The
Long Shadow of Little Rock
A Memoir
Daisy Bates
Foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt
With an Afterword by Clayborne Carson
Classic account of the Little
Rock School Crisis
“This is a book which I hope will be read by every American.
It is simply told and easy to read, but not pleasant.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt, from the foreword
to the first edition (1962)
“Daisy Bates’ vivid memoir illuminates one of
the key events of an historic freedom struggle. . . . Her
story will serve as a source of inspiration for future participants
in the long struggle for human freedom.”
—From the afterword
At an event honoring Daisy Bates as 1990’s Distinguished
Citizen then-governor Bill Clinton called her “the most
distinguished Arkansas citizen of all time.” Her classic
account of the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis, The Long Shadow
of Little Rock, couldn't be found on most bookstore shelves
in 1962 and was banned throughout the South. In 1988, after
the University of Arkansas Press reprinted it, it won an American
Book Award.
On September 3, 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National
Guard to surround all-white Central High School and prevent
the entry of nine black students, challenging the Supreme
Court's 1954 order to integrate all public schools. On September
25, Daisy Bates, an official of the NAACP in Arkansas, led
the nine children into the school with the help of federal
troops sent by President Eisenhower–the first time in
eighty-one years that a president had dispatched troops to
the South to protect the constitutional rights of black Americans.
This new edition of Bates's own story about these historic
events is being issued to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary
of the Little Rock School crisis in 2007.
Daisy Bates (1913?-1999) and her husband
published the Arkansas State Press from 1941 to 1959.
She served on the NAACP’s national board from 1957 to
1970. In 1957 the Associated Press chose her as the Woman
of the Year and one of the top ten newsmakers in the world.
Clayborne Carson is professor of history
and founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research
and Education Institute at Stanford University.
August
6 x 9, 260 pages, photographs, index
Paper $17.95
ISBN 978-1-55728-863-9 | 1-55728-863-1
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