An Interview with Sharon La Cruise

Anne Keefe: Thanks so much for being here, and for sharing your insights with Films for the Feminist Classroom. What inspired you to make this film and tell Daisy Bates’s story?

Sharon La Cruise: I went to a photography exhibit based on the book I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America [photos by Brian Lanker]. When I saw Daisy Bates’s photo in the book with Little Rock Central High behind her, I wondered why I never heard of her. I had studied black history and the Civil Rights movement, but she had never been mentioned. And so I decided to write to her. And in my letter I expressed my disappointment that I had never heard of her. She wrote back and agreed to meet me.

AK One of the things I love most about this film is how you’ve allowed the camera to include your film-making process in the frame—showing us the letter you wrote to Bates, and discussing your own learning process as you got to know more about her as a real person. Can you talk a little bit about your process for this film?

SLC I didn’t even know how to make a film, like I had studied journalism when I got my Masters, but my film was like 20 minutes or so, but beyond that I hadn’t made a full-fledged film. I wasn’t in the documentary world. At the time I was actually, when I wrote her, I had just finished working on the Olympics and I was working in advertising so I was totally not in the field, and I hadn’t been to Arkansas. So I was kind of hemming and hawing, like oh, I’m gonna have to go and meet her. And eventually, I wasted two years, and she died. And then I felt so bad, and I was like oh my god I really should have met her when I had the chance to meet her, and then a few years went by. Then in 2004 I was like—I’m gonna do it. And I just, that’s when I really take the plunge and I go to Arkansas. I gathered as many books and sources, you know, I called people and set up these pre-interviews, and I went there. And once I went there, I was committed. But I had no idea it would take seven years! You know, you go in, and then year after year, things happen, these roadblocks. And the process of making a film, it’s tortuous because of funding. If you can have all your money up front, fully funded, then you’re good, but most people it doesn’t work that way. You get like $50,000 here and $100,000 there and the money goes like that and then you have look for more. Then you have to stop cause people who work for you have to go find jobs and it’s this constant uphill climb to get to finish the film. And a film like mine, when you see it in the short version, it has almost 400 images and over 200 archival footage clips and so it’s a very expensive film to make. It’s over $600,000 to make this film. And so the fundraising is on-going because even when you think you have enough money, by the time you get to the end and you have to clear rights, it’s never enough. You always come up short. Hence, you know, why I took so long.

AK And so how did you stay committed, when you ran up against roadblocks like the funding running out?

SLC It was a weird thing. It was like I felt like I owed her, like I had promised her this film. And the more involved I got with people in Arkansas, I started becoming friends with people who were her friends, and even my own friends—I had sucked them all in! They were all helping me and so then I felt like I couldn’t just walk away; they had all put in so much time. And then in Arkansas, there was so much expectation for the film. There were times that I was just like “I don’t know if this is ever gonna be finished!” but I just felt like I have to do it. I can’t not finish this film because all these people have these expectations and I couldn’t let them down. And I couldn’t let her down cause she deserved that film.

AK And did you find that they all were hopeful expectations? Because it seemed like people had mixed feelings and I was wondering—how did you negotiate that? How did you get people to trust and open up to you?

SLC You know, people, they either loved her or hated her in some ways, a mix in between. She’s a complicated woman. I think most of the people I contacted felt that she deserved the recognition. There are people among the Little Rock Nine who definitely have mixed feelings about her, and I was very honest with them, that I wanted an honest film about her. I wasn’t doing a film about a saint. The funny thing is, when I started on the journey, I was doing a film about a saint because I didn’t know any other way to do a film. All the other films I worked on a lot of them were very historical. In all the films I watched and grew up watching, the person is really elevated to this iconic level and basically untouchable. And so I went to Arkansas on that first trip in 2004 with these expectations that I was going to do this film on Saint Daisy. And I was talking to people and I went back to my hotel room the first few days with this huge massive headache, because the stories they were telling me, they’re like, “And, I don’t think she was ever married to her husband, and she never wrote that book.” Some of the Little Rock Nine really have mixed feelings about her because they really feel like she was a publicity hog, and they were going to school getting beat up every day and she’s in front of the camera. So I was like, oh God. I had bought in to this mystique about her. There wasn’t that much written about her, but what was written was pretty much all the same stuff, and it came out of her own biography. She was her husband’s mistress for like ten years. She broke up his marriage, took him away from his kid. I mean, it was crazy. And then I had this revelation: why would I want to do a film about a saint anyway? Because I don’t know anything about Rosa Parks. I feel that’s a disservice. I didn’t know anything about her really, besides that Angela Bassett played her in a movie, that’s the most insight I’ve gotten into who she is. She’s been treated like this iconic figure in the civil rights movement, that most people don’t really know anything personal about her beyond that moment on the bus when she was tired and she was a seamstress or something like that. So I was like, why would I want to do that film? Because we really should get beyond that. Because part of the problem we have now is that we have expectations of our leaders that they were so perfect and now we’re devastated.

SLC So when I approached people about her, people who liked her or didn’t like her, I said I wanted an honest answer and assessment. I feel like I want to be honest about who she is, the good and the bad. And so out of that came my favorite quote, that her minister Sybil, who was in the film, said that he loved Daisy for everything that she was and wasn’t. He understood her and so that was kind of the approach I took. I feel that way about her, that she’s totally imperfect, but she’s very much like everybody else which makes her story that much incredible because that means we could all do something incredible. We could all be active and contribute. We don’t have to be saints; we don’t have to be Rosa Parks or the way she’s depicted. You could be an ordinary person, who, when you’re called, you step up and do what needs to be done, which is what she was. And in between that she did it for her own weird reasons, some good, and some self-serving. Based on the traumatic childhood she had issues that made her want to fight that fight. She had these needs and this emptiness that needed to be filled by kind of getting this attention from the exterior. Most of the people I encountered were like, “I’ll tell you my stories and my feelings about her.” And that’s what you see in the film, that they were very honest. We’re not trashing her by any means but I have to say if she was alive she would not like this film, because she’s a public figure and she had built up her image a certain way. And she’s a woman from the 50s who wrote her autobiography in the 60s. If you read her autobiography it’s very sad at times.

AK Yes, I found that the autobiography gave the sense that she was very aware of how she presented herself, even in discussing her traumatic past. She seemed so media savvy for that time.

SLC She’s a natural. She knew how to work the press, and she had the looks and stuff to carry it off. It’s very interesting, because she had no training, and she’s not educated. She’s self-educated, but obviously if she had been, she’s really quite smart. Because she did know how to work the media and I always felt bad for her because I understood both sides: how the Little Rock Nine felt about her—conflicted—especially because they felt like she was carrying this burden. But I always felt that she must have understood the power of the media as well. As long as she stayed in front of the camera, she was part of what people remember about what was going on at that school. The moment she stepped away from it, the story starts to die. And they couldn’t always be in front of the cameras because every time the kids gave interviews, they would get beat up more at school each day. But now that they’re adults, they don’t all realize that, they really just feel like she was overbearing. She was in every picture, they couldn’t take a picture without her. They couldn’t get her out. So they had this resentment, they feel that she overshadowed their parents. Their parents didn’t get as much recognition because of her.

AK She seems to take on a kind of mothering role.

SLC Which some of them don’t appreciate.

AK Right. And one in fact says that. She says, “One would assume that the person who is supposed to take care of me is my mother.”

SLC Yes, it was Betty Jean. Betty Jean is very clear that she’s not a fan.

AK I was thinking in that moment and also in that moment where Daisy stages the Thanksgiving meal—how her gender influenced people’s reactions to her positively or negatively—that at times it helped to be in that mothering role in front of the press, but then it also worked against her in other ways.

SLC I think you’re right. And I think because of the time period it did and it didn’t. Because she was beautiful, it definitely helped her. She was a darling. The press is all men, you know. And she’s very beautiful so I think they were willing to accept her and interview her and enjoyed her company and were at her house, and it definitely had to do with how beautiful she looked. So it was pleasing for them to be in her company. And I think sometimes it worked against her, because people would diminish her thinking she’s pretty so she’s probably stupid. And in Arkansas I just find it fascinating because we’re Northeasterners and would look at Arkansas as a poor state compared to New York and New Jersey. We were really very educationally conscious even back then. And in the black community, they are very class-conscious. So they are very conscious of the fact that she has no degree. And I swear to God, even today, in this day and age, I still meet people who mention it: “We didn’t choose her to lead us, she doesn’t even have a degree.” All of the parents, a lot of them are educated. And they’re like, we didn’t choose her. And, this detail didn’t end up in the film, but what I heard from the interviews was that since she didn’t have that strong educational foundation when she was young, she would make a lot of grammatical errors. And it’s really interesting because she’s self-educated but you can’t bridge and you can’t replace that missing education. So she would make all these grammatical errors and they would snicker, the kids and the parents, because they felt superior to her in that way. And you know what happens when you’re the leader, everybody’s pissed at you, because you’re bossing them around so they enjoy watching you kind of get cut down a little bit. So that played against her.

Also, I think within the NAACP it’s still very much a male-dominated environment and women are there but they aren’t wielding any power. When I interviewed one of the heads of the NAACP, he said that they were making decisions in the room, but he also said that there’s no women in there. So she doesn’t really have a place. And she’s leading this movement and this charge in Central High, but that’s because the NAACP has no choice but to let her lead because she’s the person on the ground with all the connections. If they had a choice, she would not be the person that they chose. But they were kind of looking in other areas of the South to fight, and they never expected Arkansas to light up the way it did. So it kind of was taken off balance because all along Arkansas was one of the first states after Brown to step up to the governor and everybody said that they were going to go by the law. The Brown decisions were met and they were going to do their thing. And then they just started to backtrack and tried to drag it out as long as they could, so while they’re doing all that the NAACP is really looking to fight Mississippi and Alabama and these other states that they expected real resistance from. So there’s a power vacuum there. And she was head of the NAACP so she was able to step in. But if they were given the choice, they wouldn’t have chosen her. When I go to their events, they still have her picture up, and they have an educational event named after her. But she’s not on that same level that you would expect when you think of her accomplishments. For what she did for the organization overall, she’s still not recognized on a very high level.

AK I’m sure you’ve heard that politicians are now saying that education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. So I’m wondering what you would say about how Daisy’s story speaks to that issue toda—her fight for education and the experience of the Little Rock Nin—just how it seems cyclical and unresolved.

SLC It’s a fascinating thing because I spent so much time in the past with the story, to watch what has happened over the years beyond. Because ever since the 1954 decision and because of the Little Rock Nine they had to go back and clarify the decision because it was so vague. There’s been this ongoing fight to just totally tear down that law and today the schools have re-segregated themselves, worse than when they were fighting in the 50s. And it’s kind of mind-boggling that this would happen. But the minute Brown took place, a lot of the whites, particularly in Little Rock, they immediately pulled their kids out of the public school system and began creating these private academies that their kids would go to so they would not have to interact with black kids. And a lot of those academies still exist today. And when you look at the map, across the country there’s case after case after case where there’s this fight all the way to the Supreme Court because of Brown. People are still fighting the same battles where they don’t want their kids to go to the same school as kids of color. I mean, it’s a tragedy really. And there’s a part of me that feels like, I don’t know if you could ever make this work, that you could never force people to fully accept you if they don’t want to. And there’s a part of me that’s thinking, I know Daisy would be very sad. The Little Rock Nine, they fought so hard, and in some parts of the world, like if you go to Little Rock, like if you go to Central High, it’s extremely integrated. The population is like 60% black, 40% white and other races. And that’s very integrated compared to the rest of our schools. The problem is that some people say that within the walls of Central High School, they’re still segregated. I don’t totally blame Central High School, I really love the principal, I really do, we actually went to the same college, Adelphi, she’s from Arkansas, I love her to death. I really don’t think it’s her fault, it’s a bigger issue, because what’s happening in Arkansas is what’s happening everywhere. These poor black kids, they’re going to these schools that are inadequate, that when they get to high school, they’re not compatible with the while students. The white students have more resources, they have more tutoring, they’re in accelerated, college-bound classes and the black kids are in remedial classes. So in some cases in Central, which is like five stories tall, they don’t even meet some classes.

AK Sounds like my high school in Durham, North Carolina.

SLC It’s everywhere.

AK There’s a color line in the tracking system.

SLC And I don’t blame them for tracking. I was tracked in high school. I don’t blame you for tracking really bright kids into college. The sad thing is, how do you elevate the kids who didn’t get the same education up to that level? It’s almost impossible in some cases, because of where they’re coming from, the gap is so huge. When I went to high school in the 70s, I didn’t even know we were segregated. I grew up in Brooklyn in a very Latin and black neighborhood, and everyone in school were kids from my neighborhood. So I never questioned it. The only whites I interacted with were my teachers, which was not unusual to me. So I went from eighth grade all the way through high school without really interacting with any white students. In high school we had like two white students. There’s no integration there, on the service end of the community. We didn’t think there was anything wrong with it because we all knew each other and were very comfortable together. And in my high school we were tracked. And I was college-bound, and the rest of the student body was not. And it’s only now I look back and realize, even in the context of that, because it’s not race, it was really ability, there’s still something so inherently wrong about it. Because now it’s like you basically said, “there’s no hope for these kids. They’re not going to college.” They know it and they’re not hiding it. They’re special, and you’re not. And they did special things for us, like we’d go to special plays on Broadway and stuff, every play you could think of in the 70s like Grease, we’d go see all of them for free. So they treated us like we were special, all our teachers knew us, our classes were smaller. We had all this support, but those other kids, they’re like, “They won’t even make it through high school.” It’s that kind of sadness, I look back. How do you change that? That fight that they’re fighting for it’s a heroic one, but it’s really hard to figure out, unless you basically say no matter where you live, everybody has the same. And if you live in a neighborhood that’s wealthy, some of your taxes have to go to the areas that aren’t doing as well. It’s like the NFL. The NFL system works really well because they have teams that are really strong, and they put the money in a pool for the teams that aren’t doing as well. They help them to keep going instead of just letting them sink. And nobody ever complains about it. It’s a form of socialism. We need the NFL model, we need socialism, because we can’t keep going on like this where the place you live will determine the kind of person you turn out to be and determine the kind of education you’ll have access to. It’s inherently not fair. Because you’re born into a certain community, now you’re trapped to be basically a failure in some cases. It doesn’t seem fair. And in the end you’re all in it together, especially in a place like New York, where communities are so close together, one block from the next, you can’t keep pretending that what happens over there doesn’t impact what happens over here. Because if you have an entire population that has no hopes, no dreams, they’re eventually going to come to your side. They have to get out somehow, they have to survive some way. You already told them that they’re nothing, there’s no future for them. What do you think, that they’ll just stay on their side and they’ll never be impacted? It’s just not realistic. We’re all in it together. I know for Daisy toward the end she made a lot of comments in interviews where she felt that they fought really hard to open the doors for equality but they never really counted on how hard it would be for people to walk through those doors. They never expected that. They though it would be a natural thing for people to be running in through those doors, and they found out that it’s not that simple, it’s a much more complicated thing.

AK How do you hope your film is used in the classroom?

SLC I want to use it in a lot of different ways. There’s a part of me that wants it to be for kids who have given up, and kids who are dropping out. I mean, the stats are staggering. Like 17,000 students drop out of school, I think, a day, maybe a week. I don’t think it’s a year. It’s pretty big, the stats. It’s 17,000 kids dropping out. And I wish those kids could watch the film and see the journey that Daisy Bates took. Because Daisy Bates is someone who could have went the other way, because of her childhood. But I feel like she’s somebody who refused to be defined by her childhood. And she decided that she was going to choose her own path. She was going to do whatever it took to get where she wanted to go. I feel that she’s an inspirational person for young people. And the Little Rock Nine, they’re just teenagers. They’re like 14 and 15 years old, having soldiers march them into school, they’re getting abused. I mean, unlike the whole notion of bullying today, it was at a different level for them. You had entire communities, in some cases, that were entirely complicit in you being beat up every day. It’s unbelievable. You have kids going home to their parents to find out that they kicked your butt all day long. You’d like to think nowadays you could talk to the parents and they would put a stop to it. In this case, you have a part of the community that was complicit, and thought it was a good idea to beat up these kids because they had no right to be at their school. So I feel that they as well were inspirational. They fought so hard to get into the school, because they realized that the school had the resources that they didn’t have in their black schools. And it’s sad to me today that students who have the opportunity to go into schools freely are going the other way. They’re like running through the doors. And there’s such a disconnect between our history and these kids. I keep feeling that if we could reconnect them to that history, maybe they’d have a better appreciation and understanding for the present that they obviously can relate to. So I would love for it to be used in that way, to reach out to kids who are already at risk of dropping out, and to have that conversation with them about being able to choose your life, and choose your path. And this whole notion of no matter what the circumstances are in your life, within your home life, that you still have choices that you can make about who you’re going to become, that you don’t have to just become a perpetual victim, and to fall into this trap.

SLC I would also love for the film to be used for leadership, to also encourage young girls to step up, because in the end Daisy Bates was just an ordinary woman, and probably much less educated than many of the people who are going to be watching the film. So she really does give you a sense of, if you’re determined and if you’re focused, and if you actually care about something, that you could actually get stuff done, and you should become more active in the community. And on a historical level, I would love to see her get her place in history books, because up until this time, no historian has written a book on her. She does not have a biographer who is a historian. Her biographer is lawyer. And that’s two different disciplines. There’s nothing wrong with his biography, but I want to see a scholar to put her in her place because until a scholar writes about her, she will not really get her place in history books. The scholars really help determine that. And other scholars will pick up from that, but so far nobody stepped up yet.

AK Maybe the film will inspire that.

SLC I keep hoping a scholar will see it and say, “I want to find out more about her on my own” and start digging and digging. And I would love to meet that person and help them on that journey, because I want someone to write a scholarly book about her and her place in the movement, and have people know her outside of Arkansas and know what she did. And even within Arkansas when they watch the film they’re like blown away because they realize they didn’t know a lot about her. They really know just the basics. So they learned a lot from the film as well. That scholarly research into her life would be my dream for her.

AK There’s another level to what your film does: it gives a model to students for moving from that spark of curiosity into a long-term research project. I love that you include yourself in the film; you include the letter you write, you include yourself looking at the microfilm, and you show your actual research happening. And that’s great for students to see.

SLC I didn’t set out to do that kind of film, because I was kind of doing the films I was used to. I had no plans to be on camera, but we made the film one way, and we realized it was kind of flat. It was too dry, and it was like the voice-of-God narrator in it. We realized maybe it would be more interesting if I took you on this journey with me as I try to unravel who she is and what happened to her in her life and why she got lost in the history. And I’m really happy that worked out well, because I didn’t plan it.

For discussion and educator guides on the film Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock, visit ITVS.