Race, Politics, and Memory: A Documentary History of the Little Rock School Crisis

4. Remembering and Commemorating Little Rock

CHAPTER 4 Remembering and Commemorating Little Rock The documents in this section detail how the Little Rock crisis has been remembered and commemorated since 1957. The documents in “Remembering and Commemorating Little Rock” suggest that the shift in the political climate has shaped the memory and the retelling of the event. Additionally, the documents reveal how commemoration can often substitute for real progress. DOCUMENT 46: Interview with Daisy Bates, WLIB Radio, June 4, 1964. Courtesy Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Daisy Bates Collection, MC582, box 4, folder 4. Daisy Bates was elected president of the Arkansas Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1952. During the crisis, she guided and advised the Little Rock Nine. In June of 1960, Bates moved to New York, though she remained president of the Arkansas Conference of Branches through 1961. She served on the national board of the NAACP from 1957 through 1970. In 1963, Bates spoke at the March on Washington, one of the few women to do so. Five years later, she moved to Mitchellville, Arkansas, to direct the Economic Opportunity Agency, a federal anti-poverty program. In 1984, she revived the Arkansas State Press, selling the paper in 1988. Bates died of a heart attack on November 4, 1999. This interview was heard on WLIB radio, a station in New York City. It has been ten years since the Supreme Court decision against segregation in the schools. 2LEWIS_pages_111-246.qxd 7/20/07 10:59 AM Page 111 And it has nearly been seven years since that day I remember so clearly—when I took nine children to school in my home town of Little Rock, Arkansas. Either way you remember, it has been a long time—too long. The Supreme Court declared that the desegregation of schools should move with “all deliberate speed.” Yet today, only 9 percent of the Negro children attending school in the South have been integrated. Nor can the North be proud of its record, because it, too, is a sorry one. For example, there are 112,000 Negro children in Arkansas. Only 366 are enrolled in desegregated schools. There are many reasons that can be offered for the slow progress that has been made. Perhaps “excuses” is the better word. When I think back on the walk that I took with nine children to Little Rock’s Central High in 1957, one thing stands out: it was a long walk. Haven’t we walked long enough? In Little Rock, in Birmingham— and in New York—it is time to remember one word in the Supreme Court decision: speed. I realize that there are local problems that have slowed down the process of desegregation in the schools—but I also remember that long walk I took seven years ago. How long must our children wait? The First Lady stated recently, that we are still shamed by one-fifth of our citizens who live on the outside of hope, because they are poor. To this one-fifth, we should address ourselves today. We can safely say that twenty million Negroes encompassed in this one-fifth live on the outskirts of hope. Not because they are poor, but because of segregation and discrimination which exist in our country. Many claim that they can see no final and equitable solution to this problem. That is not so. There are those of us who have felt the anguish of segregation and the pains of discrimination. There are those of us who have labored in the vineyard trying to help a nation mold its morals, religion and politics; not by the sermons we preach, but by the lives we live. If we look around, we would see many signs of freedom. They spark— glittering in the dark of despair like a flock of lighting bugs whirling through the dark night of discrimination. In the state of Florida, a petite 72-year-old white woman of New England—Mrs. Malcom Peabody, helped ignite that spark in the hearts of 112 Remembering and Commemorating Little Rock 2LEWIS_pages_111-246.qxd 7/20/07 10:59 AM Page 112 men when she joined 200 Negro youths in a freedom march to imprisonment . Mrs. Peabody realized that the same chain which binds the Negro in Florida, binds her freedom in Massachusetts. She realized that it takes more than mere observances of form and propriety to plow up...