Author Bio

Dunbar H. Ogden is Professor Emeritus of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley where, since 2000, he has taught a freshman seminar based on the events in this book.

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Main Description

On September 4, 1957, the group of African American high school students who became known as the Little Rock Nine walked up to the front of Central High to enroll in school. They were turned away by the National Guard, who had been called out by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. "Blood will run in the streets," said Faubus, "if Negro pupils should attempt to enter Central High School." A mob seethed out front. The man who led the Nine up to the lines of the National Guard on that fateful morning was the author's father, a white Presbyterian pastor.

My Father Said Yes is the untold story of the Reverend Dunbar Ogden, who became the pro-integration leader in Little Rock's white community. He responded to a call for support from Daisy Bates, co-owner of the town's black newspaper. Both faced fierce opposition from within as well as from outside. Reverend Ogden lost his church and Daisy Bates lost her newspaper.

This memoir is also a moving father-son story. In this frank account, the author discusses the depression his father battled for most of his life, as well as the family tragedy of his brother's suicide.

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Reviews

My Father Said Yes is a good read, interesting throughout, and an important reminder of the shameful miseries and insults inflicted upon African-Americans prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
--Eric Anshutz, Rossmoor News

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A remarkable book [which dramatizes] the power of black-white partnership.
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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Extras

Dunbar Ogden and Daisy Bates formed an unlikely coalition . . . . He was a white Presbyterian pastor. She was a black journalist who with her husband owned and edited the black newspaper in town. . . . Many ironies mark that year-long "collaboration." Ogden was a man of the church while Daisy Bates held little brief for organized religion. But in the end, years later, she said, "He was a true man of God."

    The historic moment in Little Rock came about because the Reverend Dunbar H. Ogden, Jr., had visited often and regularly in the homes of the black populace. His role as a churchman gave him that access if he chose to take it. . . .

    [Archbishop Tutu goes on to reflect on a parallel historic moment.]  May 9, 1994, marked the birth of the new South Africa. . . .  De Klerk stepped first out onto the balcony.  I grasped his hand and held it high.  A cheer rose.  I heard the hesitancy in the voices for centuries muted by whites and often betrayed by the cruel unpredictability of their own rulers.  I saw, as they saw, the hand of the white man, the hand of the oppressor, in my dark-skinned hand. . . . Minutes later I raised the hand of black Deputy President Mbeki and finally, President Mandela. . . .

    My Father Said Yes illuminates these very issues.  It is a remarkable book.  Now for the first time Dunbar Ogden's voice can be heard and his actions can be seen in  perspective.  They dramatize the power of black-white partnership.