34 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
State Sovereignty Com-
mission: A southern state
agency that aimed at dis-
rupting the civil rights
movement.
Bates, Daisy(1914–99):
Arkansas NAACP presi-
dent who helped black
students desegregate
Central High School in
Little Rock.
organizations challenging the state to report to state officials, and created a
state sovereignty commissionto resist the federal government’s ‘interfer-
ence’ in Arkansan affairs. Under the new laws, the Citizens’ Council would
receive state funding while the NAACP had to reveal its membership list,
exposing its members to violence.
By stirring the racial pot, Faubus encouraged white supremacists to wage
a last-gasp campaign to preserve school segregation. Over the summer, the
Citizens’ Council disrupted school board meetings and spread rumors that
armed men would descend on Little Rock. Georgia governor Marvin Griffin
poured gas on the fire, by telling a Little Rock rally that integration would
never occur in his state and that fierce resistance from Faubus on down could
block it in Arkansas as well. Speakers from Mississippi and Louisiana
advocated bloodshed to keep blacks out. Such incendiary rhetoric led the
KKK to target Daisy Bates, president of the state’s NAACP, and her husband
L.C. Bates, the crusading editor of the Arkansas State Press. Klansmen burned
crosses on the Bates’ front yard, fired gunshots at their house, and threw a
rock through their living-room window. A note tied to the rock warned,
‘STONE THIS TIME. DYNAMITE NEXT.’
Faubus worked hand-in-glove with white supremacists. He arranged sur-
reptitiously for the Mothers’ League of Central High, a Citizens’ Council aux-
iliary, to petition a state court to postpone desegregation. In a surprise move,
Faubus testified that the city’s stores were selling out of guns and knives,
‘mostly to Negro youths’ planning gang warfare. Although FBIagents found
no sign of impending conflict, a local judge accepted the governor’s word and
blocked the desegregation plan. Thugs drove by the Bates’ home all night,
honking their horns and shouting, ‘Daisy, Daisy, did you hear the news? The
coons won’t be going to Central!’ Federal judge Ronald Davies, who had been
transferred temporarily from North Dakota, was not impressed by Faubus’s
unproven claims and ordered desegregation to proceed.
On 2 September, the night before the nine black students were to enter
Central High, Faubus ringed the school with National Guardsmen and
manufactured a crisis to justify the call-up. He encouraged his friend Jimmy
Karam, a one-time football coach and anti-labor goon, to stir up trouble out-
side the school. In a disingenuous televised address, the somber governor
insisted that the guardsmen were needed to prevent bloodshed and promised
that they would act not ‘as segregationists or integrationists, but as soldiers
called to active duty to carry out their assigned tasks.’ Their real task, a
guardsman explained, was to ‘Keep the niggers out!’ Faubus had now gone
far beyond race-baiting speeches, legislative roadblocks, and lawsuits to pre-
vent blacks from receiving their civil rights. He now employed the armed
might of the state to nullify a federal court decision, the most flagrant states’
rights claim since South Carolina seceded before the Civil War.Federal Bureau of Invest-
igation: The main invest-
igative arm of the US
justice department. Ob-
served but did not prose-
cute crimes against civil
rights workers.