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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview G-0009, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Daisy Bates, noted journalist and civil rights activist, shares her experiences with civil rights activism and school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. This interview offers some insights into the nature of civil rights organizing and the personal courage and determination of civil rights workers.
Journalist and activist Daisy Bates recalls working for civil rights in desegregation-era Arkansas.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Well, I think I've been angry all my life about what has happened to my
people.
Yes.
And the heritage from your father was a rebirth of your attitudes, wasn't it?
It was, because before that time I don't remember ever—after my childhood
friend and I broke up—-I don't think I ever spoke to a white person.
There was a white sheriff who used to come and visit my father. I liked
him.
‘Cause you were so . . .
I was so tight inside. There was so much hate. And I think it started
then without my knowing it. It prepared me, it gave me
But when your father lay dying, he encouraged you to channel all that anger into . . .
Into something creative. I did that for some time. I think I'm still
doing it now in a very small way. And I will always remember what he
told me
So you had grown up in southern Arkansas in Huttig?
Yes, that's right.
And had stayed there all through your teen years until you met Mr. Bates.
Right.
And then as soon as you married, the two of you came to Little Rock and
started the State Press.
Yes.
And then you went back to school, Shorter Business College.
Right.
Had you graduated from high school in Huttig?
Uh-huh.
And then took some business courses and took some flying lessons . . .
. . . at Philander-Smith.
No, I never did go to Philander-Smith, other than take the
Now you had some research assistance, didn't you, in writing the book?
Yes, right, right.
Because when I was going through your papers this summer, I would find notes from somebody . . .
Bates;
. . . up in there that wrote to you, and I could tell they got so fascinated doing the research that they really . . .
Mm-hm, the notes are there.
. . . enjoyed the work, yes.
We all enjoyed it.
Okay, so you came to Little Rock. State Press. And almost
immediately, then—is this right?—you got involved with the NAACP?
Well, yes, ‘cause immediately I joined the local branch and got involved.
Now had your father. . . . I think I read somewhere in your papers . . .
Yes, ‘cause he was a member for years back. And it was a time when it was not popular to be a member of the . . .
Right.
And my Daddy, nobody really knew but the family that he was a member. And then he paid our dues; he paid my dues and my mother's dues.
Oh, he did.
Uh-huh. So he would tell me. . . . Well, I asked him one day, "Why do you
join this organization?" And he told me the meaning why and what they
hoped to do, their dreams; then all my dreams were tied with this
organization.
Okay, so you had a background, then, of involvement in the NAACP.
Yes.
And it was just natural for you to join when you came to Little Rock. And you became very active.
Yes, well, I was very active in the local branch. And then I was elected to the State Conference. I never was President of the local branch, but I belonged to the local branch.
Oh.
And then I was elected
Right. When you were very young.
I was just so impressed to realize that during all this time you were my
age.
You were about thirty-four or thirty-five.
Yes, something like that.
And that's great. You set a high standard for the rest of us to follow. Were you in any other organizations at this time?
Oh, yes. The National Council of Negro Women, the YWCA and the Urban League and other organizations.
Were you active in all these organizations?
All active. See, I was a newspaper person, and I went to all of these
meetings I belonged to. What's that white group's name? It may come to
me, the name.
But you were a member.
I was a member. It's coming to me. It's something like the Moral Re-Armament; not that, though. [Bahais]
Something before that, yeah.
Yeah. This is a old, old organization. What's the name of that darned
thing? These people, they don't have a church as such.
Dr. Holmes is head of it.
The Ministerial Alliance?
No.
Something before that.
Yeah. It'll come back to me.
Did you ever go over to the Highlander Folk School at Monteagle, Tennessee?
No, I never did.
I just wondered. There were so many people who were involved in the civil rights movement who went there, and I just wondered if maybe you had ever done that. Well, did you receive any kind of special training by the national NAACP?
No, no special training, because they sent us all of their literature: Constitutions, and I read that, and their guidelines that they went by. But they gave no special training to us.
Was there very much direction, close association with the state branch and the national branch? Did they oversee your activities pretty closely, or was it a fairly loose . . .
It's a fairly loose organization. L.C.?
L. C. Yes.
Just a moment. What's the name of Mr. Holmes's organization?
Mr. Bahai.
Bahai's.
Okay. Hello, Mr. Bates.
Mr. Hi.
They're still here.
They're still here?
Yeah. And old man Holmes called me. I believe they have a church here. They have a big, beautiful . . .
That's an Indian faith, isn't it?
I don't know where that thing came from.
But the Bahai's.
That was one of the things that you were involved in.
Yes, and they told me "I was
And she was beautiful; I mean she had a beautiful personality. And that night that they were meeting at the YWCA, and I was the only person in the audience; she spoke to me a whole hour.
Oh, you're kidding.
And it was fascinating. So she told me, she said, "You have a beautiful
soul."
I didn't think anybody knew that.
Right.
Good to think somebody thought so. Okay, what kinds of issues was the state branch of the NAACP involved in before the Little Rock crisis? What kinds of things were you active in trying to change?
The whole darned system.
It seems like there was so much that needed to be done; how did you know . . .
Oh, everything needed change then. See, the Negroes were segregated all over.
Completely.
And even the kids. Some of the downtown stores had a black fountain and a white fountain.
I had no children. But I worked with the children, because I had the
paper. And the mothers that would State Press to use the bathroom, because there was no place
downtown that they could use the bathroom. What do you do when a child
wants to go to the bathroom? See, you never faced. . . . You never had
to face that.
No, mnm-mm.
Well, you know, this was just. . . . I got angry.
Oh, yeah.
About this kind of thing.
Well, how did you decide what to concentrate your energies on?
We concentrated, I think, on everything. This was across the board. Wherever we could, we hit it. It was no special thing, but everything, the whole system.
But then when the Brown decision was handed down, all
of your energies began to be focused, really, on education.
Yeah. See, after the Brown decision, then the kids who
were Negro. . . . They sent around forms to the schools. Mr. Blossom2 and the teachers passed the ballot.
And they found that they had too many kids.
And meanwhile, Mr. Blossom sent these papers out to the schools, the last day of school, to get a determination of how many children planned to go to Central that following year, the following September.
This was in 1956?
This was in 1957.
In the spring of '57.
In the spring. So
From black students, mm-hm.
Well, a hundred students the first day, and then another hundred the following week.
Then they called those students in and told them they would have to come in and bring their parents and talk to him
So some of the parents went, but that meant that the husband had to get
off from work, lose a whole day, to go to the school. He didn't see why
that was necessary. I didn't see why it was necessary.
So nevertheless, a lot of the parents went with their children to the
schools and they talked to the Superintendent. Meanwhile they started
comingone of the nine.
Oh, my word.
And she was as light as you are.
Oh, no.
That was Carlotta Walls. And so if Carlotta got in, nobody would know if she was white or black.
Yes.
And so one of the girls lived very close to Central.
Too pretty?!
She was "too pretty" to be admitted. I mean, he couldn't find anything in
her background. She had excellent grades; she'd never had a fight
Is that what he said?
They'd actually told her that, and that the boys would be looking at her,
and that they
Oh, no. Now this was in the summer before school started.
Before school started.
Well, how did they finally settle on the nine?
They didn't settle on the nine; the nine settled themselves (we had talked over the thing)
You and Harry Ashmore were always friends?
Yes. So in the meanwhile, he called the nine, and he admitted the nine
in. And the day before they were starting to school, he told them that
he—it was Mr. Blossom, the Superintendent at that time—that they were to
go in the front door.
You made them say that.
That's right. But I had Thurgood's advice to get them to tell us that.
You walked up to the National Guards.
We walked up to them.
And you were in the group that walked up to the National Guards.
Walked to the guards. And they said that was the reason why they couldn't
admit them, because the Governor had. . . .
Nobody knew.
"I don't know whether they're there to protect us or to deny us." He
said, "I can't go into Court with ‘I don't know’, Daisy."
So that's what you got the guards to say.
That's what we had the guards say.
Well, now, had you had a close association with Thurgood Marshall
Oh, yes, we'd been in court together . They were fighting in court every day. And he was saying he had. . . . We had a battery of lawyers, some in Washington, New York, and Pine Bluff—Wiley Branton.4
We had a battery of lawyers.
Well, you know, some people have suggested that the national NAACP chose Little Rock as a battleground. Is that true?
That is not true.
When the decision came down,
Yeah. Okay. So you just started getting . . .
And then Mr. Blossom proceeded to make speeches all over town, with the
plans. He made a speech at the YWCA; I was there. He made a speech in
Pleasant Valley; I was there. And this
I bet.
And it tickled me to death.
He knew I was there
Oh, had he?
. . . and one to Negroes.
You were going to keep him honest.
I was keeping him honest. So if he'd walk in, I'd be sitting there. He'd look. "Oh," he'd turn to me, "D-d-d-d. . ."; all the speech would go out of him.
And I would sit there laughing. And I'd ask him, "But Mr. Blossom, last time you spoke, didn't you say this?" You know.
Oh, golly.
"Oh, (makes blustering noise)that."
Well, when you were going to hear all these speeches and everything, and kind of being a watchdog on Virgil Blossom, were you keeping in touch with Thurgood Marshall and . . .
Not necessarily.
. . . and kind of letting him know what was happening around here?
Not necessarily. When I found out that he was, you know, saying one thing one place and one another, I didn't quite trust him after that. So I told Thurgood, I said, "I don't quite trust Mr. Blossom."
But up until that point, it had looked like he was going to follow right along.
Yes, yes, it did. So he said, "Why don't you?" Then I told him about
these speeches, and I said, "The school board is going to court. He
said, "We'll be there." So when the school board went to court, Thurgood
was there. And when we were done we filed lawsuits, filed lawsuits.
I remember one time you had seventeen lawsuits all at the same time.
I was sitting here one day—and I opened the door—and (knocks)
"This is her home. Come in." So he came on in. Then I went back in my
room and the other reporters could talk to him. He was from Mississippi.
So I came back out to talk to the reporters. "And be careful what you
say about that," I said. "He's from Mississippi." But he still didn't
know that I was Daisy Bates. So I went on back in the back and he
followed me. And he said, "May I have a drink of water?" He said, "When
(Claps hands)
Well, it sounds like there was a lot of camaraderie among the reporters who stayed here and used this as their home base.
Yeah. Right.
Well, did you feel like most of the northern reporters were sympathetic?
I think most of the reporters, period, north and south . . .
Even the local reporters?
. . . were sympathetic. The only thing I knew about this one was what the
reporters told me—that he was
Well, do you think the Arkansas Gazette did a good job
of reporting?
I think an excellent job.
Do you think that's because of Harry Ashmore or . . .
Well, it may have been at that time.
Did you and he keep in touch during all that time?
Yes, or else he'd call. So it could have been, because at that time I think Harry was about the most liberal, and he was certainly one of the smartest in town.
Were there any other people in the white community that you kept in contact with?
Oh, yes, Mrs. D. D. Terry, Dr. Dunbar Ogden, Mrs. Reid.
Mrs. Reid.
Uh-huh.
I don't know her. Oh, Eleanor Reid.
Eleanor Reid.
Edwin Dunaway?
Oh, Edwin Dunaway. Mrs. Brewer . . .
Oh, yes.
. . . at Scott.
Mrs. Brewer, yes.
And, oh, several others that. . . .
Yes.
All your friends stopped coming over here?
They were afraid.
Sure. Heck, yeah it sounded like your house was an armed fortress.
Oh, heavens.
And we taped it. And I had the glass put in, and they broke it out that
night. Then we had those guards, window guards, made; they were a
hundred dollars apiece.
Well, that's what I wondered. If they had chased you all out of town . . .
The movement would have died.
Well, was it because there was not black support?
Not necessarily. We had quite a bit of black support, but not having the
knowhow to do all these things. I guess because we were
So you had probably had more contact with the white community than most black people in Little Rock.
Right, right. So therefore . . .
Well, did you feel like. . . . I just am really curious to know about how the black people in Little Rock responded to all this. I mean, I'm sure they were frightened, as the white people were, but did you feel like they were supporting you? Did you feel like they thought you were pushing too hard or going too fast, or can you generalize about that?
I can't remember. . . . I think really they supported us. There was not much they could do, because they didn't know how. But anytime I would call a meeting, they would come; they would be there. They'd have larger numbers.
And the parents of the Nine were completely behind you.
Oh, they were completely behind us, because then I told them that we were
taking a great chance, and the kids knew they were taking a great
chance, because white people had gotten to where they were killing
negroes, you see. This was something entirely new. And they had said
they'd kill negroes; a child meant nothing. So I told them that one
And can you imagine, I took Jeff downtown shopping one afternoon. And I
said to Jeff, "I'm tired.
He probably wouldn't get up. He was looking for shoes . . .
Running shoes.
. . . with non-skid soles, that he wouldn't slip when he started running.
Boy, that put things in a different place, didn't it?
So they couldn't catch him.
Yeah. So they couldn't put cigarettes
But that harassment continued all the time.
All during this period, all during this period.
Just every day there was something, wasn't there?
Mm-hm, something. They would pick on the vulnerable ones, like Minnie
[Minnijean Brown, one of the Nine]. They knew Minnie had a temper.
That day she had been expelled?
Uh-huh.
And I said, "And so what's the matter now? What happened? What happened?" "You tell her." "No, you tell her."
So Jeff said that
We were practicing non-violence, and we'd meet here every day
Oh, boy.
The chili went all over the boy
Yeah, and not the boy.
Not the boy. So Thurgood was here that day
Now who did you call? What's his name, Dr. Kenneth Clark?
Clark. Yeah, Kenneth Clark. So I asked, "Can you take Minnie in the New
School?" He said, "Yes." This was about this time of day. So then
Thurgood said, "She's got to have some clothes. There's cold days up
there in New York." So he gave me some money for me to buy the clothes.
All the money he had in his pocket he gave me, all of it.
Was it Mrs. Kress?
Probably so. I couldn't say it was and I couldn't say it wasn't, 'cause I
can't remember her name. But anyway, she called us, and she told Minnie
if she was going to New York that she would bring some luggage
Now did that surprise you?
That surely did.
Yeah. You just didn't realize there were people up there in the Heights who . . .
Right. So meanwhile,
And she was going to live in his home, wasn't she?
Yes. She was going to stay with him. So in the meantime Roy said, "Well,
are you not coming?" I said, "No, I can't leave my other kids." So I
sent her mother with her. I said, "We'll
Roy Wilkins. [executive director, NAACP]
Roy Wilkins. And the next afternoon we put them on the plane. The next day we had all these clothes; this lady gave them shoes, socks, and everything.
Minnie probably thought that was the greatest thing that ever happened.
Ohh.
She deserved it; we were happy. And her mother went with her. So Kenneth
Clark met them at the airport and a
Now, let's see, was Minnie a senior? No, she wasn't a senior; she was a junior that year, I think.
Yeah.
Did she stay up there more than one year?
I think she did.
Well, yeah, the schools were closed the next year.
Yes, she finished high school there.
Isn't that great? It's great that it turned out that . . .
Then after she finished there—yeah, she stayed more than one year,
Oh, he left during the Vietnam War?
Mm-hm.
Well, now, you said a minute ago that you all were practicing
non-violence. Had you had any contact with Martin Luther King, or had
Oh, we knew Martin. I had spoken in his church, and I heard him and I knew him.
Had he inspired you with the non-violent philosophy?
Well, I think he did. And inspired the kids, for the simple reason that
Well, I think one of the greatest things is that you all got together over here every afternoon.
Every afternoon.
Where did you get that idea? That is the greatest. . . .
I mean, that sounds like a professional psychologist came up with that idea, and I think you just thought it up all on your own.
Until after. . .
After, when we were downstairs. I have a rumpus room. And we would close that door, and we would talk.
And they'd just get it all out of their systems.
Yes. And Carlotta was tall and lanky, and she'd say:
After that we'd start laughing.
Yeah.
And finally she'd calm down and make her go back the next day. Because they drew strength, my strength from me and each other.
Right. You probably drew strength from them.
Yeah, we did. So in the meantime, we were very close-knit.
I bet.
And next day it would probably be Jefferson. He was always very quiet. He'd come in; "I'm going to hit him." I told him, "Don't hit anybody." I said, "Old Mrs. Huckaby. . . ." Have they seen Mrs. Huckaby?7
I've met her, but I haven't talked to her yet.
Well, she's writing a book.
Is she?
She's written a book.
Has it been published? No?
She hasn't. The last time I talked with her, she hadn't been able—
Okay.
. . . hadn't been able to find a publisher.
Oh, I would think she must be really . . .
And the publishers told her that
Uh-huh. Hope they don't tell me the same thing.
[Irrelevant discussion]
I wanted to ask you what your relationship was with Roy Wilkins. I found some transcripts in your papers up in Madison of telephone conversations that you all have had, it seems like just about every day, during the fall of 1957.
Yeah, well, we're close friends.
You kept in real close touch with him all during that time.
Yes, because we had used their law firm, and we became very close with
him
E.J.; And Little Rock was just one of the major concerns of the national NAACP during that time.
Well, it wasn't the major concern. Little Rock developed before they really knew it.
That's the way it was for everybody.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Uh-huh, he was working for. . . . He was in the civil rights
HUD, yeah, I think. And he came . . .
HEW?
HEW. I'm sorry.
Did he live in your house?
In the front room.
He just moved in
Mm-hm.
For the fall of 1957.
And they sent him down to work with me, because I didn't have anyone who
knew.
I read his reports at the National Why did you ask me to do something if you were
going to do it yourself?"
But at that time
I know.
. . . what was happening.
That was true in the Governor's office, in the Superintendent's office,
and in the Gazette office; everybody just. . . . It
was all happening so fast.
Mm-hm. So therefore they probably didn't understand because I never had
time. And like Thurgood Marshall, I could have said two words to
Thurgood, he'd understand about the problem. But this came from the
experience of being a lawyer, and he could size up a. . . . He'd been in
this a long time, in the
That was an ad in the newspaper?
No, it wasn't in the newspaper, but it was this ad from mouth to mouth.
So I believe it's somewhere in the State Press, our
paper—I'll have to ask Mr. Bates; I'll have to look for it—because I
remember writing a small article, and he put it on the front page about
it. It didn't say, because we didn't have any proof of it. We couldn't
say who told me; I couldn't say that. So who started to try to collect
the ten thousand dollars; that's what we were watching. I. S. McClinton
[black political leader] went to see Mrs. Mothershed [mother of Thelma
Mothershed, one of the Nine]; she lives right across the street.
Did she live there then?
No, she lived over across from where we lived. So she said
I. S. McClinton did that?
Mm. "To send her over to Central." In other words, it sounded like the
CIA to me (laughs) and my husband now. (Laughs)I am using the kids. So he said, "I would
take my child back to the other school." She called me; as soon as he
left the house, she called and told me. Then a minister, who is the
pastor of Mount Pleasant Church, Rev. Hays—I had a lot of respect for
him—he went to some of the parents with the same story, that we were
just tearing up the town; the town would never be the same again; he
tried and tried to get the parent to send the child back.
This was in 1957?
This was the fall of 1957. All right. Mrs. Mothershed called me; Mrs.
Green [mother of Ernest Green, one of the Nine]
Oh, and that stopped it.
That stopped it.
Well, now, both I. S. McClinton and Rev. Hays were pretty influential people, weren't they?
No,
So you never really were interested in getting into politics.
No, no. Although I worked for Johnson and Kennedy, it was simply because we had to eat. We couldn't get a job in Little Rock. We had to pay payments on our house. See, we moved out in here in 1955.
Moved in here?
Mm-hm. We built the house in 1955. This is the first house that ever was
built on this lot. So we bought the land, and in '55 we moved in. And
all of this was bought in '55, except that serving table; practically
everything in here was bought at that time. And so in '57 we were not
quite finished paying for it.
Yeah. State Press must have been doing pretty well.
Yes, it was.
After you got over that first battery of lawsuits about the police brutality business . . .
Yes, yes.
. . . then the State Press really prospered . . .
Right.
. . . until the Little Rock crisis.
‘Cause we were doing nicely at the paper.
So we've got to pay for the plant
Is that right?
This is right. Those little old. . . . I imagine that you have seen the
little old houses, what they call GI houses, little square things.
There's some down at the end of 33rd, 32nd,
Were you able to borrow the money?
Yeah. Got a bid. Had to have a bid first. Got a bid on the house. That man died; he was doing the plans. We had to start all over again.
Oh, no.
"I can't get a builder to build
Forget about all these fancy people that want
So we got the man to draw up the blueprints. We got these people to give
us a bid on it. We got our bid. Then we took all these blueprints and
went down to the man
I said, "We got a firm commitment."
So I went back to FHA, and I told him.
He said, "Now we gave you a firm commitment, and I want to know why you
have not sold those papers for Mrs. Bates." And he said, "Come right on
over," so I went on over. And he gave me all the papers and everything
else, and then we all signed. And you're not supposed to start building
until they sell the paper, but I did.
After we signed the papers that afternoon, I had the builders put the
stakes up the next day.
My husband said, "Daisy, didn't you know you could get in trouble like
that?" I said, "We're going to get the money; don't worry about it."
So then
And this was your dream house.
This was the dream house;