Refusal to capitulate to white resistance
As she remembers building a home in Little Rock, she describes how she would not allow herself to become an "Uncle Tom." She and her husband remained in the house, but vandals broke their printing press.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Daisy Bates, October 11, 1976. Interview G-0009. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
And if we had turned to be an Uncle Tom or something like that and then got it, we'd have lost respect for us. I didn't think I had to. And Negroes who are Uncle Toms, they don't have to do that. They think that, but you don't have to be that. If I've got to live like some people, I don't want to live. So a lot of people, I think, want to live too much, so bad until they will do unknown anything, but to survive. A lot of people were worried unknown because they thought that we couldn't dig in, you know; we would have to move. I said, "We won't have to move." Why should we move? For two years we had guards with guns.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
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During '57-'58 and '58-'59 you had to have the house protected, but they never did run you out.
- DAISY BATES:
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I spent every night right here.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
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But they broke the State Press.
- DAISY BATES:
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Yes, oh, yes.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
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And then after that, how did you make your livelihood?
- DAISY BATES:
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Well, Mr. Bates, the NAACP hired him.
