1957 Ad

Ebony, Dec, 1997 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

FORTY Septembers ago, when the blue chips were down, the converging forces of the age fused in one Black woman and nine Black children. The names of the Nine--Thelma Mothershed Wair, Elizabeth Ann Eckford. Gloria Bay Kalrsmark Jefferson A. Thomas, Melba Patillo Beals, Ernest Green, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown Trickey and Terrey D. Roberts--should be etched forever on the short list of the honor roll of courage. But in order to understand their ordeal and their triumph, one must have some understanding of the 10th member of a historic team who provided one of the best examples in our history of the power of individuals to make history and change history.

The 10th member of the Little Rock 10 was Daisy Bates, who was, in 1957, president of the Arkansas Conference of the NAACP. Catapulted overnight into a complex struggle between federal and state authorities, she deployed her meager forces with consummate skill and artistry. During one of the greater constitutional crises in American history, she wielded as much power as has been given to any woman of her time.

In Little Rock, almost everyone said in 1957 that Central High was integrated because Daisy Bates willed it.(*) She had help; she would be the first to admit. The National office of the NAACP threw its best legal and administrative talent into the fight, and Daisy Bates insists that the real heroes were the children and their parents. But when all this is admitted one still has to account for the Herculean influence of a tough, charming woman with a subtle sense of timing and a genius for giving resolution to the minds and hearts of men and children.

She decided when the children would test the defense of the National Guard. And when some of the participants weakened, she persuaded them to stick. It was she who added a personal and social dimension to the NAACP's legal fight by ministering to the inevitable personality problems and frictions that arise in a small group caught in a maelstrom of history. And even her personal enemies praise her for the way she conducted a year-long holding action while most of the White community waited for the Nine to surrender ("voluntarily withdraw") and take them off the moral hook.

Above and beyond her tactical ability, Daisy Bates' impact was felt most by "moderates," Blacks and Whites. She repeatedly scored the paralysis of "so called Southern liberals." She repeatedly chided them for timidity and fear. The course she charted in Little Rock forced "moderates" to put up or shut up. She was equally scathing in her attacks on "conservative Blacks" and the professional class some of whom eschewed action because of social and economic fears.

"We have got to decide," she said, "if it is going to be this generation or never."

Segregationists paid her the supreme compliment of acknowledging her effectiveness. She and her husband, publisher L. C. Bates, 57, bore the brunt of a systematic campaign of terror and intimidation. Their home was under a continuous siege. Bombs bottles and bricks rained on their lawn. During the height of the crisis, segregationists in the school distributed placards bearing the legend: "DAISY BATES--WANTED."

The object of all this attention was born Daisy Lee Gaston some 77 years ago, in Huttig, a small sawmill town in southeast Arkansas. Her father, Orlee Gaston, was a lumber grader in the local mill. Huttig wasn't a bad town, as Arkansas towns go. Blacks and Whites lived side by side, and many of Daisy Lee's playmates were Whites. But there were some things that Daisy Lee didn't understand. She couldn't understand, for example, why she had to go to school in a run-down frame building, while the White children had a "nice brick building."

"I asked Daddy about it," she recalls, "and he tried to explain. He traveled a lot and he read a lot. He said, `This is the way things are today, but some way, somehow, somebody is going to make it different."'

She went one day to the butcher to buy a pound of center-cut pork chops. Daisy Lee, who was 6 at the time, had been in the market for almost 30 minutes before she realized that White people who had come in after her were being waited on first. She protested. The butcher told her, "Niggers have to wait." Finally, he tossed her a pound of fat remnants and snatched her money. Daisy Lee went home and cried. Since that day, she has been a lot of places and has seen a lot of things. She has grasped the hand of the president of the United States and dined in the governor's mansion. A lot of water has gone down the Arkansas River, but the day is as vivid in her mind as yesterday. Nor has she forgotten what happened afterward. She told her mother and waited for her to go to the market and tell the butcher off. Her mother said wait until Daddy comes. When Daddy came, she told him and waited for him to march off and right a great wrong. He didn't. It dawned on Daisy Lee that nobody could or would do anything. She wept.

It was then that Orlee took his daughter into the room and explained to her what it meant to be a Black in the South. That night, Daisy did a naughty thing. She prayed that the butcher would die. And she stopped playing with White children--White folk, all of them, were mean.