BHM: Good Black News Celebrates Daisy Bates, Civil Rights Activist, Newspaper Publisher, Little Rock Nine Organizer

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

This is Daisy Bates.

President of the NAACP Arkansas chapter during the civil rights movement and co-publisher of The Arkansas State Press, a newspaper dedicated to advocacy journalism for African-Americans.

Bates is best known for organizing and shepherding the Little Rock Nine as they desegregated Central High in 1957 in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Ed. U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Bates regularly drove the students to and from school, hosted them in her home after school and worked tirelessly to ensure they were protected from violent crowds.

One of her most successful protection strategies was to get local ministers to escort the students to school, daring the white Christians protesting and hurling threats to attack men of the cloth. Bates’ plan worked, but she started to receive threats herself.

Rocks were thrown into her home, crosses were burned on her property, and bullet shells were sent to her in the mail. White advertisers boycotted her newspaper and eventually she had to shut it down.

Bates was also the only woman who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington during the official program, pledging that women would fight just as hard and long as the men until all Black people were free and had the vote.

Bates later served in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson and worked on anti-poverty programs. In 1968 she moved to the rural black community of Mitchellville, Arkansas and worked there to improve the lives of her neighbors by establishing a self-help program which was responsible for new sewer systems, paved streets, a water system, and community center.

In 1986 the University of Arkansas Press republished The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which became the first reprinted edition ever to earn an American Book Award.

The city of Little Rock eventually honored Bates by opening Daisy Bates Elementary School and by making the third Monday in February George Washington’s Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day an official state holiday.

Bates passed away in Little Rock on November 4, 1999. Her house became a National Historic Landmark in 2002 and in April 2019, the Arkansas governor signed into law a bill that designates Daisy Bates and Johnny Cash as the two representatives of the State of Arkansas in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection.

I’ve known about the Little Rock Nine since I was a teenager, but not about Bates until I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2017.

Her story captivated me not only because of all that’s mentioned above, but also because she transformed serious personal pain into productive power.

When Daisy was three years old, her mother was raped and murdered by three white men. Her attackers were never brought to justice, and when Daisy was old enough to learn the details of the horrific tragedy, her ensuing hatred of white people almost consumed her. But words from her adoptive father on his deathbed helped refocus and shape her life:

Hate can destroy you, Daisy. Don’t hate white people just because they’re white. If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliations we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum—and then try to do something about it, or your hate won’t spell a thing.