The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Great Account
Review: Daisy Bates was an integral figure in the integration of Little Rock Central High School. As president of the State Conference of NAACP branches, she was very active in the fight for black rights. Hers is an eloquent account of a highly volatile situation. She effectively compares her views with other accounts of people that were there, and the writing is very fluid and moving.

Rating:
Summary: a great work of the civil rights era
Review: Daisy Bates work is a very important document from the era of civil rights. Although it is not an actual account of one of the nine students who integrated Central High, it is very close. Bates was right there directing the operation, making sure the students were protected, and made sure that the children were encouraged to go ahead with their duty. I don't think I would have been able to send those kids in to that school, with all those hateful students. I hope Arkansas and the citizens of Little Rock apologize every day for what they did to those nine children.

Rating:
Summary: reap the bitterness of despair.
Review: THE LONG SHADOW OF LITTLE ROCK is an interesting book. The story of Daisy Bates, civil rights activist, newspaper writer, officer in the NAACP, is a story of hate and bitterness and constant battling against the whites in her state of Arkansas. It is supposedly the story of the intergration of Central High School in 1957 by 9 black youths under the sponsorship and "guidance" of Mrs Bates and the NAACP yet it more often reads as a chronicle of Mrs. Bates's successes and failures and her importance in the intergration. It is a one-sided view of an important occurance in the civil rights battle.

The reader must always keep in mind that the book was first published in 1962 (there is a preface by Eleanor Roosevelt) as the civil rights movement began taking on a more violent tinge. If you read it knowing the time period it was written in and the circumstances in the country and in the civil rights movement you can get through the pervasive hate and bitterness. Even Mrs. Roosevelt, herself concerned with the civil rights issue, comments on the bitterness of the volume.

It would be interesting to read Melba Beals WARRIORS DON'T CRY in conjunction with this book - because perhaps then the real truth of the Little Rock experience would be known. Beals did not care for Mrs. Bates and her experiences at Little Rock are covered in a very brief paragraph in Bates' book while other students, such as Minnijean Brown, enjoy pages of coverage. It makes you wonder whether Beals's story is true or a conglomeration of all the acts committed against the other students and if Mrs. Bates truly was concerned for the children at Little Rock or the press coverage.

A good read but one that must be read with the knowledge of the times, the attitude of the times and an open heart. Mrs. Bates recently died - and her book is an important read in the study of civil rights despite the anger, hate and bitterness of the writing.