Remarks at a Memorial Service for Daisy Bates in Little Rock, Arkansas

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 1, 2000

April 27, 2000

Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for those wonderful words and for doing a wonderful job in Washington. Governor, Mayor, Senator Lincoln, Representatives Snyder and Berry and Hutchinson, Lieutenant Governor Rockefeller, and Attorney General Pryor and Senator Pryor, we're glad to see you here today. Thank you.

To Larry Ross and all of the committee and Carlotta, thank you for your words. And Ernie, Minnijean, Jeff, and Elizabeth, thank you for being here. I thank all the people who provided our magnificent music, and I thank Janis and Diane and my longtime friend John Walker for what they had to say about Daisy. And I want to thank the Gaston and Bates families for inviting me here today. I've had a good time. [Laughter] And I'm glad I came. And I think Daisy's getting a good kick out of us making such a fuss about her today. [Laughter]

On the day of Daisy's funeral, I would like to have been here, but I was in Washington because that was the day long assigned to present the Congressional Gold Medal to her Little Rock Nine. I remember the last time I saw her was here, in 1997, on the day we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the integration of Little Rock Central High. And though her body was weaker and her voice was gone, she was still plainly happy to be there as the Governor and the mayor and I held open the doors for the students who were once kept out by the law, to walk in to the cheers of their fellow citizens--thanks to her.

I think that my old friend Reverend Young said about all that needed to be said about--[laughter]--about nearly everything. I am still in one piece, although it's a slightly grayer--[laughter]--jagged, more beaten up piece. But Reverend Young, I just figured if all of you were doing better, I could sure get by. And I'm glad to be here with you.

I was trying to think--you know, one thing I'd like to say to you is that there is always a danger when somebody does something that is really great that defines his or her life, that somehow you miss everything else. You know, we could put flowers at the shrine of what Daisy Bates did, at Little Rock Central High School, and for those nine young people, from now until the end of this country, and we never could do enough to say thank you.

But what I'd like to say to you at the end of this very moving and long and inspiring program is that I really liked Daisy Bates. I liked her for who she was. I liked her because she was a brave woman who fought the civil rights battle. But I liked her also because she was a brave woman who kept her spirits up and found joy in life as her body began to fail, who learned to speak through her eyes when her voice would no longer make a sound, and who never lost the ability to laugh.

I never will forget when I was wheeling Daisy through the Civil Rights Memorial at Memphis, when they put up the section on Little Rock Central High School, and they had the wonderful statue to her on one side and a pretty good likeness of Governor Faubus on the other side. [Laughter] So I wheeled Daisy in, you know, and then she was looking at herself, and I said, "You look pretty good, Daisy." She said, "Yeah." And I said, "Old Orval looks pretty good, too, doesn't he?" And she said, "Yeah, he does." [Laughter] She was laughing about it.

She always--she had a dignity that comes from having lived a life well and a peace of mind that comes from faith and strength that allows you to let go of those things that time is going to take away sooner or later from all of us, anyway. But not very many people can do that. A lot of people would have been feeling sorry for themselves, saying, "Well, after I did all this stuff in my life, why doesn't my body work anymore?"

I liked Daisy Bates not only because of what she did at Little Rock but because of the way she lived right to the end. And when she lost things that are painful for any person to lose, somehow what was left became more pure, more strong, almost like a diamond that was chipped away and formed and shines more brightly. And I am grateful for that.

You know, I'm also grateful for the fact that she overcame the adversities of her childhood. I was glad John Walker said what he did. This was an orphan child who found her way to a great truth. She was, in addition to what the film said about her, the only woman pilot in the Arkansas Civil Air Patrol in World War II and the only woman who spoke on that magnificent day at The Mall in August of 1963 when Martin Luther King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech.

She endured emotional and physical attacks, ostracism, violence, and harassment. Her newspaper was boycotted by local businesses who closed the door of it for three decades, because they wanted neither her nor it to speak the truth to their deaf ears. In spite of it all, maybe because of it all, Daisy Bates continued to fight the good fight.

There's something else I think is worth saying. When you come to the end of a person's life and an end of an era, and you look at all these little children here and you look at this beautiful choir back behind us, there is a certain tendency to believe that, oh, this is a great country with a great history, and somehow this was all inevitable it was going to turn out this way. That is not true. That is not true. And I want the young people to know that it is not true.