The Bravest Woman I Have Ever Known"

The Day We Hope For

In celebration of Black History Month I want to share one of my personal stories about the bravest woman I have ever known. In all of the years that I knew her, she was simply known to me as, Mrs. Bates.

I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in March of 1953. My parents Lawrence Clayborn (L.C.)& Fannie Lou Butler were lifelong residents of Little Rock and we lived in a duplex on 1411 N. St. Ringo St. Ringo St. was a regularly traveled street because it was a straight walk or drive from 9th St, which was where the bulk of the black businesses in Little Rock were located to the very southern end of town. A lot of Little Rock’s influential blacks lived close to Ringo St. Dunbar High School later Dunbar Junior High School was on 18th & Ringo St. Dunbar Community Center and Gibbs Elementary School are on 16th & Ringo.

Beginning on 14th Street was Mrs. Marshall’s Confectionary Store where I began working at age seven bagging sandwiches and confectionary. The confectionary was cookies, candies, soda pop, pickles and ice cream. I made fifty cents and ate whatever I wanted. Mrs. Marshall was a very nice lady and was the sister-in-law to Thurgood Marshall. He would visit whenever he was in town.

Across the street was my church Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church one of the largest and oldest black churches in Little Rock pastored by Reverend Wesley E. Hayes. At the end of the block heading towards 15th St. was Taylor’s Cleaners and behind it was Mr. Mansker’s Barbershop. From the time I was seven years old I lived right in the midst of everyday opportunities to earn money through various means. Sandwiched from the east was Philander Smith College (two blocks from my house) and to the west Arkansas Baptist College (four blocks from my house). These were two private old established black colleges.

My grandmother, Jerushia Trowser was the best seamstress and tailor in the area, mending and making dresses and suits for black and white people in Little Rock. She lived at 1413 Ringo St. just two doors from us. My grandmother was self-employed and she did work for most of the local cleaners both black and white. I spent many days helping her as a youth pinning patterns, picking up the scrap cuttings, which would later be made into a blanket or something, and as I grew older she allowed me to cut out the patterns. My grandmother would specially make dress suits for some of the hard to fit men in the city and for the women church dresses for special occasions. She also prepared lunches for the men at the barbershop, ACME drycleaners employees and Dunbar Community Center staff. She earned a good living never needing to ask anyone for help. But I as grew older I became too macho and masculine for sewing, "boys don’t sew." If only I knew the salary a good tailor makes today.

My best friend during the early and mid sixties was Michael Taylor who lived in the same duplex next door. Mike was about two years older than I was and his grandparents owned Taylor’s Cleaners across the street, which was also a long established neighborhood-gathering place. His mother, Ruth was divorced and worked as a registered nurse at the hospital. As teens Mike and I operated a shoeshine parlor out of the cleaners that made us good steady money. We specialized a spit shine polish on the State Troopers black boots and soon all the law enforcement guys were dropping their shoes off to be polished by us. We charged $7.00 a pair, which was a lot of money in those days but the shine, would last a good week.

Ever the hustler (I did not know the word entrepreneur in those days) when I was about ten or eleven years old I began cutting yards during the spring and summer months. My services were unique from the other kids who cut grass because I also edged the sidewalks, swept the front and back porch and raked up my clippings for the same price. Sometimes my dad would help me the first time to make the yard look perfect. Afterwards I just basically kept them maintained, which was a snap. A lot of my extra money came from the tips for well-done job. After a while I was cutting most of the yards in my neighborhood while at the same time operating a JET magazine distributorship.

During those days the JET magazine was a vital link for national news in the local black communities but only a few was generally sold infrequently at the local barber and beauty shops. My distributorship was a door-to-door service weekly. Soon it got to be that when I brought your JET magazine to your house to read while I cut your grass. It was a good business that I did for several years. The Jet cost me $.20 and I charged $.27. A lot of times my customers would give me $.30 and tell me to keep the change. Growing up I paid for most of my clothes, movies, the pool hall and the stuff I wanted.

One of my customers was Mr. Lucius Christopher Bates. I called him Mr. L.C. I guess he saw something in my hustling nature and get up and go spirit. He hired me to cut their grass once a week and sometimes help out around the house doing minor cleaning household chores for his wife, Mrs. Bates. Another thing I guess that drew me closer to him was that he and my father had similar first names L.C. People called my father by two names L.C. or "Bootleg". People called Mr. Bates, L.C.

It was shortly after the assassination of JFK in 1963 when I first met Mrs. Bates. I was too young and naïve to know and understand her accomplishments of what she did and especially had no clue of what happened in 1957-58. I only knew her as a nice lady who was beautiful to look at and very intelligent. She always showed a motherly smile and took interest in what I was doing as a youth. The chores that she had me do were not hard work. Twice a month I would clean the baseboards, windowsills; clean the large glass windows in the family room and living room plus any other odd and ends that she wanted.

Their home was somewhat deceptive because when you entered from the front it appeared to be a single story house. But the home was split-leveled with a lower living area in the back of the house. They had a large yard that was fenced in from all sides with neighboring houses around them. There was no alley on that block which in those days was somewhat unusual. She kept her home immaculate because people were always stopping by.

The lady that I only knew as Mrs. Bates is Daisy Bates who was one of the great civil rights leaders of the twentieth century. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court (Brown v Board of Education) ruled that segregating students by race in public schools must end. Many southern cities resisted the high court’s order to integrate schools. In 1957, as the rest of the country watched with bated breath, Little Rock, Arkansas was polarized in a civil rights battle that would forever change American life. At the very center of the Little Rock battle was Daisy Bates, a feisty and determined NAACP Coordinator who shepherd nine children to becoming the first black students ever to integrate Central High School known as the "Little Rock Nine".

As a young child I was too young to remember and understand the historic events that were happening around me and even as a child growing up around the Bate’s and their home life, I never knew the significance. You did not see a lot of things around their home that gave many clues other than they ran a newspaper.

The lady I knew made delicious lemonade and served it in glasses. She was insistent that we learn to drink out of and use glass utensils properly. There were no plastic cups or mayonnaise jars in that house. Whenever she assigned me chores she would give clear instructions and then would allow you to work independently only checking when you said you completed the task. They did not have any children but every child in the neighborhood knew them.

When I turned 14 I joined the NAACP Youth Council and our meetings were at Mrs. Bates’ home. By this time she was traveling a lot around the country and we worked with Ms. Green who was the youth advisor. Mr. LC though was ailing was still active in the community but did not travel as much as Mrs. Bates so I saw more of him as I grew older.

Born Daisy Lee Gatson in Huttig, a small sawmill town in far southern Arkansas nears the Louisiana border. It was in Huttig that fifteen-year-old Daisy Lee Gatson met her future husband, Lucius Christopher Bates a tall thin insurance man who stopped by to sell Daisy’s father a policy. L.C. Bates and Daisy’s father became friends. L.C. Bates born in Liberty, Mississippi was the son of a Baptist minister and had many advantages compared to most young black people of his time. He was at least 13 years older than Daisy. Their courtship is somewhat murky and there are several interpretations but in 1941 Daisy and L.C. moved to Little Rock and started the Arkansas State Press newspaper.

Some of the things Mrs. Bates did to change discrimination may seem unimportant at first glance. For example, Daisy frequently and firmly insisted on being called "Mrs. Bates". One of the ways white people reminded blacks that they were considered inferior was by calling them by their first names, as one would do a child. Sometimes white people wouldn’t even bother with a black person’s name; they would just bark out, "Hey you, girl…" or "Come here, boy." Daisy refused to tolerate this indignity. I guess that is why I didn’t know she was famous "Daisy Bates" until I was in high school and college. She was always Mrs. Bates to me until she died in Little Rock on November 4, 1999.

On Tuesday, September 3, 1957 a small group of black students would enter the city’s previously all-white Central High School. Having fought for school integration for many years, Arkansas NAACP state president Daisy was now becoming the black student’s chief mentor and spokesperson. She knew that integrating central wouldn’t be easy. White people insisted on maintaining segregated schools were forming committees, some of which vowed to block the entry of the black students by any means possible.

Mrs. Bates was known through out Arkansas as the champion of school integration. Those who favored it viewed her as a heroine, while opponents considered her a troublemaker. Quite a few black people were wary of her because she displayed an inner strength that few had. Having been oppressed for so many years, they feared that Mrs. Bates would only bring down more trouble on their heads.

Many assumed that Daisy handpicked the students who were selected to integrate Central High, when actually Little Rock School Superintendent Virgil Blossom chose them. With recommendations from the city’s black junior and senior high school over eighty names were submitted. Far more than he wanted to start with he told the principals to weed out applicants who were not "mentally and emotionally equipped for this transition." By this method, the number of applicants was reduced from eighty to thirty-two. Mr. Blossom held individual conferences with the thirty-two remaining pupils and their families. He convinced fifteen young people that Central High wasn’t right for them for one reason or another. Seventeen remained. As the tension mounted in the weeks before school opened, seven more students backed out. That left ten youngsters to begin integrating Central High School, which had admitted only white students since opening in 1927.

Although she hadn’t chosen the ten students, Mrs. Bates began meeting with them at her home. They included students entering the last three years of high school: sophomore, junior, and senior years. The ten young people were: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Jane Hill, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls.

It was not until the evening of August 22 did Daisy Bates fully realize how dangerous the segregationist could be. On that Thursday night, Mrs. Bates watched the eleven-pm news on her living room TV. The news was disturbing. That evening a local segregationist group called the Capital Citizens’ Council had hosted a dinner at Little Rock’s Hotel Marion. They had brought in Georgia’s governor, Marvin Griffin, as the featured speaker. Some 350 people had paid $10 (the equivalent of about $70 in today’s money) apiece to hear Governor Griffin denounce the Supreme Court’s school integration order. Forcing previously all-white schools to admit black students as an attack on the South’s "way of life" and an attempt "by force to destroy our government," Governor Griffin told the cheering audience. He urged white southerners to resist integration and called the Capital Citizen’s Council a "courageous group of Arkansas patriots who are fighting a dedicated battle to preserve the rights of states."

What a perversion of the word ‘patriot", thought Daisy Bates as she watched the broadcast. "Patriot" was usually applied to people like George Washington, Nathan hale, and Benjamin Franklin. How could a group of white people who wanted to exclude black teenagers from an all-white high school be called "patriots"? But the most harmful aspect of the Capital Citizens’ Council gathering was the effect it could have on the Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus.

Up to that point it hadn’t been clear whether Governor Faubus would go along with the school integration plan or oppose it. Griffin’s rousing reception made it more likely that Faubus would cave in to the segregationists and try to keep the black students out of Central High. Faubus and Griffin certainly appeared to be in agreement. Griffin was staying at Faubus’s guesthouse, and the two governors were having breakfast together the next morning.

Following the news broadcast, Mrs. Bates switched off the TV and took Skippy, the family cocker spaniel, out for his final walk of the day. Upon returning home, Mrs. Bates sat down on the living room couch by the picture window and began leafing through a newspaper. Daisy Bate was glancing through a newspaper when suddenly she heard what sounded like an explosion. The forty-three-year-old civil rights leader and newspaper publisher instinctively hit the floor and covered her head. L.C. ran into the room and found his wife lying on the floor.

"Are you hurt? Are you hurt?" L.C. asked.

Although covered with glass and bleeding slightly from numerous small cuts, daisy was otherwise unharmed. "I don’t think so," she answered. Rising to her feet, she picked up the rock that had burst through the picture window. A note was attached to the rock by a string. Unfolding the paper, Mrs. Bates read the note and then showed it to her husband.

THE NEXT WILL BE DYNAMITE

"A message from the Arkansas Patriots," said Daisy Bates, sarcastically mocking the Georgia governor’s speech. She and L.C. knew that "K.K.K." stood for Ku Klux Klan, a racist hate group known for violence against black people.

"Thank God their aim was poor." Said L.C. He called the police, but they had little interest in trying to find out who had thrown the rock.

The couple patched up the window with masking tape, and then went to bed, but Daisy couldn’t sleep. She kept reliving the moment the rock had hit the window, when she had thought the house was being bombed. All through the night questions raced through her mind.

Might some racist actually dynamite their home? What would the bigots do to the black students when they tried to enter Central High in less than two weeks? What would Governor Faubus do? Would the segregationists try to destroy the newspaper that had provided a living for L.C. and Daisy Bates for the past sixteen years?

As State President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People I was in the front-line trenches. Was I ready for war? Was I ready to risk everything that L.C. and I had built? Who was I really and what did I stand for? Toward dawn I knew I had found the answer. Daisy Bates finally drifted off to sleep, no longer plagued by doubt or uncertainty.

L.C. had a permit to carry a loaded revolver. He, Daisy, and several friends, including their next-door neighbor, a dentist named Garman Freeman, began taking turns guarding the Bates home at night. By this time daisy Bates was receiving so many threats by phone and letter that, for protection, she placed a loaded gun in her car’s glove compartment.

On Tuesday, August 27, Mrs. Clyde A. Thomason, Mothers’ League recording secretary, filed suit seeking a temporary injunction-a court order preventing the integration of Central High.

On Tuesday, August 29, Pulaski County Judge, Murray O. Reed heard Mrs. Thomason’s suit. She testified that in "strict confidence" that there would be violence at the school between white and colored boys if the school opened as integrated. Many witnesses who came forward to refute her claim was Little Rock Chief of Police Marvin Potts, School Superintendent Virgil Blossom and Dr. William Cooper Jr., a surgeon who was president of the Little Rock School Board.

But a surprise witness supported Mrs. Thomason’s claims. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus walked into the courtroom and testified he personally knew of cases in which guns had been seized from black and white students. Largely because of the governor’s testimony, Judge reed ruled in Mrs. Thomason’s favor granting the injunction against starting integration.

The racist celebrated Judge Reed’s decision. On the night of August 29, people drove past the Bates home; honking their horns and shouting Daisy, Daisy did you hear the news? The coons won’t be going to Central!"

But the next day, Friday, August 30, NAACP attorneys Wiley Branton and Thurgood Marshall went before the U.S. District Court asking to have Judge Reed’s order overruled Judge Ronald Davies ruled that integration must proceed as planned. Furthermore, he issued an order that no one interfere with the black students entering the school. By August 30 Arkansas officials began trying to intimidate Mrs. Bates. Attorney General Bruce Bennett sent her a letter demanding that she answer fourteen questions relating to the Arkansas NAACP’s operations, memberships and finances. Mrs. Bates refused to answer his questions and two years later the United States Supreme Court ruled that such demands "violate freedom of speech and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment."

On Labor Day, September 2, 1957 that night at nine o’ clock, 300 Arkansas National Guardsmen began to surround Central High. Governor Faubus had called these emergency troops to active duty-why was not known. At ten-fifteen pm the governor spoke on local TV and radio. He was vague about his reasons for calling out the Arkansas National Guard while claiming that "they will not act as segregationist or integrationist, but as soldiers" there to keep the peace. Then he revealed which side he had taken. "It is my opinion that it will not be possible to restore or maintain order and protect the lives and property of the citizens if forcible integration is carried out tomorrow. The school, for the time being, must be operated on the same basis as they have in the past." In other words, for an unspecified period the ten black students must stay out of Central High.

Classes at Central began at eight-forty-five AM on Tuesday, September 3rd. The National Guardsmen, as well as a crowd of 400 white adults, watched as nearly 2,000 students, none of them black entered the school. The only black person at the scene was L.C. Bates, who came as a reporter. At one point a group of out-of-town racist rushed toward L.C., probably to try to beat him up. Suddenly, he reached into his pocket. Local whites warned the out-of-towners that Bates had a permit to carry a loaded gun, and the thugs backed off. When asked by visiting white newsmen how he had summoned the nerve to face the mob, L.C. quipped: "I just came by to add some color to the occasion."

Superintendent Blossom and the school board were uncertain about what they should do so they asked Federal Judge Ronald Davies for instructions. The judge announced his decision that evening. The ruling was that the students would enter Central High the next day, September 4.

L.C. hadn’t gone to Central High on September 3 just to report on the start of school for the State Press. He wanted to see the size and the mood of the crowd. When he told her about the thugs who had been about to rush him, her worries grew. People went in and out of the Bates house that night asking what she thought would happen and what she planned to do. One of them was the Reverend J.C. Crenshaw, president of the Little Rock NAACP, associate pastor of Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church and one of the men who baptized me at age eight.

"Maybe," she said, "we could round up a few ministers to go with the children tomorrow. Maybe then the mob won’t attack them." Superintendent Blossom asked both the white and black ministers to stay away from the school because their presence might inflame the bigots. She phoned the Little Rock Police to request that a squad car be stationed at 12th and Park Street before eight-thirty the next morning to protect the black students. Yes, they promised, but they could not escort the children all the way to Central.

It took her until three a.m. to complete the phones call to the students, however she was not able to reach Elizabeth Eckford because her family did not have a telephone. Mrs. Bates considered going to the railroad station, where she thought Elizabeth’s father worked nights, but she was so tired that she decided to sleep a few hours and contact Elizabeth in the morning.

When she awoke, Mrs. Bates called the NAACP’s New York Headquarters for a final briefing and moral support. Daisy and L.C. got into their car and began driving towards Twelfth and Park. On the way they switched on the radio and heard a news bulletin: "A negro girl is being mobbed at central High…" "Oh, my God!" Daisy Bates cried in horror. She had forgotten to notify Elizabeth that they were meeting and driving to school together.

Elizabeth, unaware of the plan, had taken a bus to school. Wearing a black and white dress she had made for her first day of classes, carrying a green notebook, Elizabeth stepped off of the bus at about eight a.m. and began walking the final block to Central High. Outside the school she saw a line of armed Guardsmen and a crowd of some 400 white people. At frit Elizabeth was glad to see the National Guardsmen and assumed they were there to protect her. But whenever she tried to get past them to enter the school, the guards blocked her path, even raising their bayonets to keep her away. At the same time the Guardsmen allowed the white students through. Noticing that the lone black student was trying to get into the school, the crowd closed in on her, yelling, "Lynch her!" and "Go home, black bitch!" Elizabeth recall, "I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the mob-somebody who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me."

Not knowing what to do Elizabeth returned to the bus stop all while the crowd shouted threats, followed her, as did several newsmen and photographers. For what probably seemed like an eternity she sat there until L.C. Bates and a white woman named Grace Lorch walked up to comfort and protect her. The mob figured it was natural for Mr. Bates to aid one of his people, for they left him alone, but they hurled insults at Mrs. Lorch and also present Dr. Benjamin Fine, New York Times education editor, "Nigger lover!" and "Dirty Jew." After a few minutes a bus came and Elizabeth boarded it, leaving the ugly mob behind.

The nine of students stepped out of the cars, with two minister leading the way and two bringing up the rear, the students began walking to Central High in a line. The racist hated Mrs. Bates so intensely that her presence at the school might spark a riot, so she and others remained in the cars.

Led by Lieutenant Colonel Marion Johnson the students were halted and prevented from entering the school, on orders of the governor Faubus. Soon the whole nation knew what had happened, for TV crews, reporters, and photographers had recorded the day’s events. In fact, over the next few months the Little Rock school crisis became one of the first ongoing news stories covered by on-site television crews.

Following the tense events of September 4, 1957, Jane Hill decided to attend all-black Horace Mann High School. The remaining Black students who wanted to enter Central High were given a nickname by which they became known to the world; "the Little Rock Nine." During that time the president of the United States; Dwight D. Eisenhower was furious at Governor Faubus for defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s order to integrate the schools. After threatening to arrest the governor, Faubus recalled the National Guard from Central. Months later Eisenhower called in the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army to escort the students to class during the 1957 crisis and Central High School was finally integrated.

Those known as the "Little Rock Nine" were of course older but I grew up, played with and dated some of their younger brothers and sisters. Carlotta Walls lived two houses from us.

I have related just a small portion of the events and what happened at Central High School during 1957-58. The complete story may be read in the Power of One, Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine and Daisy Bates, Civil Right Crusader.

Mrs. Bates the woman I knew as a young impressionable boy growing up in Little Rock, was a woman of immense courage, faith, compassion and love all wrapped into a feisty, strong-willed and opinionated woman who was just one of the many excellent examples of humanity I grew to know and love. The last time I talked to Mrs. Bates was in 1996 at the age of 82 and wheel chair bound. She introduced me to another great lady who also was in a wheelchair. Her name was Rosa Parks.

Daisy Bates the bravest woman I have ever known.

Parents encourage your children to read more books about America’s heroes and heroines. History is only important until you have knowledge of it.