Excerpt from TURN AWAY THY SON

CHAPTER NINE:   Daisy Bates

Late Sunday night Virgil Blossom called Daisy Bates and told her to have the children at her house first thing Monday morning and then await instructions on how to proceed.   Monday morning's Arkansas Gazette carried a statement by Mrs. Margaret Jackson, vice president of the Mothers' League of Central High School:   "we hope to have a big demonstration [on Park Street in front of the school] to show that the people of Little Rock are still against integration.   I hope they [Negroes] won't get in."   At Daisy Bates' house, where eight of the children, several parents, and a handful of reporters had gathered to prepare for the children's second attempt to enter Central High, radio reports informed the anxious little band that an unruly crowd had heeded Mrs. Jackson's wishes and had formed once again in front of the school.   Radio commentators broadcast sidewalk interviews, and the group assembled at Bates' home heard one man say:   "Just let those niggers show up!   Just let 'em try!"   Another man fumed:   "We won't stand for our schools being integrated.   If we let 'em in, next thing they'll be marrying our daughters."   Minnijean Brown's mother sat with her hands folded in her lap, her lips moving in prayer; Elizabeth Eckford's father bowed his head.   The irreverent Daisy Bates found that she, too, was praying. 1

Finally the telephone call came from Gene Smith, Assistant Police Chief, saying that plans were in place to allow the children to enter the school through one of the out-of-the way doors on the south side.   The white reporters left immediately; four black reporters stayed behind, hoping to get more details so they could have exclusive coverage of the historic moment.   Rushing to leave, Bates told them if they arrived at the school on the Sixteenth Street side, they could see the children enter.   As he drove four of the children and Daisy Bates in his car toward Central High School, Chris Mercer, the young black lawyer and former Associate Director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations thought to himself that there would be no real violence that day in Little Rock.   These children were not warriors, he thought, they were just kids who had never had any real leadership roles or training, and surely in this day and age they would not be placed in harm's way.   Recalling her terrifying first attempt to enter Central High, Elizabeth Eckford wondered nervously if she and her friends would have protection this time.   With characteristic teenaged invincibility, Ernest Green never dreamed he might be hurt.   Sensitive and studious Terrence Roberts felt scared but determined, and he believed that once he got into the school, "the kids will accept me and not cause any trouble."   Only Daisy Bates had the sickening fear that something might go terribly wrong that day in Little Rock, but as she reflected on her own mortality, she could not think of anything "more worth dying over." 2

As the children pulled up to the Sixteenth Street entrance and alighted from their cars, they noticed that the mob of over a thousand people assembled in front of Central High seemed to be surging away from the building and down the street.   Little Rock police officers in bright blue shirts lined Park Street, which ran in front of the school, and everyone's attention seemed to be focused on something beyond the vision of the children as they made their way quickly into the school.   The unintended decoy proved to be the four black reporters, whose arrival just ahead of the children had triggered a savage outburst of violence that easily could have proved murderous if someone had not noticed the nine children entering the school and shrieked:   "Oh god!   The niggers are in the school!" 3 

Central High Mothers' League Vice President Margaret Jackson was in the crowd she had encouraged to form on that pretty September day.   Her two daughters were students at Central, and she feared for their moral well-being, since she believed that "allowing Negroes into White schools would promote wide scale miscegenation" and she was convinced that if the Federal Government persisted in forcing the integration of the schools, "it would lead to bloodshed."   Another Mothers' League member in the crowd that morning, Mary Thomason, tried to break through the police lines when she saw the black children going into the school.   Failing in her attempt to get through, she screamed at the men around her:   "Where's your manhood? . . . Why don't you do something to get these people?" then collapsed into sobs as she wailed:   "My daughter's in there with those niggers.   Oh, my god!   Oh, God!" 4

From the front entrance where he had been stationed to ward off any unwanted intruders, football coach Wilson Mathews thought he saw a group of black men being killed.   When he reported this in the office, Girls' Vice Principal Elizabeth Huckaby, thinking the children were being attacked, felt physically ill.   Mrs. Huckaby was soon relieved to see student leader Craig Raines walking toward her office with the black children, whom she immediately took into Principal Jess Matthews' office.   Little Thelma Mothershed, the one with a heart problem, promptly sank to the floor (Daisy Bates later claimed she had had a heart attack), and Mrs. Huckaby called the school nurse.   As if this were not enough excitement, the student body then let out a collective roar from each of the Home Rooms to cheer the football team toward victory in Friday night's game; the press and the mob interpreted the outburst as violence inside the school, and the rumor mills cranked into high gear. 5

White students began to slip out of the building, supposedly in protest of the black children's entry.   Some of them began to provide the eagerly waiting reporters with lurid (and false) details of the supposed violence taking place inside the school.   One account that went out on the radio and ended up in the Arkansas Democrat that night horrified citizens and frightened parents who were listening for news of the integration process:   "Several fights broke out among Negro and white students in the corridors of Central High School after the Negroes entered, a student who left the school building said today.   The youth said he saw three Negroes with blood on their clothing.   He said Negro students were chased through the hallways inside the building, and that 'several fights had broken out.'"   Understandably, these reports terrified the parents who were still huddled at Daisy Bates' house.   After each report, Bates received an assurance from Gene Smith that it was false, but Oscar Eckford spoke for the assembled parents when he screamed at Bates:   "Well, if it's not true, why would they say such things on the air?" 6

White parents also found the radio reports frightening, and they began to arrive at the school demanding their children be allowed to leave.   All such requests were honored, though one big high school boy may have spoken for his peers when he responded with embarrassment to his frantic mother's demand that he leave his class by stammering:   "Aw, Mom!"   The view from inside the school was far different from the reports being issued on the outside.   Ernest Green recalled later that he could not hear the noise coming from the street, and that many of the white students were friendly to him because the avid segregationists were boycotting the school.   Terrence Roberts and Thelma Mothershed reported in that night's Arkansas Democrat that "nothing much happened" inside Central High School during their first day of classes.   Melba Patillo encountered a white mother in the halls who spit on her and shrieked:   "next thing, you'll want to marry one of our children!"   Melba had classes on the Park Street side of the school, and she described the sound of the mob as having an "animal quality."   The school library was also on the Park Street side, and librarian Lola Dunnavant described the sound as being like an earthquake or storm - "a steady, deep roar all the time." Frightened Miss Dunnavant feared for the black children's safety, and in her memoir she described a poignant encounter with a terrified black maid who apparently was hiding in the restroom.   Although the children were momentarily safe, the potential for danger and violence was clearly in evidence just beyond the walls of the impressive, fortress-like school. 7

Stymied in their attempt to prevent the black children from entering Central High, members of the increasingly-frustrated and steadily-growing mob cast about for other targets for their abuse.   Arkansas Gazette reporters received much verbal taunting, but they had grown accustomed to being called "nigger lovers" and "communists."   More serious were the assaults on the out-of-town reporters.   After the four African American newsmen - Alex Wilson of the Tri-State Defender in Memphis, James Hicks of the Amsterdam News in New York City, Moses Newsome of the Baltimore Afro-American and Earl Davy, photographer for the Bates' Arkansas State Press - had been beaten and run off, the crew from Life magazine received such a severe beating that police arrested them for their own protection.   L. C. Bates wandered ill-advisedly through the crowd but was not attacked; as his biographer noted, he had a gun in his pocket "and he had his hand on it all the time."   This was an act of bravado that only The Fates protected from disaster.   The crowd at Central High was in an ugly mood, and some among them would undoubtedly have welcomed the opportunity to vent their rage on an armed black man. 8

1 Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock , (New York:   David McKay and Company, 1962) p. 87, 89.   "City and State Police to be There Today . . .," Arkansas Gazette ,   September 23, 1957, p. 1A. "Students Report Only One Incident," Arkansas Gazette , September 26, 1957.   Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock , 89.

2 Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock , pp.   89, 86.   C. C. Mercer interview with Elizabeth Jacoway, August 1, 2003, p. 14.   Ernest Green interview with John Pagan, January 26, 1973, p. 5, in the possession of the author.   Walter Lister, Jr., ""Police Guard Negroes If They Go to School In Little Rock Today," New York Herald Tribune , September 23, 1957, SERS.   Daisy Bates interview with John Pagan, August 23, 1972, p. 2, in the possession of the author.

3 Relman Morin and Keith Fuller, "Violence Wins a Round at Little Rock School," Louisville Courier-Journal , September 24, 1957, SERS.

4 John Wyllie, "Conversations in the South," p. 2, March 3, 1959, Box 498, Folder 6, Orval Faubus Papers, Special Collections, David Mullins Library, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.   Roy Reed, Faubus:   The Life and Times of An American Prodigal , (Fayetteville:   University of Arkansas Press, 1997), p. 226.

5 Elizabeth Huckaby, Crisis at Central High:, Little Rock, 1957-58 (Baton Rouge:   Louisiana State University Press, 1980), pp. 34-35.   Melba Patillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry:   A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High (New York:   Simon and Schuster, 1994).  

6 Robert Troutt, "Growing Violence Forces Withdrawal of 8 Negro Students at Central High," Arkansas Democrat , September 23, 1957, p. 1.   Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock , p.   91.

7 The school librarian recorded in her memoir that parents arrived all through the day; Lola Alice Dunnavant, "Inside Central High School:   Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957-1958," pp. 9-11, Box 1, Folder 58, Lola A. Dunnavant Collection, Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock, Arkansas.   Huckaby, Crisis at Central High , p. 38. Green interview with Pagan, p. 5.   "'Nothing Much Happened,'" Arkansas Democrat , September 23, 1957, p. 1.   Beals, Warriors Don't Cry , p.111.   Melba did, in fact, marry a white man; Beals, Warriors Don't Cry , p. 311.   Ted Poston, "Nine Kids Who Dared:   Melba Patillo, New York Post Daily Magazine , October 22, 1957, Bates Scrapbook, Daisy Bates Papers; Dunnavant, "Inside Central High School," pp. 9-11.

8 Carroll E. (Gene) Prescott interview with FBI, September 25, 1957, p. 159, Box 4, Folder 1, FBI Report, Special Collections, Ottenheimer Library, University of Arkansas at Little Rock.    "Newsmen Victims of Mob," Arkansas Democrat , September 23, 1957, p. 1.   Jack Setters, "Gov. Faubus' Stock Climbs As Events Confirm Fears," Nashville Banner , September 24, 1957, Southern Education Reporting Service, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.   Irene Martin Wassell, "L. C. Bates:   Editor of the Arkansas State Press ," Master's Thesis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 1983, p. 57.   Arkansas Democrat reporter Robert Troutt claimed that he heard a Life magazine photographer say:   "they're in there; let's start something so I can get some pictures . . ." at which point "Somebody hauled off and clobbered him . . . ."; Robert Troutt interview with John Pagan, August 28, 1972, p. 3, in the possession of the author.