Daisy Bates -“No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies"

Education is everything. But like many other fundamental human rights, we cannot take it for granted. Even in 2015, there were still more than 120 million children worldwide who did not complete primary education. As Borg Brende points out, these children are “denied not only a right, but opportunities: a fair chance to get a decent job, to escape poverty, to support their families, and to develop their communities”. As a self-confessed Guardian-reading, bleeding-heart liberal I am of course bound to espouse equality of educational opportunity. But if altruistic concerns do not suffice, there are sound economic arguments too. According to an OECD report published in 2015, providing every child with access to education and the skills needed to participate fully in society would boost GDP by an average 28% per year in lower-income countries and 16% per year in high-income countries for the next 80 years.

The focus of my fourth blog post is Daisy Bates –a civil rights activist who campaigned tirelessly, even in the face of violence and intimidation, for racial equality in education. She is best known for the leading role she played in the integration of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, but never achieved the same level of renown as her more famous contemporary Rosa Parks. Since Rosa’s exploits have become legendary I will not repeat them here, but alongside Jeanne Theoharis I urge you to cast from your mind any image you might have of a “meek seamstress gazing quietly out of a bus window”. Her Washington Post article ‘How history got the Rosa Parks story wrong’ rehabilitates Rosa as the radical and rebel she truly was.

Now I’ve got that off my chest I will turn my attention back to Daisy. She was born on November 11, 1914 to mother Hezakiah Gatson and father Millie Riley. Her mother supported the family by working as a lumber grader in a sawmill in the southern Arkansas town of Huttig. When Daisy was just three years old, her mother was murdered and her father abandoned her, so she was taken in by family friends Orlee and Susan Smith. At the age of eight, Daisy learned the full, horrifying details that her birth mother had been raped and murdered by three local white men and her body thrown into a millpond. Her adoptive father, Orlee Smith, told her that the killers were never found and that the police had shown little interest in the case. Daisy was thus forced to confront racism at an early age and it fuelled her desire to fight against racial injustice.

As a child, Daisy attended Huttig’s segregated public schools, where she experienced for herself the poor standard of education for black students. As Booker T. Washington observed, "white men will vote funds for Negro education just in proportion to their belief in the value of that education." Jim Crow schools therefore taught their students only those skills needed for agricultural work and domestic service. White landowners believed that any education beyond this would not only be a waste, but might encourage blacks to have ideas above their station. As a result, local school boards spent almost three times as much on each white student as they did on blacks. This meant that the salaries of black teachers were far below those of whites, so segregated schools failed to attract the most promising college graduates. Educational inequality was further compounded by the labour demands of the sharecropping economy. Almost all black children in the South missed school to do farm-work, attending school just 15 or 20 weeks each year in the 1930s.

When Daisy was fifteen, she met her future husband Lucius Bates and began travelling with him throughout the South. In 1941 the couple were married and settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they started their own newspaper. The Arkansas State Press was one of the only African American newspapers solely dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement. The newspaper focused on the need for social and economic improvements for Black Arkansans and became known for its fearless reporting of police brutality. Daisy not only worked as an editor, but also regularly contributed articles. When the Supreme Court issued the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 that outlawed segregation in public schools, the State Press demanded immediate integration in Little Rock schools. Daisy had joined the local branch of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as soon as she moved to Little Rock and had become president of The Arkansas Conference of Branches in 1952. She now led the NAACP’s protest against the Little Rock school board’s plan for slow integration. Daisy personally began taking black children to the white public schools, ensuring that newspaper photographers recorded each instance when the children were refused admission.

When the national NAACP office started to focus on Arkansas’ schools, they looked to Daisy to plan the strategy. She worked closely with the black students who volunteered to desegregate Central High School in the Autumn of 1957. When the students attempted to enrol, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent their entry. Several attempts at integration failed and the story of the ‘Little Rock Nine’ became national news when white residents rioted and threatened the physical safety of Daisy and the students. In a telegram sent on 26 September 1957, Martin Luther King urged Bates to “adhere rigorously to a way of non-violence,” despite being “terrorised, stoned, and threatened by ruthless mobs.” Even in the face of such intimidation, Daisy regularly drove the students to school and worked tirelessly to ensure they were protected from violent crowds. After President Eisenhower dispatched 1,000 paratroopers to enforce integration of the school, Daisy continued to be an advocate for the students throughout their time at the school, even joining the school’s parent organisation.

Due to Daisy’s role in integration, she was often a target for intimidation. Since her house was used as a drop off and pick up place for the Little Rock Nine, it was often targeted and damaged by segregation supporters. Rocks were thrown into her home several times and she received bullet shells in the mail. In her autobiography she recalled how:

“Two flaming crosses were burned on our property. The first, a six-foot gasoline-soaked structure, was stuck into our front lawn just after dusk. At the base of the cross was scrawled: "GO BACK TO AFRICA! KKK." The second cross was placed against the front of our house, lit, and the flames began to catch. Fortunately, the fire was discovered by a neighbour and we extinguished it before any serious damage had been done.”

In addition, Daisy and her husband were forced to close the Arkansas State Press in 1959. Due to the strong position they had taken during the Little Rock Integration Crisis, white advertisers boycotted the newspaper, which successfully cut off funding.

In October 1958, Martin Luther King invited Daisy to be the Women’s Day speaker at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and she was elected to the executive committee of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1960, Daisy moved to New York City and wrote her memoir, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which was published in 1962. It was republished in 1986 and became the first reprinted edition ever to earn an American Book Award in 1988. After writing her memoir, Daisy spent the next few years working for the Democratic National Committee’s voter education drive and for President Johnson’s anti-poverty programs in Washington, D.C. Daisy was invited to sit on the stage during the March on Washington in 1963. Due to a last-minute change, she was invited to speak at the march, the only woman to do so.

After suffering a stroke in 1965, Daisy returned to Little Rock, and then in 1968 moved to Mitchellville, Arkansas. There she became director of the Mitchellville Office of Equal Opportunity Self-Help Project, which was responsible for new sewer systems, paved streets, a water system, and community centre. She resurrected the Arkansas State Press in 1984 but sold it several years later. She maintained her involvement in numerous community organizations and received various honours for her contribution to the integration of Little Rock’s schools. Little Rock paid perhaps the ultimate tribute by opening Daisy Bates Elementary School and the state of Arkansas proclaimed the third Monday in February, Daisy Gatson Bates Day. In 1999, following a series of strokes, she died at the age of 84, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom.

Bibliography

Brende, Borg. “Why education is the key to development.” World Economic Forum. 2015. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/why-education-is-the-key-to-development/ [Accessed 22 January 2021]

Hanushek, Eric. “Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain.” OECD Publishing. 2015 https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264234833-en [Accessed 22 January 2021]

Irons, Peter. “Jim Crow's Schools.” American Federation of Teachers. 2004. https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2004/jim-crows-schools [Accessed 22 January 2021]

Norwood, Arlisha. "Daisy Bates." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/daisy-bates [Accessed 22 January 2021]

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Daisy Bates - American civil rights leader.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1999. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daisy-Bates-civil-rights-leader [Accessed 22 January 2021]

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. “Bates, Daisy.” Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/bates-daisy [Accessed 22 January 2021]

Theoharis, Jeanne. “How history got the Rosa Parks story wrong.” The Washington Post. 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/01/how-history-got-the-rosa-parks-story-wrong/ [Accessed 22 January 2021]