The Little Rock Nine of Civil Rights fame had a lioness of a woman who stood in their corner during those tumultuous times when the nation was seeking to divest itself from the grip of racial segregation. Many people are now familiar with the iconic images when Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas underwent desegregation and the venom that was unleashed on the nine brave students who challenged the Jane Crow system of humiliation, degradation and American apartheid.

I first posted on the Little Rock Nine here.

Many have seared into their consciousness the image of Elizabeth Eckford, and the screaming White woman who walked behind her yelling vile racial epithets at her. Many are familiar with the photos of the courageous nine who went to and from school, while being guarded by the 101ST Airborne sent by President Dwight Eisenhower.

But, many are at a loss in naming the stalwart lady who shepherded the Little Rock Nine into history, and in her way changed a city, a state, and a nation.

Her name is Daisy Bates.

Here is her story.

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (b. November 11, 1914 – d. November 4, 1999). Civil rights activist, journalist. Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was born in Huttig, a small town in the lumbering region of southeast Arkansas. Raised by her adoptive parents, Orlee and Susie Smith, Mrs. Bates never knew her real parents. In the autobiographical sections of The Long Shadow of Little Rock (1962), she revealed that as a child she was told that her mother had been raped and murdered by three White men who were never brought to justice for their crime, and that her father was forced to flee Huttig for fear of reprisals from Whites should he attempt to prosecute the suspects. The Smiths were childless friends of Mrs. Bates’ parents and had agreed to adopt her.

Daisy had a warm and supportive relationship with the Smiths, and she was raised as a somewhat spoiled and willful only child. She grew up in a segregated world, attending segregated schools, which were handed down ragged, old, and outdated books from the better White schools.

When Daisy was fifteen years old and still in high school, she met Lucius Christopher Bates, an insurance agent and close friend of her father. L.C. Bates was born in Mississippi, attended segregated county schools, and went to Wilberforce College in Ohio, majoring in journalism. Upon graduating, he worked on the Kansas City Call in Missouri, but lost his position. He turned to selling insurance and was successful, but longed to return to journalism.

When Orlee Smith died in 1941, L.C. Bates proposed to Daisy Lee, and she accepted. They married a year later, used their savings to lease a newspaper plant from a church group and began a weekly newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. The paper soon had a circulation of ten thousand. Daisy and L.C. brought news to the Black community in a more balanced viewpoint, exposing incidents of White police brutality, and in the process, arousing the anger of White businessmen who threatened to withdraw their advertising from the Bates’ paper. In March of 1942, after the State Press reported the gruesome details of the killing of a Black soldier by a Little Rock policeman, many advertisements were withdrawn and the Bates had to double their efforts, working twelve to sixteen hours a day to keep their paper afloat. Gradually, readership increased, and within a year the newspaper reached twenty thousand readers.

As the “voice of the people”, the State Press worked for the improvement of the social, political and economic circumstances of Black Americans throughout Arkansas, especially in the right to vote and in continually exposing police brutality, and eventually forcing some changes.

The Right To Vote Rally

Flyer for a rally “The Right To Vote. The Fight To Vote” sponsored by the Federation of Negro Civil Service Organizations, Inc. Speakers include Jackie Robinson, Daisy Bates, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Roy Wilkins. (SOURCE)

Black policemen were hired to patrol black neighborhoods, and the state of race relations improved noticeably. By the end of World War II, Mrs. Bates believed that Little Rock had gained “a reputation as a liberal southern city”.

Not so in the area of schools and education. With Daisy accepting the position of president of the Arkansas state conference of the NAACP in 1952, the passing of Brown vs. Board of Education on May 17, 1954, and with Arkansas continuing its slow and deliberate pace of school desegregation, Mrs. Daisy Bates was poised to usher in a new era of radicalism in the fight against Arkansas’ gradualism. With assistance from the NAACP, Mrs. Bates began helping Black American children to enroll in all-white schools. When the children were denied admission, Mrs. Bates recorded and later reported each incident to the local papers. Under increasing pressure from Black parents and the NAACP, Superintendent Virgil Blossom of the Little Rock Public School District announced a plan to begin the desegregation process with Central High School in September 1957.

Opposition and racial attacks began. Governor Orval Faubus in opposition to desegregation on September 2, 1957, the first day of school, ordered units of the Arkansas National Guard to Central High School to prevent violence. The NAACP lawyers—Wiley Branton and Thurgood Marshall–obtained an injunction from federal courts against the governor’s action, but the troops were not removed.

The nine Black American teenagers who were eventually chosen to participate in the integration of Central High School came to be known as the Little Rock Nine. Mrs. Bates planned and coordinated their activities, stood with them through the ordeal, and gave them a place of rest from the daily onslaughts of racial violence they encountered at Central High School.

The most memorable incident is that of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine students who mistakenly went to school alone on the morning of September 22, 1957. Her grace under pressure while she was jeered at and taunted by white mobs, especially in the horrific venom shouted to her by Hazel Bryan, came to symbolize the strength and determination of an entire generation of Black American students.

Elizabeth Eckford is shown center after attempting to enter Little Rock High School and being turned away by the National Guard with an angry Hazel Massery shouting behind her.

Because the mob was not controlled by the local police, Daisy and the student’s lives remained in danger. The police chief requested the assistance of the U.S. Justice Department. The next day, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized all Arkansas National Guard units and sent in 1,000 paratroopers from the 101ST Airborne Division to carry out orders of the federal courts. The following day, September 25, 1957, the paratroopers, under the leadership of Major General Edwin A. Walker, escorted Mrs. Bates and the nine students into Central High School. The paratroopers were withdrawn to nearby Camp Robinson on September 30, but Arkansas National Guard units were to remain on patrol at Central High School throughout the school year.

On October 31, 1957, the Little Rock city council arrested Mrs. Bates and other members of the Arkansas NAACP for failure to supply the city clerk’s office with information about the NAACP’s membership, contributors, and expenditures. At the trial in December of 1957, Mrs. Bates was convicted and fined $100, plus court costs. The conviction was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bates kept in close contact with the Black students at Central High School, and she always accompanied them and their parents to meetings with school officials when incidents occurred. Eventually, White school officials and students learned that anyone who bothered “Daisy Bates’ children” would also have to deal with Daisy Bates personally. Her vigilance in the protection of and support of her children earned Mrs. Bates the resentment and animosity of most Arkansas Whites, and a secure place for herself in twentieth-century Black American history.

The State Press was forced to close in 1959, but Daisy Bates remained active on the lecture circuit, in voter registration campaigns, and in community revitalization. In 1985 the Bateses again began to publish the Arkansas State Press, which continued to serve the important social, economic, and political needs of Black Americans in Little Rock. Despite some illness, Daisy Bates remained active in a variety of community organizations and was sought after by the press, politicians, and the people to provide her perspectives on the contemporary problems facing the Black American community.

Daisy Bates at Woolworth's Boycott

Daisy Bates at Woolworth’s Boycott

Daisy Bates and others at Woolworth’s boycott. (SOURCE)

In 1987 the University of Arkansas Press reissued Mrs. Bates’s autobiography. Inaugurated in 1992, the Daisy Bates Education Summit helped evaluate the progress of America’s school districts in ensuring equal access and quality education to students of all colors.

In 2001, the Arkansas legislature signed a bill honoring Daisy Bates with a state holiday, and the National Park Service officially designated Mrs. Bates’s Little Rock home a National Historic Landmark.

After a series of strokes incapacitated her body, but never her indomitable will, Mrs. Daisy Lee Gatson Bates died in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of 85.

REFERENCES:

“Daisy Bates”, by V.P. Franklin, from Black Women in America, by Darlene Clark Hine, et. al., Oxford University Press, 2005, pgs, 78-80.

The Daisy Bates papers, which include an oral interview with Daisy Bates, are located at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Photographs courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society.