At the September 2009 meeting of the Philander Smith College Board of Trustees meeting, the trustees discussed changing the formal address of the college. Two reasons were presented for the renaming of the address. First, through expansion, the entrance to the College physically sits on Daisy Bates Drive. As the College has increased its outreach which has caused a subsequent increase in visitor traffic, having a more accurate address helps to readily identify the location of the College. In addition, the new campus master plan calls for the elimination of the grid system on the campus so our entrance will eventually loop in and out, and the streets will mostly be eliminated.

The second, and probably most important point, was that the new address would strongly reinforce the social justice mission of the College. Daisy Gatson Bates is recognized worldwide for her active role in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. She and her husband used their newspaper, The Arkansas State Press, as a vehicle for activism. She served as the state president of the Arkansas Branches of the NAACP, and later served on the National NAACP Board.

She wrote her memoirs, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, in 1962. In it, she revealed several connections between Philander Smith College and the Little Rock Nine. She shared that our faculty tutored the nine, and that the wife of PSC professor Lee Lorch, Grace, rescued Elizabeth Eckford from that now famous photo. Bates also shared that when PSC started the flight program under the leadership of Tuskegee Airman Milton Crenchaw in the early 1940s, she was the only woman enrolled. Daisy Bates was also the only woman with a speaking role at eh 1963 March on Washington, solidifying her palce as a civil right icon. She died on November 4, 1999.

On November 10, 2000, 14^th Street was renamed Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive, right before her birthday (November 11^th). In 2001, the Arkansas legislature formally recognized the third Monday in February as “Daisy Gatson Bates Day.”

After further research, the executive committee of the Board voted in October to change the address. So today, our new official address is 900 Daisy Bates Drive (the full address is 900 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive, but the shorter version is acceptable).

I shared the extensive background on Ms. Bates because we should definitely take any opportunity to tell the significance of our address as it links to Central High School and the role Philander Smith College played in the first major event of the Civil Rights Movement. It is only fitting that we too honor the legacy of Daisy Bates since Philander Smith College played a role in her work with the Little Rock Nine.

The Prez