The Long Shadow of Little Rock

The Long Shadow of Little Rock is a 1962 memoir by Daisy Bates, a civil rights activist who rose to prominence during a series of rallies to integrate a school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Vividly describing the tumult of the civil rights movement, Bates traces her journey from grassroots movements in Little Rock, through her position as an advisor for the “Little Rock Nine,” and onward to the integration of the all-white Central High School. The memoir is known as one of the best primary sources describing the civil rights struggle in the mid-twentieth century.

Bates begins her memoir recalling the United States Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision that the segregation of individuals into institutions based on their racial status creates inequality. This decision, called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, set a clear imperative for states that ran segregated schools to desegregate them immediately. These states included Arkansas, Kansas, and twenty more states, mostly in the south. Segregationists in Arkansas virulently rallied against the ruling. They focused their energies on preventing Central High School from becoming desegregated, in the hope of turning back the ruling and inspiring more segregationists to start similar protests.

In Arkansas and abroad, the spirit of white nationalism amplified the segregationists’ voices. Despite their vitriol, the nine black students who sought entrance into Central High (the “Little Rock Nine”) were slated to begin class alongside their white peers in September 1957. Daisy Bates stepped up to be the students’ advisor and advocate. Protests came to a boil, and hordes of white people congregated on the school grounds, issuing death threats. Bates compares this juncture in the desegregation effort to a “reign of terror.” The media called this moment the “Battle for Little Rock.”



Though desegregation’s legal precedent was unambiguous, other parts of the government were not immune to racist opposition. The city council pressured the police chief of Little Rock to detain the NAACP activists, including Bates. Bates surrendered before the situation escalated. The police charged her with declining to make public her full knowledge of the desegregation effort, including personal details about its members. Bates had declined because she knew that releasing this information would endanger their lives. The judge issued her a fine, but the NAACP reversed the ruling later in the Supreme Court. These legal victories did little to diminish the real threats against the activists’ and students’ lives. Bates recalls stocking her home with firearms in case of a break-in. On one occasion, a dummy in her likeness was hanged in a mock lynching put on by segregationists. Even after her house was battered with homemade bombs, her pleas to federal law enforcement to intervene were returned with memos stating that these were problems for her local police.

Ultimately, the Little Rock Nine enrolled and began class just as scheduled. Despite the trauma they endured by simply trying to go to school, they went on to lead extraordinary lives. Bates and her husband, L.C., paid a long-term price for their altruism. The newspaper they co-owned, the Arkansas State Press, suffered a severe decline in both sales and sponsorship in the wake of their highly publicized activism. In 1959, they had no choice but to bring it to an end.

Despite their business woes, L.C. and Daisy Bates were propelled back into activism. L.C. joined the NAACP until he retired, and Daisy went to reside in New York, where she completed The Long Shadow of Little Rock. The original version contained a foreword written by Eleanor Roosevelt, extolling its relevance to contemporary America. Roosevelt believed that Daisy’s writing could help restore conscience to politics.



The Long Shadow of Little Rock is both an incisive critique of racial terror, and a firsthand account of one woman’s role in naming it, at a great personal cost. Bates’ memoir shows that no institution, whether a Presidency or a public school, is apolitical, refuting persistent white nationalist rhetoric that seeks to chill America’s growing tradition of racial activism.