Bates learned at the age of nine that her mother had been raped and murdered by three white men when Daisy was an infant and that her father had then abandoned her.5 Taken in by friends of her parents, Susie and Orlee (or per- haps Oralee) Smith, Daisy had experienced a happy childhood until she first encountered racism at the age of seven or eight and then learned of her parents' fates a year or so later. This new knowledge filled the little girl with a rage and a hatred of white people that never left her. As she recalled, "There was so much

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198 E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

hate inside me, but somehow, that hate prepared me for what came later in my life. It gave me the strength to carry it all out. I don't think anything prepared me more than my anger."6

In addition to the anger and bitterness that drove her, Bates realized years later that her status as a virtual orphan was a major factor in her psychological makeup. "Even though nobody in Huttig called me an orphan," she reflected, that was, in fact, what she was. "I was given away by my one living parent, and never adopted by those good foster parents, the Smiths. They never gave me their name . . . and that always bothered me."7 In response, she decided, "I would spend my life making my life worth something. Orphans come here with the feeling that they're in this world alone, even if we have lots of people who love us. The people who mean the most are not there to confirm that." Whether con- sciously or not, she decided "to fight for what I thought was rightfully mine . . . my sense of worth as a human being, my rights, justice, equal opportunities."8

By 1956, Daisy Bates had become a leader in Little Rock's African American community. Married to the owner and editor of a crusading black newspaper and serving as executive secretary of her state's Fair Employment Practices Commission and, most recently, as president of the Arkansas NAACP, Daisy had risen from obscurity in the fifteen years since she had moved to Little Rock.9

Undoubtedly her ascent had been helped by her stunning good looks, her out- going personality, her stylish clothes, and her air of sophistication. One biogra- pher described her as "full of life, charismatic, charming, and very beautiful."10

Daisy and L. C. Bates's rise, however, had not been without difficulty. They had alienated many of the African American community's traditional leaders— mostly clergy—by calling them pawns of the white community.11 They had also taken hardline stands on black voting rights and police brutality, stands that had made many of Little Rock's African Americans feel that the Bateses were pressing too hard for change to occur too fast. Bates's biographer Grif Stockley wrote that many black people in Little Rock were unwilling to challenge the status quo, and their "lack of aggressiveness was continually a problem for Daisy Bates and the NAACP."12 Bates told photographer Brian Lanker that "there were blacks that didn't understand what was happening to them. This disturbed me an awful lot. There were not enough people who wanted to change, not enough of them to fight for a change."13

A more significant impediment to the Bateses' assumption of leadership positions was their less-than-respectable past. Daisy Lee Gatson fell in love with L. C. Bates when she was fifteen and he was twenty-seven, and she moved with him to Memphis not long after that.14 Unfortunately for Daisy, L. C. was married and had two children.15 The Memphis years are a blank in Daisy's autobiog-

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 199

raphy and in her later interviews, and the narrative always resumes in 1941 when she and L. C. moved to Little Rock. In 1942 they slipped away to a small Arkan- sas town and married.16

Another obstacle to Daisy Bates's rise to respectability in Little Rock's black community was her lack of education. The town of Huttig did not have a high school, and it is likely that Daisy's formal education ended at the eighth grade.17

Though she later claimed to have taken courses at Little Rock's Philander Smith College and Shorter Business College and at LeMoyne College in Memphis, no records of her attendance have survived.18 Little Rock's black elite valued edu- cation highly, and college sororities played a major role in the social lives of the women of that community.19 The principal of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School had the only earned doctorate in the Little Rock school system, and more than half of his faculty either held or were in the process of earning mas- ter's degrees.20 Many years after her heroic service to her city during the Little Rock desegregation crisis of 1957-1959, Bates told a young friend that her "lack of education and finesse made me uncomfortable many times."21

Apparently, by the time she and L. C. moved to Little Rock, Daisy had real- ized that she could not have children, which she had wanted desperately, and she had tired of the vacuous life of being a kept woman.22 L. C. had always encouraged her to develop her interests and talents, so when he purchased the Arkansas State Press, she began to get involved in its day-to-day operations. She soon discovered that she was fascinated by the newspaper world and especially by L. C.'s passionate dedication to the pursuit of civil rights for black Ameri- cans.23 By her mid-thirties, Bates was going out to cover stories on her own, though she did not write them herself but dictated them to members of the staff. Her insecurity about her writing skills lasted throughout her life.

Toward the end of her life, Bates reflected: "The truth is, it was because of Daddy and L. C. that I ever got into the business of civil rights work, in the first place. I think I always had the courage, Daddy gave me that; but I needed the fo- rum, and L. C. gave me that."24 Her foster father, Orlee Smith, had been a mem- ber of the NAACP almost from its inception, and he paid dues for his wife and for his little daughter Daisy.25 After she became aware of the racism that existed in Huttig, Smith often talked to her about the need to correct the racial inequities in their world and his hope that the NAACP would be able to do so. He told her "how hard educated black people [were] working to get laws changed, to bring equality to the South for colored folks."26 L. C.'s passionate devotion to racial justice was one of the things that made him attractive to the much younger Daisy; as she remembered it, "We had fallen in love first, but after that, it was our passion for justice that made us soul mates."27

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2 0 0 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

In 1942, L. C. wrote a series of outraged articles about the killing of a black serviceman, in uniform, by a white policeman before a large crowd of onlookers in the African American business district.28 White businesspeople immediately tried to pressure L. C. through economic reprisal by canceling their advertising.29

The president of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce offered to make him "one of the biggest Negroes in the South," if he would soften his tone.30 From that day forward, L. C. said, he "never solicited an advertisement from a white busi- ness."31 One of Daisy Bates's biographers called this "a watershed moment" for the Arkansas State Press because it raised the newspaper's profile in the African American community, but it also alienated some of the local black elites who were accustomed to following the dictates of Little Rock's white leaders.32 Even before this, L. C. had launched a campaign on the front page of his newspaper calling for new leadership in the black community.33 In the ensuing years, L. C. mentored his wife in his brand of militant racial politics and then made her the city editor of his newspaper; increasingly, the two of them began to be recognized as a team.

Acutely conscious of her image, Daisy Bates developed a persona that radi- ated command and confidence, but her affected self-assurance often masked a looming sense of inadequacy. In public she appeared unfailingly in stylish clothes, high heels, heavy makeup, and a flawless coiffure, and her fun-loving, effervescent manner completed the picture of a woman who expected agree- ment and acceptance. Grif Stockley wrote that during the 19408, Daisy "had absorbed the lesson that how one was perceived was more than half the battle of civil rights."34 Biographer John Adams wrote that the projected image of middle-class respectability was another source of Bates's influence and power.35

By the time she found herself called on to serve as a mentor to the Little Rock Nine in their quest to integrate Central High School, Bates had perfected her self-presentation, but the cost to her would be high in terms of self-doubt and stress, which ultimately played havoc with her health. This insecurity may have been the source of her tendency to place herself center stage whenever pos- sible and to exaggerate the roles she played at key moments in her life. As Grif Stockley wrote, "Beneath her lovely clothes and effusive manner she possessed a will of steel, energy to match, and an ego, as she became famous, that increas- ingly put herself at the center of the universe.... She was not like her friend Rosa Parks—humility was not Bates's long suit. Had it been, she would have been washed away as a historical footnote in the tidal wave of pressure of 195/."36

In 1952 Daisy Bates served as a tour director and chaperone for the Spirit of Cotton tour, an event the National Council of Negro Women sponsored in conjunction with the annual Memphis Cotton Makers Jubilee, the black coun- terpart to the all-white Memphis Cotton Carnival.37 Bates chaired the National

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 201

Council of Negro Women's Citizenship Education Committee in Little Rock, and she had worked for two years as the Little Rock chair for the jubilee. The tour had stops in Memphis, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York, Phila- delphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. In each city, the women met with community leaders on both sides of the color line. Adams called this her "for- mal coming out in the national black press," suggesting that black reporters ex- hibited a "level of fascination" with the fair-skinned, beautiful young chaperone from Little Rock.38 The Pittsburgh Courier referred to her as "a new personal- ity."39 The stylish, petite Bates was experiencing many of the same reactions in Little Rock, and the extensive press coverage of the tour enhanced her image as an attractive and effective black leader.

Upon her return to Little Rock, the thirty-nine-year-old Bates achieved the presidency of the NAACP'S Arkansas State Conference of Branches, largely be- cause that organization was at a low ebb financially and organizationally; she and L. C. were able to engineer her elevation from vice president to president at a poorly attended conference where other candidates did not offer themselves.40

The national office had expressed increasing concern about the dearth of lead- ership in Arkansas, and Daisy and L. C. had long railed against the influence of the black clergy who opposed the NAACP.41 Daisy soon proved up to the task, increasing memberships from 201 to 720 in her first year as president.42 She threw herself into the work with the zeal of a person who has finally found her calling, and she was a dynamic and positive leader. She resurrected languishing branches around the state, while L. C. promoted her work in the Arkansas State Press. The lawyers in the national office were delighted, and they discovered that they liked her.43 Bates was equally thrilled to be proving her mettle.

Following the lead of the national NAACP, Daisy and L. C. focused their at- tention on educational equality after the ruling in the Brown v. Board of Educa- tion case in 1954, which outlawed segregation in the schools. As Janice Kearney wrote, they used the Arkansas State Press "to educate the local black community about the importance of school integration to racial progress"; the result was that they were able to build "an informed black community that not just expressed unity against segregation in 1957, but, more important, understood the national implications inherent in the outcome of what began as a local conflict."44 One of her future lieutenants would later describe Daisy as "having no skills," and he believed that L. C. was the brains behind the operation.45 The Central High School vice principal for girls, Elizabeth Huckaby, thought otherwise, writing in her memoir: "I could see why Mrs. Bates was successful as president of the state NAACP. She was a good infighter, persistent, intelligent, and unintimidated—a woman who had made a choice of this career fully aware of its dangers to her

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202 E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

person and also its rewards in prestige and in service to her people."46 As would in time become clear, Daisy Bates was also a master of public relations, and a part of her persuasiveness in that role was her unwavering attention to how she presented herself to the world. Possessed of a large ego and confident of her beauty and charm, Bates worked tenaciously to maintain a public facade that must have been as exhausting as it was effective.

In the year after Brown, while the nation waited for implementation orders from the Supreme Court (a directive in 1955 that would come to be known as Brown II), Little Rock school superintendent Virgil T. Blossom spoke to hun- dreds of parents in dozens of meetings all over the city.47 His school board had announced the week after Brown that they would comply, and he set about educating his patrons and formulating a workable plan.48 Daisy Bates made it her business to attend as many of these meetings as possible, and she quickly realized that the superintendent was saying different things to white and black audiences.49 She called him on it, asking pointed questions in front of large groups of people. It soon became apparent that her presence at a meeting left him visibly flustered. She informed Thurgood Marshall in the national NAACP office that she did not trust the superintendent.50

Shortly before Brown II came down on May 31, 1955, Virgil Blossom an- nounced the Little Rock School District's meager proposal, which came to be known as the Blossom Plan. It involved a gradual, phased program of integra- tion that openly called for "minimum compliance" with the Brown II directive and specified no date for implementation.51 Bates immediately began to recruit students to participate in the desegregation process; many of them were mem- bers of the youth chapter of the NAACP that she had organized in 1954.52 Increas- ingly she was recognized as the African American community's spokesperson on integration and its most zealous advocate, and the national black press began to view her as a rising star in the civil rights movement.53

In February 1956 the Little Rock NAACP, despairing of receiving fair treat- ment from the Little Rock school board, filed suit in federal district court de- manding full and immediate integration in a case styled Aaron v. Cooper.54" Daisy Bates's stunning exchange with Leon Catlett occurred while he was tak- ing depositions in that case. The federal judge ruled in favor of the school board, arguing that they had made a "prompt and reasonable start" toward desegrega- tion.55 The NAACP attorneys appealed the decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the district judge's decision but also ordered him to retain jurisdiction in the case and set an implementation date of September 1957.56 Now it was definite that integration, however limited, would proceed in Little Rock.

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 203

By this time the forces of white resistance to integration throughout the South—soon to be called "massive resistance"—had begun to gain momentum, and the Arkansas State Press and the Little Rock NAACP came under increasing attack. In the February 1957 session of the Arkansas General Assembly, segre- gationists introduced and passed four bills designed to cripple the integration effort in Arkansas.57 The most serious of these created the State Sovereignty Commission whose purpose was, according to NAACP lawyer Wiley Branton, "to require members of the NAACP and other civil rights organizations to reg- ister with a state agency and to report their various activities and finances."58

Increasingly militant, L. C. Bates refused to moderate his tone in the face of this assault, and both he and Daisy seemed to draw strength from the charge into battle. It was, however, a decision that would cost L. C. his newspaper and Daisy her health.

During the spring of 1957, Virgil Blossom initiated a "screening" process, using the black principals, to determine which black children would be eligible to participate in integration. When Daisy Bates learned of this through some of the members of the NAACP'S youth council, she contacted the black principals, who then suggested that Blossom should meet with Bates to explain his proce- dures.59 The meeting occurred in May, and Bates took with her several mem- bers of the Little Rock NAACP'S executive committee, as well as L. C. Blossom dismayed the assembled group by stating, "I feel that for this transition from segregation to integration in the Little Rock school system, we should select and encourage only the best Negro students to attend Central High School—so that no criticism of the integration process could be attributed to inefficiency, poor scholarship, low morals, or poor citizenship." The Bates group responded to Blossom's suggestions by saying that the process of screening students "seemed only to instill a feeling of inferiority, fear, and intimidation, and that the proce- dure should be discontinued." Blossom demurred.60

Through the summer, Bates felt fairly confident that integration would pro- ceed in September without incident, but a week before the school year was to begin, white segregationists threw a rock through a window of her new "dream" home and burned a cross on her lawn.61 She wrote to Gloster Current in the national NAACP office that "there is a real campaign of terror going on down here. . . . We have set up the flood lights in front of my home and it is being guarded around the clock."62 This was just the beginning of what would become two years of unremitting threats of violence and venomous personal insults that rabid white segregationists hurled at Daisy and L. C. Bates. The complicated legal maneuvers undertaken by a beleaguered school board, the encouragement of the segregationists by an opportunistic governor, and especially the danger of

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204 E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

harm to the black children who desegregated Central High School—all turned Daisy Bates into a warrior. From this point forward, Bates became uncompro- mising in her demands for racial justice.

On the evening of September 2,1957, in a surprise move, Governor Orval E. Faubus stationed a contingent of the Arkansas National Guard around Cen- tral High School. Speaking in a televised address later that evening, Faubus claimed that he had given the soldiers the responsibility to maintain law and order when school started the next day.63 Neither Virgil Blossom nor Daisy Bates knew whether the governor intended to prevent integration or protect it. Blossom immediately called the black parents and asked them to keep their children out of school and bring them to a meeting in his office in the morning. The parents called Bates and asked her to be present. While a mob of angry whites gathered in front of Central High the next morning, the black children, their parents, and Bates met in the superintendent's office. They were dismayed to hear him suggest that the children should approach the school the next day unaccompanied by their parents. He thought it would be easier to protect them if the adults were not present. One of the students, Carlotta Walls (later LaNier), remembered in her memoir that "the room was so still, it felt as if no one even breathed."64

In conversations that day with the national NAACP office, Bates admitted that she did not know why the National Guard had been stationed at Central High. Thurgood Marshall told her that in order to proceed legally against the governor (if indeed he was obstructing the students' entry), someone would have to force a statement from the National Guard that they were there to pre- vent the black students from entering the school.65 Through a harried afternoon and evening, Bates dealt with the concerns of worried parents, the demands of her own organization, and the presence of a growing contingent of the African American press, which had decided to use her home as their headquarters.66

Bates could not free herself from the horrifying images of what could happen to the black children if they approached Central High School unprotected.67

Late in the evening she hit on the idea of having the students escorted to the school by an integrated group of ministers.68 After a number of frantic phone calls, she received a few commitments, and after midnight she began to call the parents of the black students (at this point, seventeen had been selected to at- tend), telling them to gather a couple of blocks from the school so they could be escorted in safety.69 Unable to find a number for Elizabeth Eckford, she fell into bed exhausted about 3 a.m., intending to contact her in the morning. Bates had begun the habit of taking a sleeping pill with scotch, and when she awoke after only two hours of sleep, she forgot to call Elizabeth's parents.70

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 205

On Wednesday morning, September 4, Daisy and L. C. were in the car headed to the designated rendezvous point when they heard on the radio that a young girl was being mobbed in front of Central High School. "Oh my God I forgot Elizabeth!" she screamed in horror.71 L. C. jumped from the car, a gun in his pocket, and ran to find Elizabeth, while Daisy drove on to meet the other stu- dents. After a harrowing, life-scarring thirty minutes, Elizabeth made it onto a city bus and left the scene.72 The other eight children who showed up walked with four ministers as far as the National Guard blockade, where a soldier told them that he could not admit them on orders from the governor.73 Now Thur- good Marshall had the evidence he needed to proceed legally against the state of Arkansas for obstruction of a federal mandate.

When the group left Central High after being turned away on that first day, Bates took nine of the courageous students to Virgil Blossom's office, hoping he would be able to come up with some course of action. He was not in, so she then took them to the office of the U.S. attorney, who greeted them with a "deer in the headlights" look and clearly did not know what to do. Confusion reigned in all quarters.74 The courageous students, soon to be dubbed the "Little Rock Nine"—Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mother- shed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Car- lotta Walls—stayed the course through a lonely, damaging year, earning the right to pass into history as civil rights warriors.75

The school board appealed immediately to the federal judge for further in- structions.76 The judge who earlier had retained jurisdiction in the case had recused himself (to preserve his political viability), and the visiting judge, Ron- ald Davies, was from North Dakota and had demonstrated in an earlier rul- ing that he had little sympathy for the school board's dilemma.77 Three days later he ordered the board to proceed with integration immediately.78 Governor Faubus had created a constitutional crisis by pitting state against federal power, and the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower did not know what to do next.79 Neither did Judge Davies. On September 10 he issued an order directing the U.S. attorney general and the U.S. attorney in Little Rock to enter the case as friends of the court, thereby authorizing them to advise and assist him in this convoluted situation.80 The NAACP lawyers in Little Rock also filed a pleading asking for an injunction against Faubus. Davies set a trial date of September 20, giving himself time to attend the wedding of his youngest daughter.81

During the interim, "four plane loads" of FBI agents continued an investiga- tion they had begun a week earlier in an effort to substantiate or disprove Gov- ernor Faubus's claim that great potential for violence existed in Little Rock.82 A summary of their report, which was leaked to favored journalists, claimed that

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206 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

no such threat existed; the full report, however, which historian Tony Freyer ob- tained years later through the use of the Freedom of Information Act, detailed extensive threats and dangers of violence.83 The FBI agents also investigated Daisy Bates in an attempt to ascertain if she had any ties to the Communist Party.84

In this period, while the black students were out of school, they received many invitations from around the country offering them opportunities to leave Little Rock and pursue their education elsewhere. Bates called them together and gave them the letters and invitations, explaining to them that it was their decision to make. They discussed the possibilities of making up time if they transferred to another school, but finally one of them said thoughtfully, "You know we cannot go anywhere, for if we do, the entire fight would be lost." When Bates called the parents to inform them of their children's decision, they told her that "they had already been informed that the children had decided to remain and added, cWe are with you ioo%.'"85

In the meantime, Arkansas congressman Brooks Hays had arranged a meeting between Governor Faubus and President Eisenhower at the president's vacation retreat in Newport, Rhode Island. Though their meeting was amicable, it was inconclusive, and Faubus returned to Arkansas increasingly aware that his stance was at odds with the thinking of the federal government, the Little Rock school board, and his state's leading newspaper. At the trial on September 20, Judge Da- vies directed Faubus to stop interfering with the orders of the court. Faubus with- drew the National Guard from their posts around Central High School and flew off to a meeting of the Southern Governors' Conference in Sea Island, Georgia.

Over the weekend, Virgil Blossom, Brooks Hays, Harry Ashmore (editor of the Arkansas Gazette), Mayor Woodrow Mann, former Arkansas governor Sid McMath, and Edwin Dunaway (a white, liberal lawyer and close friend of Daisy Bates) worked frantically to prepare for the violence at Central High School that they had said publicly would not happen. They secured a commitment from the Little Rock Police Department that its officers would turn out in force to preserve the peace when the nine black children attempted once again to enter the school.86 They asked Daisy Bates to secure commitments from the nine students' parents that their children would brave the mob one more time, even though Faubus had asked the NAACP to withhold the students through a "cool- ing off period."87 Bates recalled: "The kids were so courageous. They were ready to go and they wanted to go. The whites didn't want them and it made them want to go more."88 Ernest Green remembered later, with characteristic teenage invincibility, that he never dreamed he could be hurt. Terrence Roberts thought the white kids would like him once they got to know him. Only Daisy Bates had the sickening feeling that something could go terribly wrong.89

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 207

Bates reported to Gloster Current at NAACP headquarters in New York that she spent all day on Sunday, September 22, working with Ashmore, Dunaway, and Mann, trying to get the federal government to provide some kind of pro- tection for the black children when they entered Central High. The Justice De- partment refused.90 Late on Sunday night Virgil Blossom called Bates and told her to have the nine students at her house on Monday morning and then await instructions on how to proceed. The scene at her house that morning was fren- zied, with the students, their parents, and a swarm of national reporters crowd- ing the small home. In the two weeks that the children had been out of school, they had had frequent interviews with the national black press. Bates recalled a few years later: "I would always be present so they couldn't put words in the children's mouth.... Whenever they would ask a loaded question I would say you are not being fair with u s . . . . Finally we won most of the reporters.... It was important that the reporters themselves understood the children . . . they [the students] weren't handpicked by me."91

The radio at the Bates home blared frequent reports about the huge and growing crowd outside Central High and the threatening comments many of the emotional segregationists were making.92 Finally, the assistant police chief, Gene Smith, called to say that plans were in place to allow the children to enter the school through an out-of-the-way door on the south side of the building.93

Most of the white reporters dashed to their cars as soon as the phone call came through, but several of the black reporters waited to hear the full details, and as an unintended consequence they functioned as a diversionary tactic—and suffered severe beatings—while the black students scurried into the school.94

When the white mob realized that the black children had gotten inside, they set up a howl that lasted for hours; the school librarian described it as sound- ing like an earthquake or storm, "a steady, deep roar all the time."95 The rioters lashed out at the white policemen who guarded the perimeter of the campus, many of whom were segregationists themselves. New York Times reporter Claude Sitton wrote later that what kept the police lines from breaking during the riot- ing was that "those policemen were more afraid of big Gene Smith than they were of the mob."96 As Smith told Harry Ashmore from a pay phone at the scene, he had walked inside the police line from one end to the other, over and over, and "I've told those sons of bitches if any of them step back I'd shoot them in the back of the head."97

Back at the Bates home, the anxious parents listened to the continuing radio reports. Many white students left the school as soon as the black children went in, and they gave lurid reports to the eagerly waiting reporters. One claimed that he had seen several fights between black and white students in the corridors

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208 E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

and "three Negroes with blood on their clothing."98 After each report, Daisy Bates secured an assurance from Gene Smith that the rumors were false, but a frightened Oscar Eckford spoke for the assembled parents when he screamed at Bates, "Well, if it's not true, why would they say such things on the air?"99

By noon, Smith, Blossom, and Mann had concluded that the mob could not be controlled and the black children were increasingly at risk, and the trio de- cided to remove the black students from the school, to the consternation of the school principal and the black kids themselves, who all thought that the situa- tion inside the school was under control.100 Bates announced to the reporters gathered at her home that afternoon: "The children will not return to Central High School until they have the assurance of the President of the United States that they will have protection against the mob."101 By suppertime that night, Eisenhower had issued a proclamation calling on the citizens of Little Rock to refrain from their "willful obstruction of justice" and disperse, but there was no mention of federal protection for the children.102

The Little Rock police guarded the Bates home and each of the homes of the nine children that night, and a cadre of well-armed friends and neighbors also gathered at Daisy and L. C.'s house. The segregationists felt they had won a victory at the school, and the Bateses' telephone rang constantly with whites hurling crude insults and vicious threats. Much of the national black press corps had gathered at the small frame house, including Alex Wilson, who had been beaten that day at the high school. The atmosphere was tense and expectant, because there had been rumors of a caravan of segregationists descending on Little Rock from east Arkansas. About 10:30 p.m., one of the guards ran in and reported that police had stopped a caravan of about one hundred cars just two blocks from the Bates home and that the cars had been loaded with guns, am- munition, and dynamite.103 That report proved to be exaggerated, but it was quite alarming at the time.

About 2 a.m., the phone rang. When Daisy answered a white voice an- nounced: "We just had our first killing in Little Rock and you are responsible." That report also turned out to be false, but as Bates recalled three years later: "I was absolutely at the breaking point because this is what we didn't want. This is what Faubus had predicted, this is what we had worked so hard against."104 Daisy walked into her bedroom and cried, "God how much can a person stand?" She felt that she just could not take any more. "The way I felt at that moment if I could have lifted the cotton curtain and walk[ed] behind the iron curtain I would have told America to go straight to hell. Because, I felt absolutely there was no justice anywhere in America." Bates thought it was terrible "for children and adults to be subjected to this kind of treatment with no help forthcoming

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 209

and we had begged the president and I had begged for relief. And these children had gone into two mobs. What can you expect in America? And so I cried.... I hated everything and everybody at that moment."105

No one slept very much that night. The next morning about 7:30, Bates re- ceived a telephone call from a man who told her, "We didn't get you last night, but we will. And you better not try to put those coons in our school!"106 In her conversation with Gloster Current at the NAACP office in New York that morn- ing, Daisy said: "The children are at home where they are going to stay. We cannot subject these children to that mob violence."107

Across town, Mayor Woodrow Mann sent a frantic and wildly exaggerated telegram to President Eisenhower, requesting federal troops. Much discussion and preparation in Little Rock and Washington, D.C., had preceded the sending of that telegram, and the president was ready.108 Shortly before noon Eisenhower ordered units of the famed loist Airborne Division of the U.S. Army to Little Rock; he also federalized the Arkansas National Guard, thereby taking those troops out of Faubus's control.109 By late afternoon an integrated force of 856 soldiers had landed at the Little Rock Air Base, and by nightfall 319 of these men, all white, had taken up stations around Central High School. Another 99 men arrived by land the next day.

At first Bates was relieved when she learned the federal troops were coming. People were asking her why she didn't just give up and whether the price was worth it. At times she wondered. She remembered: "I just didn't see how I could win. With the bickering in Washington . . . the background check, whether I was being directed by Russia or what. This was a great decision for me to make whether I should continue."110 Bates realized that she held the lives of nine children in her hands, and in a rare moment of quiet and reflection she asked herself, "Why am I the person to have to do this? . . . What have I done? Have I done the right thing? . . . In the final analysis I had to make the decision. If one child died I would be blamed for it and this is what hit me right between the eyes."111

In a typescript that did not make it into her published memoir, Bates asked herself at this point, "Had I made the right decision? In my quest for justice, had I helped my people? Or was this day the result of a vendetta I made against all white people at the age of six years?"112 Bates felt an overwhelming exhaustion, and she realized that "I had been fighting all my life."113 Feeling she was nearing mental and physical collapse, she wanted to give up.114 She was so tired that she could barely lift her feet, but she answered the ringing telephone to hear some- one cursing at her: "You are bringing in these damn integrated troops.... if you think this is going to stop us you have another goddamn thing coming . . . you

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210 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

black bitch."115 Bates knew then that she could not give up, but she decided it was time for "a scotch and a sleeping pill."116

About 1:00 a.m. Virgil Blossom called to say that the children should plan to go into the school that morning. Bates responded: "I can't do it. I just called nine parents and told them tomorrow not today.... I just can't do i t . . . you've got to do i t . . . . How am I going to do it? He said I don't know . . . you have to do i t . . . [and I said] I certainly am not driving around this city alone tonight." So Blossom called the black principals, both men, to go with her, and she "went and took a bigger scotch."117 The three African American adults drove around to the homes of all nine children and told the parents to have the kids at her house the next morning at 8:30. Gloria Ray's father met them at the door with a shotgun in hand and refused their request, saying, "I don't care if the President of the United States gave you those instructions! . . . I won't let Gloria go. She's faced two mobs and that's enough."118 Bates recalled later that she was thinking as "we eased on down the steps . . . Lordy are we going to have this at every one of them?"119 The three had breakfast about 4 a.m. and then went to bed. All the children were at her house the next morning at 8:25 when an army station wagon pulled up to drive them to school.120 Gloria Ray's father had delivered his daughter and said, "Here, Daisy, she's yours. She's determined to go."121

Surrounded by soldiers, the Little Rock Nine climbed the imposing, curving staircase outside Central High School and marched triumphantly through the huge front doors. The helmeted troops guarding the school's perimeter, with bayonets affixed to their guns, made short work of the slight resistance outside the school. The army's analysis of the first day was that its initial show offeree was "an unqualified success."122 The parents of the nine students sent a letter to President Eisenhower saying, "We the parents of the nine Negro children who have enrolled at Little Rock Central High School want you to know that your actions in safeguarding their rights have strengthened our faith in democracy. Now as never before we have an abiding feeling of belonging and purposeful- ness."123 Inside the school, without soldiers to protect them in the classrooms, the nine young heroes engaged in a new kind of battle, one that escalated as the year progressed, one for which they had no preparation.

In the ensuing weeks, the nine youngsters gathered frequently after school at Mrs. Bates's home, where they would decompress in the room downstairs she called her "rumpus room."124 They would share their stories of the mistreatment they were receiving inside the school, they would drink Cokes, and they would dance. Daisy Bates coached them on all sorts of things: how to hold their books so they couldn't be knocked out of their arms, how to walk so they looked dig- nified and proud, and how to interact with the reporters who always pressed

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 211

for details on life inside the school. She also tried to prepare them for the real possibility of injury or death. As she remembered two decades later, "So I told them that one of us might die in this fight. And I said to them, clf they kill me, you would have to go on. If I die, don't you stop. If Jeff died ...' He said, CI ain't going to die' (laughs)."125 Daisy Bates began to think of them as "her" children, and they would soothe a yearning she had long felt.126 She told one of her bi- ographers near the end of her life, "All my children . . . I mean . .. the ones I called mine . . . the nine, those sweet children who sacrificed so much, lost so much,. .. they would call me 'Miss Daisy.' And I knew that was a real sign of respect."127

Fairly precipitously, the army began to reduce its presence in Little Rock. The NAACP had encouraged the nine black students to report incidents of ha- rassment, such as shoving in the halls, name calling, close following that made their heels bleed, and the throwing of sharpened pencils, but some of the nine felt that most of the school authorities seemed to resent their reporting, and the kids grew increasingly reluctant to do so. The NAACP field secretary, Clar- ence Laws, had reported to his superiors that this reluctance, combined with "the failure of the Army and the school to make known the actual situation in the school, gives the impression of a peace and quiet which does not actually exist," and he feared that this incorrect impression could "cause the untimely withdrawal of all troops."128 He was right. On November 27 the army withdrew the last of its men, leaving the protection of the black students to the Arkansas National Guard.129 The attacks inside the school escalated.

About this time, Daisy and L. C. received word that someone had offered $10,000 to any person or organization who could get the nine out of Central High School. Thelma Mother shed's mother called Bates to tell her that a local black politician, I. S. McClinton, had come to her home and said, "I would not risk my child's life." Other parents reported that Reverend Wesley E. Hayes, the pastor of Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church, told them that "we were just tearing up the town; the town would never be the same again." L. C. put an article on the front page of the Arkansas State Press saying that they had heard about the $10,000 and that "some people" had tried to collect, promising that the next time he heard such stories, he was "going to print names." That stopped the problem.130

Bates settled into a demanding schedule of giving speeches every weekend all over the country for the NAACP.BI Thousands of letters arrived at her house during this period, some vicious and hateful, some filled with praise for her and the nine students.132 Financial contributions also began to arrive, and Bates created a scholarship fund for "her" young students' college educations.133 The

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212 E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

Ku Klux Klan printed cards declaring "Open season on Daisy Bates" and listed her address.134 Fire bombs and stones continued to be hurled at her house. Her front door was riddled with bullet holes.135 One woman called every morning at 3:00 a.m. to harass her.136 Daisy Bates had become the face of integration in Little Rock, and it was an exhausting, exhilarating time in her life.137

Bates reflected a decade after the crisis: "We were determined they were not going to chase us out of town. Had they chased us out of town, the movement would have died."138 This was a characteristic overstatement from Bates, who always placed herself at the center of the action. In interviews and in her auto- biography she frequently exaggerated her role, as when she told this interviewer that she had marched with the students up to the line of the National Guards- men, when the abundant photographs from that day show she was not there.139

This is perhaps understandable, given the high emotion of the period, but it was a pattern that opened her to severe criticism, especially from some of the Little Rock Nine, who felt that they and their parents should have received more of the credit for keeping "the movement" alive.140

In February 1958 the Little Rock school board went back to the federal courts and asked for a delay of two and a half years so passions and tempers could cool.141 As soon as Judge Harry Lemley granted the requested delay, the NAACP appealed his decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The Eighth Circuit reversed Lemley, and the Little Rock school board appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. In an unusual called session of the Court, that body ruled in Cooper v. Aaron that the presence of violent resistance was an insufficient reason to deprive black citizens of their rights, and the justices ordered the school board to proceed with the plan of integration it had initi- ated the year before.142 In preparation for just such a decision, a special session of the Arkansas legislature had passed a series of anti-integration laws, one of which allowed the governor to close the schools in the event of "forced inte- gration."143 On September 12,1958, Orval Faubus closed all the high schools in Little Rock.144

Daisy Bates flew into action, of course, attempting to find tutors for the seven remaining students (Minnijean Brown had been expelled in February and Ernest Green had graduated with his class in May).145 Fairly quickly, the families of Terrence Roberts and Gloria Ray moved away from Little Rock, but the remaining five enrolled together to take correspondence courses through the University of Arkansas, with the national office of the NAACP footing the bill.146 That organization had decided it needed the remaining children to stay in Little Rock, explaining, "Obviously if the Negro students currently enrolled in Central High School should leave the state for education elsewhere, there

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 213

would presumably be no immediate reason why the high school could not be re-opened on an all-white basis."147 Bates continued her grueling routine of rais- ing money for the students' college scholarship fund, running interference with visiting reporters, speaking around the country for the NAACP, and supporting her increasingly frantic husband as his newspaper foundered (despite signifi- cant infusions of cash from the national NAACP office) as a result of his militant championing of desegregation in Little Rock.148

During the school year of 1958-1959, remembered in Little Rock as "the lost year," the school board resigned, new school board elections produced a split board with three strong segregationists and three businessmen who advocated reopening the schools on an integrated basis, the all-white Women's Emer- gency Committee to Open Our Schools emerged as a new force in Little Rock politics, the split school board fired forty-four of the city's best teachers (ac- cusing them of being integrationists), and the business community found its voice with a campaign called Stop This Outrageous Purge, which ousted the segregationist school board members and elected three "moderate" members who rehired the fired teachers. White students moved to neighboring towns to attend school, went off to the prestigious prep schools that had recruited them heavily, or attended one of the private schools that opened during the year. Most black high school students remained out of school, and many never went back.149

By the fall of 1959, the city's white leaders had learned the high cost of main- taining segregation and had decided that industrial and business growth de- pended on providing public education for their youth. Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls enrolled again in Central High School, and the school year started without much fanfare.150 The months of unrelenting stress had taken their toll on Daisy Bates, however, and when the David McKay Publishing Company of- fered her a contract to write a book about her experiences, she jumped at the opportunity and moved to New York. She told friends that "she needed to leave the scene of the war, to save her own self."151 As she told one biographer, "The Crisis had placed every part of her life in jeopardy; her marriage, her health, her sanity and certainly hers [sic] and L. C.'s financial stability."152 Daisy and L. C.'s marriage had suffered as she had moved out from under his wing and onto center stage. Their business had suffered as advertising and subscriptions fell off sharply at the Arkansas State Press in response to a concerted campaign by segregationists.153 The newspaper closed in 1959, and L. C. went to work for the NAACP as a field secretary under Daisy Bates's leadership (she was still president of the Arkansas State Conference of Branches), a reversal of roles that undoubt- edly increased their marital stress.154

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214 E L I Z A B E T H JACOWAY

From 1960 to 1962, Daisy lived in New York, with frequent trips back to Ar- kansas to check on the situation there.155 She also continued her schedule of speaking around the country for the NAACP, and she joined that organization s national board.156 She found herself unable to write her memoir, however, in part because of its searing emotional nature, in part because she had no confi- dence in her writing abilities. Thrown into a glamorous world of celebrity and high living where she was the star of the moment, she found a thousand excuses to avoid the rigors of writing. The names in her address book included Lena Home, Harry Belafonte, Alex Haley, Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Miles Davis, Charles Diggs, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Spingarn, and, of course, Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall.157 Bates began to dream about making a movie of her life, with her friend Lena Home starring as Daisy.158 Rumors made their way back to Little Rock that she was having an affair with a white man, and of course L. C. suffered.159 Finally, with the assistance of at least four ghostwriters, including Alex Haley and Benjamin Fine, Bates finished her book and saw it published.160 She returned to Little Rock and divorced L. C. in 1963.161

Daisy and L. C. remarried within six months, but their brief divorce indicated the extreme nature of Daisy's stress and exhaustion.162 (They remained married until L. C.'s death in 1980.) Also in 1963, Daisy spoke at the March on Washington, the only woman invited to do so, and she continued work she had been doing for President John F. Kennedy: registering voters in several northern cities.163 After Kennedy's assassination, Bates went to work for President Lyndon Johnson; as she said in an interview ten years later, "it was simply because we had to eat. We couldn't get a job in Little Rock. We had to make payments on our house."164 In 1965, the frantic pace of Daisy Bates's life caught up with her, and she suffered a debilitating stroke that impaired her speech and her gait.165 Determined to continue to make her mark, she moved to Mitchellville, a tiny, impoverished town in south Arkansas, and for six years applied all the tools she had acquired working in the War on Poverty to bring the little town back to life.166 The fiery crusader just could not yield to the demands of age and a lifetime of stress, and she was determined to keep going, to keep making a difference.

In 1976, this author interviewed Daisy Bates for the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina. A few months later, she called to ask if I could bring two professors to meet her, and Bates agreed. The obligatory niceties out of the way, Bates asked if they would like something to drink, such as a cup of tea. The two northern gentlemen, not wanting to put their impaired hostess to any trouble, declined. As a southern girl, she understood what was being offered, and she accepted. Bates disappeared briefly and then returned carrying a silver tea service and lovely bone china, and she served her guests

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 215

with as much confidence and elegance as any lady in an English country manor. She was indomitable, and she was determined to show these three white profes- sors that she knew "how to do." It was classic Daisy with an impressive ego and a lot of brass. They could all see how the little girl from Huttig had made her way to the top of the civil rights elite.

After a long decline, Daisy Bates died in 1999 at the age of eighty-six. She was the first and only woman to lie in state in Arkansas's capitol rotunda, and a thousand people came to pay their respects.167 In the following years, the street that runs beside Central High School was renamed for her; a day honoring her was added to the Arkansas calendar; and her home became a civil rights shrine.168 Aside from these tributes, Bates has never received the widespread recognition her leadership and sacrifices should have brought.

Although Daisy Bates was superseded in the civil rights pantheon by heroes who took a more militant stance and made larger demands, none were more courageous, or more determined, or more glamorous. At the time of her death, an editorial in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said that "Daisy Bates demon- strated . . . that some things never go out of style: courage, candor, honor, char- acter, simple human dignity."169 As one of her biographers reflected, "The most prolific of writers could have never created a story as incredible as the life that Daisy Bates lived," and this is undoubtedly true.170 Near the end of her life Bates suggested that despite the battle scars, she had no regrets about any of her in- volvement. She had long ago concluded that "I was put here to make a differ- ence."171 She did that, in spite of her doubts and insecurities, and the nation is in her debt.

NOTES

I thank the Delta Women Writers symposium for their rigorous and generous critiques of this chapter.

1. Charles Allbright, "Leaders of N A A C P Declare They Want Desegregation Now," Arkansas Ga- zette, May 5,1956, IA.

2. John Aaron v. William G. Cooper, Eastern U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Arkansas, Western Division, Depositions of the Witnesses, Rev. J. C. Crenshaw and Mrs. L. C. Bates, Taken at Instance of Defendants, May 4,1956, box 6, folder i, 89, Daisy Bates Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison (hereafter cited as WHS).

3. John Lewis Adams, "'Time for a Showdown: The Partnership of Daisy and L. C. Bates, and the Politics of Gender Protest and Marriage," Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2014, 359. For another interesting treatment of the influence of gender in Daisy Bates's life, see John Kirk, "Daisy Bates, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis: A Gendered Perspective," in Gender and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Peter Ling and Sha- ron Monteith (New York: Garland, 1999), 17-40. For an excellent discussion of the southern regions

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216 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

"racial etiquette," see David R. Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990).

4. Bates reflected late in life: "I always felt as if life had prepared me for the role I played in Little Rock." Janis F. Kearney, Daisy: Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Little Rock, Ark.: Writing Our World Publishing, 2013), 103. For the most comprehensive and scholarly Bates biography, see Grif Stockley, Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas (Jackson: University Press of Mis- sissippi, 2005).

5. Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir by Daisy Bates (1962; repr., Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987), 10-15; Kearney, Daisy, 120-24. See also Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin, The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine (New York: Clarion, 2004), 8. Two of Bates's biographers, Grif Stockley and John Adams, have argued that much of her autobiography is unreliable, if not outright fictionalized. Adams suggested that "the construction of her early years is consistent with an African-American autobiographical writing tradition that uses the power of individual narratives to reflect the general experiences of the race" (Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 96).

6. Kearney, Daisy, 125. On his deathbed Orlee Smith begged Daisy to turn her hatred and bit- terness into a positive force, fearing that otherwise it would destroy her (Bates, Long Shadow, 29).

7. Kearney, Daisy, 108. 8. Ibid., 109. Bates was always disturbed when the public misunderstood her motives: "It both-

ered me so much when people would look at me as if I was just doing something to get attention, or to make a name for myself" (126).

9. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 235. 10. Ibid., 139. White civil rights advocate Reverend Will D. Campbell of the National Council

of Churches called her "the beautiful and indomitable Daisy Bates" (Fradin and Fradin, Power of One, xi).

11. "Who Is to Blame?" Arkansas State Press, December 18,1942. Daisy was also very outspoken; as she told biographer Janis Kearney, "I never was able to keep my mouth closed, and never cared about putting things nicely so people could stomach them. L.C. used to get so mad at me about that, but he also was very proud of how brave I was" (Kearney, Daisy, 156).

12. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 44; Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 181-82. Bates later recalled that many in Little Rock's African American community felt that she was an outsider who was "stirring up trouble." See Daisy Bates interview with Elizabeth Jacoway, October 11,1976, 54, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (hereafter SOHP).

13. Brian Lanker, I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1989), 73.

14. Linda S. Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 12,1992; Stockley, Daisy Bates, 24-25; Kearney, Daisy, 160-62; Bates, Long Shadow, 32-33.

15. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 140. 16. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 27; Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 8. For some interesting insights on

this period in her life, see Fradin and Fradin, Power of One, 30-31. 17. Kearney, Daisy, 113; Leroy Matthew Christophe, The African American Hall of Fame (Little

Rock, Ark.: National Dunbar Alumni Association of Little Rock, 1993), 71. A childhood friend be- lieved that Daisy might have attended high school while she lived with her grandmother in another town for two or three years (Fradin and Fradin, Power of One, 29).

18. Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates." Bates claimed in her autobiography that she had taken some correspondence courses at Philander Smith and at Shorter, where she "took courses in Busi-

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 217

ness Administration, Public Relations, and other subjects related to the newspaper field" (Bates,

Long Shadow, 38-39). In an interview with this author, she noted that she took flying lessons at

Philander Smith (Bates interview with Jacoway, 15, SOHP). One of her childhood friends thought she

had taken some college courses while in Memphis (Fradin and Fradin, Power of One, 31).

19. Grif Stockley interview with Annie Abrams, in Stockley, Daisy Bates, 281.

20. Faustine C. Jones-Wilson and Erma Glasco-Davis, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School of

Little Rock, Arkansas: "Take from Our Lips a Song, Dunbar to Thee" (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning

Company, 2003), 31-32, 42.

21. Kearney, Daisy, 105.

22. Ibid., 127. Daisy Bates told Kearney: "The one thing that haunted [me] more than the desire

to see our people freed in every w a y . . . was my desire to have a child to call my own. I know how

people gossiped that I was too busy running around the world, being a civil rights queen and [too

busy] with the newspaper to really have time to care for a child" (ibid.).

23. Irene Wassell, "L. C. Bates: Editor of the Arkansas State Press" MA thesis, University of Ar-

kansas, School of Journalism, Little Rock, 1983.

24. Kearney, Daisy, 156.

25. Bates interview with Jacoway, 4, SOHP.

26. Kearney, Daisy, 120.

27. Ibid., 150,160.

28. For example, "City Patrolman Shoots Negro Soldier, Body Riddled while Lying on Ground,

White Military Police Look On," Arkansas State Press, March 27,1942.

29. Bates, Long Shadow, 36-37.

30. Wassell, "L. C. Bates," 36-37.

31. Ibid.

32. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 214.

33. Arkansas State Press, January 16,1942.

34. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 58.

35. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 361.

36. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 58.

37. "Woman Editor Escort for Jubilee Queen," Chicago Defender, March 15,1952; Adams, "Time

for a Showdown," 279-80. See also Cynthia Sadler, "'On Parade': Race, Gender, and Imagery in the

Memphis Mardi Gras, Cotton Carnival, and Cotton Makers' Jubilee," in Tennessee Women: Their

Lives and Times, ed. Beverly Greene Bond and Sarah Wilkerson Freeman (Athens: University of

Georgia Press, 2015), 2:125-51.

38. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 288. Bates's father, Hezekiah Gatson, was said to have been

light-skinned enough to pass for white. According to Bates's biographer Janis Kearney, his mother

was German (Kearney, Daisy, 98).

39. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 20.

40. Ibid., 283-86. Adams wrote that the Arkansas State Conference of Branches "was on the

brink of extinction."

41. Kearney, Daisy, 63.

42. Ibid., 295.

43. Ibid., 285.

44. Ibid., 304.

45. Chris Mercer interview with Grif Stockley, January 17, 2002, in Stockley, Daisy Bates, 50. Roy

Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, disagreed, writing to Pauli Murray: "No one can repay

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218 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

Mrs. Bates for the magnificent job she did in Little Rock. Personally I do not believe any other person had just the right mixture of skills and the exact temperament for success that were the pos- session of Daisy Bates" (Wilkins to Murray, July 18,1958, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, WHS). See also Stockley, Daisy Bates, 149.

46. Elizabeth Huckaby, Crisis at Central High: Little Rock, 1957-1958 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 94.

47. Virgil T. Blossom, It HAS Happened Here (New York: Harper, 1959). 48. Ibid., 25. 49. Bates interview with Jacoway, 14-16, SOHP. 50. Ibid., 15. 51. Blossom, It HAS Happened Here, 21-22. 52. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 296. In the final analysis, the students "selected themselves"

(Bates interview with Jacoway, 12). See also Elizabeth Jacoway, "Not Anger but Sorrow: Minnijean Brown Trickey Remembers the Little Rock Crisis," Arkansas Historical Quarterly (Spring 2005): 7; Terrence Roberts, Lessons from Little Rock (Little Rock, Ark.: Butler Center Books, 2009), 11, 15; Carlotta Walls LaNier, A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School (New York: One World, 2009), 51.

53. Adams, "Time for a Showdown," 327. 54. For a brief treatment of this case as it proceeded all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, see

Elizabeth Jacoway, "Richard C. Butler and the Little Rock School Board: The Quest to Maintain 'Educational Quality,'" Arkansas Historical Quarterly 65, no. i (Spring 2006): 24-38.

55. "Aaron v. Cooper," Race Relations Law Reporter i (October 1956): 859-60. 56. Tony A. Freyer, Little Rock on Trial: "Cooper v. Aaron" and School Desegregation (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 2007), 75-76. 57. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 93-94; Elizabeth Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis

That Shocked the Nation (New York: Free Press, 2007), 59; Bates, Long Shadow, 53. 58. Wiley A. Branton, "Little Rock Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation," Journal of Negro

Education 52 (Summer 1982): 251. 59. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 101; Stockley, Daisy Bates, 97. 60. Frank Smith, "Report of the Conference between the Little Rock School Superintendent and

N A A C P Representatives, May 29,1957," ser. Ill, container A, box 98, folder 2, N A A C P Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

61. "Oral Interview with Mrs. Bates concerning 1957 Crisis, June 21, 1960," Daisy Bates Papers, Manuscript Collection MC582, ser. 6, subser. i, box 12, tape i, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (hereafter Bates interview, UA); Stockley, Daisy Bates, 112-13.

62. Memorandum to Miss Geier from Mr. Current, August 29,1957, ser. Ill, container A, box 98, folder 2, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

63. "Faubus Calls National Guard to Keep Schools Segregated," Arkansas Gazette, September 3, 1957, IA. For a full discussion of Faubus's decision to use the National Guard, see Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 119-27.

64. Bates, Long Shadow, 63; LaNier, A Mighty Long Way, 60. 65. Bates interview with Jacoway, 13, SOHP. 66. In an interview three years later, Bates recalled: "At this time there were 300 reporters around

the clock[.] T h e y . . . stayed at the house[,] they ate up my steaks" (Bates interview, UA, 5). 67. Kearney, Daisy, 135. 68. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 122-23; Bates, Long Shadow, 64.

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 219

69. Kearney, Daisy, 136-37; Bates interview, UA, 3; Bates, Long Shadow, 65. 70. Bates interview, UA, 11. 71. Ibid., 4. 72. Years later, Bates would reflect: "I know that my mistake changed Elizabeth's life . . . but, in

many ways it changed mine as well. I have relived that terrible nightmare so many times" (Kearney, Daisy, 136). Bates claimed that the National Guardsmen made no effort to protect Elizabeth Eckford (Bates, Long Shadow, 71-73).

73. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 125. 74. Ibid., 127. 75. Apparently the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Relman Morin crafted the phrase the "Little

Rock Nine" in Morin, "In This Hurricane's Eye? Calm Settles on City," Arkansas Democrat, Octo- ber 7,1957, 3.

76. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 126-27. 77. For an explanation of Judge John Miller's recusal, see ibid., ch. 5. 78. Lawrence Brooks Hays interview with Ronald A. Tonks, 26, in Southern Baptist Convention

Presidents, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tenn. 79. See Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 132-46, for a discussion of the confusion prevailing in

Washington, D.C. 80. Ray Moseley, "U.S. Begins Move to Enjoin Faubus, 2 Guard Officers; [North Little Rock]

Negroes Turned Back," Arkansas Gazette, September 10,1957, IA. 81. "U.S. Course Plotted to Give Governor His Day in Court," Arkansas Gazette, September 11,

1957, IA. 82. Kearney, Daisy, 144. 83. Warren Olney III to Herbert Brownell, September 13,1957, "Summary of FBI Report in Little

Rock Difficulty," box 5, folder 2, Arthur Brann Caldwell Papers, Mullins Library, University of Ar- kansas, Fayetteville; "F.B.I.—Little Rock Crisis Reports," Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Little Rock.

84. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Daisy Bates file, Grif Stockley Papers, ser. II, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Little Rock.

85. Daisy Bates speech, n.d., Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, WHS; Bates interview, UA, 5. 86. Gene Foreman, "City Will Maintain Order at School, Mayor Says; Ike Bids for Acceptance,"

Arkansas Gazette, September 22,1957, IA. 87. Relman Morin, "Get Negroes Out, Faubus Peace Formula," Montgomery Advertiser, Novem-

ber 18,1957, in Southern Education Reporting Service Papers, Vanderbilt University Special Collec- tions and University Archives, Nashville, Tenn.

88. Lanker, I Dream a World, 73. 89. Ernest Green interview with John Pagan, January 26,1973, 5, Elizabeth Jacoway Little Rock

Crisis Collection, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Little Rock (hereafter EJC); Walter Lister Jr., "Police Guard Negroes if They Go to School in Little Rock Today," New York Herald Tribune, September 23,1957, in Southern Education Reporting Service Papers, Nashville, Tenn.; Daisy Bates interview with John Pagan, August 23,1957, 2, EJC.

90. Transcript of telephone conversation between Daisy Bates and Gloster Current, Septem- ber 23,1957, group III, ser. A, container 98, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

91. Bates interview, UA, 5. 92. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 169; Bates, Long Shadow, 89. 93. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 169.

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220 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

94. Ibid., 172; Stockley, Daisy Bates, 143,145; Bates, Long Shadow, 91. 95. Lola Alice Dunnavant, "Inside Central High School: Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957-1958,"

9-11, EJC. 96. Claude Sitton, "U.S. Marshalls Would Keep Order in Little Rock, Backed by Police," Au-

gust 24,1958, Chattanooga Times. 97. Harry Ashmore interview with Elizabeth Jacoway, November 17,1976, 78, EJC. 98. Robert Troutt, "Growing Violence Forces Withdrawal of 8 Students at Central High," Arkan-

sas Democrat, September 23,1957, i; Bates, Long Shadow, 91. 99. Bates, Long Shadow, 91. 100. Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates." 101. "Negroes Out until Ike Acts," Arkansas Democrat, September 23,1957, i. 102. "Obstruction of Justice in the State of Arkansas by the President of the United States of

America: A Proclamation," September 23, 1957, box 6, folder "Integration—Little Rock, 1957," Dwight David Eisenhower Papers, Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kans. (hereafter DDE).

103. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 145-46. 104. Bates interview, UA, 8. 105. Bates, Long Shadow, 96; Bates interview, UA, 8. 106. Bates, Long Shadow, 96. 107. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 146. 108. See Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 176-78, for a discussion of the maneuvering behind the

telegram. 109. Executive Order 10730: Providing Assistance for the Removal of an Obstruction of Justice

within the State of Arkansas, September 24,1957, box 6, folder "Integration—Little Rock (2)," DDE. no. Bates interview, UA, 9; Daisy Bates FBI file, Grif Stockley Collection, ser. II, box i, folder 5,

Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Little Rock. 111. Bates interview, UA, 11. 112. Bates typescript, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 3, WHS. 113. Bates interview, UA, 11. 114. Kearney, Daisy, 142. 115. Bates interview, UA, i. 116. Ibid., 11. Kearney wrote of this moment: "While there comes a time in the midst of the '57

Crisis that she questions her role, and the sanity of it all, more often, she accepts with fortitude and conviction that this was an opportunity that fate or God, or both presented to her; and she dare[d] not pass it up" (Kearney, Daisy, 73).

117. Bates interview, UA, 12. 118. Bates, Long Shadow, 101-2. Gloria Ray was a straight-A student who wanted to become an

atomic scientist; her father had attended Tuskegee Institute. See "Program for the Citizens National Scholarship Dinner," January 31,1958, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 12, WHS.

119. In her memoir Bates attributed this comment to Leroy Christophe, one of the principals, but in characteristic fashion, in a later interview she claimed it for herself. Bates, Long Shadow, 103.

120. Bates interview, UA, 12. 121. Bates, Long Shadow, 103. 122. Robert W Coakley, Operation Arkansas, Monograph no. 158M (Washington, D.C.: Office of

the Chief of Military History, 1967), 80. 123. Parents to Eisenhower, September 30,1957, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 12, WHS.

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates 221

124. Bates interview with Jacoway, 26, SOHP. In a characteristic attempt to inflate her role, Bates claimed in her memoir that the children met at her house every afternoon (Bates, Long Shadow, 131); the nine students remembered it differently (Stockley, Daisy Bates, 163).

125. Bates interview with Jacoway, 20, SOHP. 126. Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates"; Kearney, Daisy, 146. 127. Kearney, Daisy, 94. 128. Clarence Laws statement, November 14,1957, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, WHS. 129. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 220-21; Shawn A. Fisher, "The Battle of Little Rock," Ph.D.

diss., University of Memphis, 2013, 294. 130. Bates interview with Jacoway, 31, SOHP. 131. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 152,180. Daisy's white friend Fred Darragh, who had "flown the hump"

in World War II, flew her in his own plane on many of these assignments; see Elizabeth Jacoway interview with Fred Darragh, ser. I, box 35, folder 6, EJC.

132. Most of the hate mail contained in the Daisy Bates Papers, WHS, came from Texas, Louisi- ana, California, and northern states; very little came from Arkansas. In her standard response to the positive mail, which was sent to many northern and foreign supporters, Bates wrote: "When this Little Rock school problem has been resolved and the city is permitted to return to its former peace and tranquility, I doubt that those of us who have been close to this problem will recall too much the words and deeds of the bigots and the misguided. Rather, I believe that we will remember most those fine persons like yourself, who spoke or wrote words of praise and encouragement. In our most trying hours these words have been the source of abiding strength and solace." See, for example, Daisy Bates to Grace Paton, February 14,1958, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, WHS.

133. The national NAACP helped with the creation of this scholarship fund; Stockley, Daisy Bates, 166. 134. "Keeping an Eye on Daisy Bates," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 15, 2000. 135. Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates." 136. John Pagan telephone interview with Daisy Bates, August 23,1972, EJC. 137. The vice principal for girls at Central High School, Elizabeth Huckaby, wrote in her memoir:

"The devil himself could not have been more abhorred by the segregationists than Daisy Bates" (Huckaby, Crisis at Central High, 200).

138. Bates interview with Jacoway, 19, SOHP. 139. Ibid., 13. Bates told Linda Caillouet she had entered Central High School with the nine stu-

dents on September 25, but she did not (Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates"). 140. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 224, 226. Bates recognized the problem, but told Janis Kearney, "I

know some people didn't like i t . . . that I got the attention while L.C. and others in the struggle worked just as hard, but got half the attention. But, that's just the way things work" (Kearney, Daisy, 156). In an interview with Grif Stockley, Terrence Roberts recalled, "I would have perhaps wanted her to have a more balanced perspective about that—to see herself more in a service role than the role of occupying the spotlight" (Stockley, Daisy Bates, 224). Stockley concluded that the heart of the issue was that the nine students felt that "their parents' contributions have not been properly recognized" (226).

141. "School Board Cites Inability to Enforce Compliance; Asks U.S. Court to Halt Integration," Arkansas Democrat, February 21,1958, i.

142. Jacoway, "Richard C. Butler and the Little Rock School Board." 143. Ernest Valachovic, "All Faubus Bills Sail Through; House Acts Rapidly to Outstrip Court,"

Arkansas Gazette, August 28,1958, IA.

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222 E L I Z A B E T H J A C O W A Y

144. "Faubus Closes CHS after Court Denies Delay of Integration," Arkansas Gazette, Septem- ber 13, 1958, IA. The Little Rock school board did allow football, however, and the Central High Tigers went on to place second in the state championship. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 270.

145. Bates description of activities, to Gloster B. Current, December 31,1958, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, WHS.

146. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 289. 147. Ibid. 148. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 190. 149. For a full discussion of this period, see Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, chs. 14-16.

150. Ibid., 343-45- 151. Kearney, Daisy, xxii. 152. Ibid. 153. Kirk, "Daisy Bates"; Stockley, Daisy Bates, 181. 154. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 204-5. 155. Ibid., 89. 156. In 1961 Bates wrote to a supporter: "I had to give up the presidency of the Arkansas Chapter

of the NAACP. Working with the National NAACP, raising funds for the children's education, and contributing what time and money I can for the C O R E sit-ins, plus the book is just too much." Daisy Bates to Mrs. Howard Lewis Aller, December 20,1961, Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, WHS; Stockley, Daisy Bates, 73.

157. Daisy Bates Papers, carton i, WHS. 158. Kearney, Daisy, 79. 159. Ibid., 83. Apparently the rumors were true; see Stockley, Daisy Bates, 241. 160. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 193; Kearney, Daisy, xxiii. 161. A news clipping from a Pine Bluff, Arkansas, newspaper claimed: "As late as June 17,1962,

Mrs. Daisy Bates is still the most hated personality by Arkansas segregationists. Upon completion of her manuscript at New York, she returned to Arkansas where she was greeted by a huge, fiery cross (the K K K ' S symbol of death)." Pine Bluff Commercial, n.d., Daisy Bates Papers, carton 2, scsw.

162. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 242. 163. Ibid., 299; Bates interview with Jacoway, 38-39, SOHP. 164. Bates interview with Jacoway, 32, 41, SOHP. 165. Stockley, Daisy Bates, 257-58. 166. Bates interview with Jacoway, 42-44, SOHP; Caillouet, "Daisy Lee Gatson Bates." 167. "Mourners Pay Tribute to Daisy Bates: Funeral Today; 1,000 View Body at State Capitol,"

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 9,1999. 168. "Daisy Bates Drive Honors [Little Rock] Activist: Signs Label Legacy of Woman of 'Cour-

age,'" Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 11, 2000; "Senate OKS Bill to Honor Daisy Bates: State Holiday Approved for Civil Rights Leader," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 2, 2001; "Clinton to Attend Fund-Raiser to Fix Daisy Bates Home," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 26, 2002, 6B.

169. "Daisy Bates: The Triumph of Grace," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 5,1999. 170. Kearney, Daisy, 170. 171. Ibid., 153.

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