Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was born in 1914 in the small Arkansas town of Huttig, near the Louisiana border. Her legacy includes the creation of a Little Rock newspaper, which she started with her husband, and the mentorship she offered local students, who were historically known as the Little Rock Nine.
Her birth parents remain unknown, but Susie and Orlee Smith took her in as their foster child when she was nine. As an adolescent, she attended a segregated school in her hometown. Historians believe that Bates did not complete formal schooling past the ninth grade.
At the age of 15, Bates met a traveling salesman from Tennessee, Lucious Christopher Bates. Although she didn’t know it at the time, this would be the man she would marry. After the death of her foster father in 1932, she moved to Memphis to live with Lucious. A little less than a decade later, the two relocated to Little Rock.
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Once the pair had settled down in their new city, they opened the Arkansas State Press, a statewide civil rights newspaper that advocated for the betterment of African Americans. Bates dedicated herself to the paper’s operations and later became an editor, even without writing for the publication.
Advocacy and activism
As her activism career began to pick up steam, Bates and her husband joined Little Rock’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1952, Bates was elected President of the state’s NAACP. Her work gained her attention from Arkansas’s White population. It ultimately led to her involvement in the case Aaron v. Cooper which declared school segregation unconstitutional.
With the Civil Rights Movement starting to ramp up, southern states began to fight against national efforts to integrate public spaces. Bates was instrumental in Arkansas’s desegregation work.
Most notably, as President of Arkansas’ NAACP she was a public advocate for the Little Rock Nine. Bates welcomed the high school students into her home where together they organized their integration efforts.
On the morning of September 24, 1957, the nine students left Bates’ home to attend Central High School, where they were met by the state National Guard. Despite the pushback and threats of violence, Bates remained steadfast in her support.
This work was so impactful that the Associated Press named her the 1957 Woman of the Year in Education. However, with the entire nation now clued into the happenings of Little Rock, her family publication, Arkansas State Press, and her home became a target.
In 1959, the paper closed down and the family took turns guarding their home at night from attackers. Bates documented her work in the 1960 memoir, “The Long Shadow of Little Rock.”
Her work and notoriety made her one of the most prominent female figures in the Civil Rights Movement. At the 1963 March on Washington, Bates was the only women who gave a speech. Although she spoke less than 200 words, she used the time to tribute other prodigious women like Rosa Parks and Gloria Richardson.
Legacy after death
Bates passed away on November 4, 1999 in Little Rock. She spent her life fighting for the rights of Black people across America. The following May, President Bill Clinton attended and spoke at her memorial service.
“But what I’d like to say to you at the end of this very moving and long and inspiring program is that I really liked Daisy Bates,” said Clinton. “I liked her for who she was. I liked her because she was a brave woman who fought the civil rights battle. But I liked her also because she was a brave woman who kept her spirits up and found joy in life as her body began to fail, who learned to speak through her eyes when her voice would no longer make a sound, and who never lost the ability to laugh.”
Her home in Little Rock has since been established as a National Historic Landmark. In 2001, the Arkansas legislature voted to immortalize her life’s work by declaring the third Monday in Feburary as Daisy Gatson Bates Day. Nearly 20 years after she died, the U.S. Capitol added a statue of Bates to the National Statuary Hall Collection.
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