Posted on 04/19/2002 8:31:36 AM PDT by DCBryan1
Clinton pleads for Bates home aid
ELISA CROUCH
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
In the 1950s and 1960s, the blond brick home that belonged to Daisy and L.C. Bates became the command post for change.
In the den downstairs, Daisy Bates tutored the nine students who integrated Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. Her neighbors watched civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, who went on to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, come to the home for visits. They also saw angry whites hurl rocks and bricks through the front windows.
On Thursday, neighbors joined former President Clinton and about 200 others who filled chairs in the Bates' front yard, 1207 W. 28th St., at a $50-a-ticket fund-raiser to renovate the home and transform it into a museum.
"This is an important part of America's history," Clinton said, squinting from the sun and speaking from a podium near the front porch. "This was the place that it happened."
Before she died in 1999 at age 84, Bates said she wanted her home to become a testimony to the 1957 desegregation crisis, when nine black students tried to enroll in Central High School.
The city's first desegregation efforts were blocked when then-Gov. Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard. His standoff with President Eisenhower became a defining moment for Arkansas and the nation.
One of the nine students, Elizabeth Eckford, sat in the front row Thursday and watched Clinton speak.
A friend of the Bates, Clinton declared the home a National Historic Landmark during a trip to Little Rock two years ago as president.
Now, the Christian Ministerial Alliance and the Daisy and L.C. Bates Museum Foundation are working to turn the home into an educational tool. The 48-year-old bungalow needs $100,000 worth of improvements.
In 1999, a tornado tore through the home and left broken windows and a caved-in roof. Though most of the damage is fixed, the home needs structural work.
Those working on the project hope that within a year or two, the home will be restored to look just as it did when Bates fed her visitors black cherry ice cream and encouraged the Little Rock Nine.
Once complete, the home will join the Central High Visitor Center as a place where visitors can learn about the city's civil rights struggles.
"The Bates house has so many ties, not just that the Bates lived there ... but then the role that the house played," said Johanna Miller Lewis, chairman of the history department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
The university is helping the alliance and the foundation open the house as an historic attraction.
Thelma Mothershed Wair, another member of the Little Rock Nine, didn't attend. But her parents did. They sat in the front row and watched the crowd gather from across the street in their front yard and later heard Clinton's talk.
A.L. Mothershed remembered the pressures that came with sending his daughter into an all-white high school.
"The thing we were concerned about was letting her go to the best high school she could," said Mothershed, 85. "The journey wasn't too good, but the results were."
Clinton said returning to Little Rock for the fund-raiser was important to him. The future museum will put a "human face" on the events that occurred in 1957 and the struggles Bates and her students endured.
"Daisy Bates cared about the children," Clinton said. "She knew they were instruments of history, but also children who needed an education and deserved to be protected."
Before speaking, the former president sat between Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and Imam Johnny Hasan, president of the Christian Ministerial Alliance, an interfaith and predominantly black group of religious leaders. The alliance assumed the title to Bates' home after she died. L.C. Bates died in 1980.
Dailey said the museum will help future generations understand civil rights history.
"May we never repeat again those tragic moments in history where we have in many ways destroyed the integrity of individuals," Dailey said.
After leaving the Bates home, Clinton visited with former members of his administration at a private reception. His next stop was Hot Springs, where he planned to spend the night.
Today Clinton will view the White House photographs from his presidential collection on display at the Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center and will attend a fund-raiser for U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., at the Arlington Hotel.
Clinton last visited the Spa City in 1997, when he helped kick off the transformation of the old Hot Springs High School into a cultural center named in his honor and then spoke in Little Rock at the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1957 desegregation crisis. Bates participated in the commemoration.
"I've always considered her a genuine heroine of the civil rights movement," Clinton said of Bates. "She's only begun in the last 10 years to get the recognition that she deserves ... She was kind of a living testimonial to the civil rights movement until the day that she died."
This article was published on Friday, April 19, 2002
Pretty wide definition of "Christian"! "Imam"?!
This is too easy.
Whenever I see a picture of that disgusting man, I can only hope that the damage he has done to our wonderful country can be repaired. No caption necessary.
Like the Sink Emperor really give a care about historical sites like the Choctaw freight station, torn down to accomodate his liebrary.
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