Daisy Bates

Daisy Mae Bates (1861-1951) was a social worker among the Australian aborigines. One of the first Europeans to win their confidence, she compiled a unique collection of material about them.

Daisy Bates was born Daisy O'Dwyer Hunt at Ballychrine, Tipperary, Ireland. Following the death of her mother, she was raised in the family of Sir Francis Outram, a retired officer of the Indian Civil Service. In 1884 she emigrated to Australia for health reasons, and at Bathurst, New South Wales, she met and married John Bates. She returned to Britain in 1894 and took up journalism but in 1899 emigrated to Western Australia, partly in connection with a pastoral lease in which she was interested and partly on behalf of the Times to investigate charges of white cruelty to the aborigines.

Bates's reports suggested that the aborigines were incompetently and unwisely managed but refuted the idea that they were being treated cruelly. Having discharged her commission, Bates remained in Western Australia and for 35 years lived as a solitary European among the aborigines. Her work was officially recognized by the Western Australia government, which commissioned her to study particular tribes and made her the state's traveling Protector of Aborigines.

The death of her husband and the acquisition of property in the north of Western Australia did not distract her from the service to which she had now clearly resolved to devote her life and for which, in 1933, she was made a commander of the British Empire. The aborigines accepted her as their friend and referred to her as Kabbarli, or grandmother. She was admitted to some of their initiation ceremonies, from which their own women were excluded on pain of death, and made copious notes on all she observed, which formed the basis of a book she published in 1938. She was still working among the aborigines at the age of 80, but in 1945 ill health compelled her to retire to Adelaide. She died on April 18, 1951.

Bates not only studied the aborigines but also helped to feed them, nurse them, and settle disputes between them. She took care to respect their tribal rules and customs and was critical of missionaries who attempted to undermine their beliefs and convert them to those of a totally alien world. She regarded the aborigines as a race doomed to eventual extinction but was concerned that the process should be as painless as possible. In this regard she concluded that what was needed was not "anthropological study of social laws" but "administration of British rule founded on our highest and best traditions."

Further Reading

There is little written about Daisy Bates. The best source of information is her own account of her life, The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent among the Natives of Australia (1938; 2d ed. 1966). Winifred Holmes, Seven Adventurous Women (1953), has a lengthy discussion of her.

Additional Sources

Bates, Daisy, The long shadow of Little Rock: a memoir, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987.

Blackburn, Julia, Daisy Bates in the desert, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

civil rights activist; publisher

Personal Information

Born Daisy Lee Gatson, Huttig, AR, c. 1914. Married L. C. Bates (a journalist and insurance salesman; died 1980), 1942.
Education: Attended Shorter College and Philander Smith College, both in Little Rock, AR.

Career

Publisher and activist, 1942-87. With L. C. Bates, published, edited, and wrote for Arkansas State Press newspaper, 1942-59; chairman, state conference of branches, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1952-59; published book The Long Shadow of Little Rock, 1962; worked for Democratic National Committee and government anti-poverty programs, c. early 1960s; community activist, Mitchellville, Arkansas, 1968-72; retired, 1974; reopened State Press as part owner, 1984; sold paper, 1987; Elementary School in Little Rock named for Bates, 1987; carried Olympic torch, Atlanta, GA, 1996.

Life's Work

Daisy Bates is best known for her involvement in the struggle to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. As an advisor to nine black students trying to attend a previously all- white school, she was a pivotal figure in that seminal moment of the civil rights movement. As a publisher and journalist, she was also a witness and advocate on a larger scale. Her memoir of the conflict, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, is a primary text in the history of American race relations. Bates endured numerous hardships, but in the ensuing years her unstinting labors on behalf of equality opportunity have earned her numerous laurels.

She was born Daisy Lee Gatson in Huttig, a tiny Arkansas town dominated by a sawmill. "Huttig might have been called a sawmill plantation," she maintained in her book, "for everyone worked for the mill, lived in houses owned by the mill, and traded at the general store run by the mill." Growing up there, "I knew I was a Negro, but I did not really understand what that meant until I was seven years old." At that time, she went to buy some meat for her mother at a store and was rudely snubbed by the butcher. "Niggers have to wait 'til I wait on the white people," he brusquely informed her.

The incident had a strong impact on young Daisy, but her rage at discrimination turned to horror when she learned, somewhat later, that the parents she had known all her life were in reality friends of her real parents; her mother, it turned out, had been murdered while resisting rape by three white men. The men were never brought to justice, and Daisy's real father left town. "Young as I was, strange as it may seem," she wrote, "my life now had a secret goal- -to find the men who had done this horrible thing to my mother. So happy once, now I was like a little sapling which, after a violent storm, puts out only gnarled and twisted branches."

At the age of 15, Daisy became the object of an older man's attentions. L. C. Bates, an insurance salesman who had also worked on newspapers in the South and West. L. C. wooed her for several years, and they married in 1942, setting up housekeeping in Little Rock. Though the low pay and lack of job security had been a constant for him as a journalist, he longed to leave the insurance business and run his own newspaper. The Bateses decided to act on this dream, leasing a printing plant that belonged to a church publication and inaugurating the Arkansas State Press. The first issue appeared on May 9, 1941.

The paper became an avid voice for civil rights even before a nationally recognized movement had emerged, and enjoyed a substantial readership--and thus a healthy flow of advertising revenue. The paper regularly published articles that reported and condemned police brutality against black citizens, and took up the cause of black veterans of World War II, who met with harassment and violence--sometimes even murder--upon returning to the South. Yet the paper's fearless editorializing on the subject of a black serviceman's slaying at the hands of a white police officer upset local whites, especially area business owners. Faced with a sudden loss of advertising money, the paper appeared poised to disappear. "The picture was discouraging," Daisy recalled in her memoir. "So much so that I was tempted to pack up and leave Little Rock." Even so, she and her husband "decided to stick to our guns."

The State Press continued to publish pieces attacking police brutality. "The Negroes supposedly fighting a war in the name of freedom had through our paper found a voice to express their feelings," she asserted. Henceforth, emboldened by the support of readers and bolder advertisers, the paper "expanded its crusading role on an ever widening front. It fought to free negroes from muddy, filthy streets, slum housing, menial jobs, and injustice in the courtrooms." Thanks in part to such crusading, conditions in Little Rock improved for a time, and it "actually began to gain a reputation as a liberal southern city." In 1945, the State Press was able to buy new printing equipment.

Daisy attended classes at nearby Shorter College in business administration, public relations, and "other subjects related to the newspaper field." She also studied for a time at Philander Smith College. Though she loved flying and took classes at a flight school, Daisy was forced to give up this hobby when it adversely affected her insurance premiums. She served as the paper's editor- in-chief during L. C.'s vacation, and both before and after his return continued to pursue controversial stories. A 1946 piece about a labor dispute, which sided with striking workers and criticized a local judge, led to their arrest and conviction on contempt of court. The Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the conviction.

After the war, throngs of black soldiers returned to the South, facing discrimination, harassment, and violence. Bates noted in her book that brutality against returning soldiers was a great motivator in the growth of the civil rights movement, and that membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) grew radically during this period. L. C. and Daisy Bates had been members virtually since their arrival in Little Rock; in 1952, Daisy became the leader of the state conference of NAACP branches. She was already co-chairing the state conference's Committee on Fair Employment Practices, but took to her new duties with aplomb. Two years later, in a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional; the decision was sparked by a multitude of lawsuits filed against segregated schools and coordinated by the NAACP.

"To the nation's Negroes," Daisy Bates observed in her book, "the Supreme Court decision meant that the time for delay, evasion, or procrastination was over." While acting governor Francis A. Cherry expressed his intention to comply with the law, he was defeated by an avid segregationist--Orval Faubus, who vowed resistance to federal mandates on the issue. But Daisy Bates and other activists, who had long watched black studies languish in inferior schools while all-white schools enjoyed infinitely greater resources, determined to press the issue. Nine black students were slated to attend Little Rock's Central High; they became the focal point for one of the most intense chapters of the civil rights movement.

Despite all legislative efforts by the segregationists to prevent the "Little Rock Nine," as the students were known, from attending Central High, the school's integration was slated to begin in the fall of 1957. Daisy Bates became their advisor and protector. White mobs met at the school, threatening to kill the black students; these mobs harassed not only activists but also northern journalists who came to cover the story. Soon, Bates recollected, "hysteria in all of its madness enveloped the city. Racial feelings were at a fever pitch."

The city council instructed the Little Rock police chief to arrest Bates and other NAACP officials; she and the local branch president surrendered voluntarily. They were charged with failing to provide information about members for the public record, in violation of a city ordinance. In such a charged environment, of course, publicizing such information would have endangered the members in question. Though Bates was charged a fine by the judge, NAACP lawyers appealed and eventually won a reversal in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite such provisional victories, the physical safety of Bates, the students, and other activists was constantly threatened. "It took many weeks for me to become accustomed to seeing revolvers lying on tables in my own home," she remembered in The Long Shadow of Little Rock. "And shotguns, loaded with buckshot, standing ready near the doors." The students endured constant intimidation, and Bates saw herself hanged in effigy by segregationists. She was later threatened in her car by a white man, and bombs were thrown at the Bates house. The U.S. government answered her desperate telegrams by explaining that such incidents were a matter for local authorities.

Ultimately, the Little Rock nine were able to attend Central High, and many of them went on to impressive careers. The price for the L. C. and Daisy Bates was high, however; an orchestrated boycott of advertisers caused the newspaper's revenue to dry up quickly, and they were forced to shut it down in 1959. L. C. accepted an NAACP post the following year, which he retained until his retirement in 1971. Daisy, meanwhile, traveled to New York and spent two years writing her book. It was published in 1962 with a foreword by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. "This is a book which I hope will be read by every American," Roosevelt declared; adding in her conclusion that the volume "should shock the conscience of America and bring a realization of where we stand in the year 1962 in these United States."

Daisy Bates moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for the Democratic National Committee. She participated in the anti-poverty programs of the Lyndon Johnson administration, but was incapacitated by a stroke in 1965. The following year saw her donate a number of her papers, photographs, and other historical documents from the Little Rock crisis to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

In 1968, she moved to the town of Mitchellville, Arkansas, living in a mobile home and participating in a number of efforts to improve living conditions for the area's mostly Black residents. As a result of her tireless work with the city's Self-Help Project, new water and sewer systems were installed in the town, roads were paved, and a community center--with swimming pool--was completed in 1972. When budget cuts by President Richard Nixon threatened the project, she protested bitterly. She retired two years later.

L. C. Bates died in 1980, but Daisy held out hope that the State Press would circulate once more. At last, in 1984, this longtime dream became a reality. "I said to myself, `If you're going to do it, do it now or forget it,'" she told Ebony. "One of the reasons I hadn't done it is I didn't have enough money on my own to finance it." A satisfactory arrangement was made in collaboration with school superintendent Dr. H. Benjamin Williams and the Rev. Robert Willingham. This partnership--which gave her two-thirds ownership-- allowed the paper to buy a new typesetting machine. The paper's first run sold out. "It's been fantastic, an awakening to me," she exclaimed. "And we are trying to address new issues. We're even getting requests from Vietnam veterans who want us to help them." One of the "Little Rock Nine," Ernest Green, served as the paper's national marketing director; he had previously held a position in the administration of President Jimmy Carter.

Times had changed, of course, and in addition to a smaller staff, the paper addressed different social realities. In keeping with her lifelong mission to instill pride, Daisy Bates saw that the paper used the phrase "Afro-American" instead of "black." She reasoned in Ebony that the former designation "gives you a heritage, a background of which to be proud." The year 1984 also saw her receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; the institution would ultimately be the home of the Daisy Bates Collection.

In 1986, the University of Arkansas Press republished The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which became the first reprinted edition ever to earn an American Book Award. The following year she sold the newspaper, but continued to act as a consultant. Little Rock paid perhaps the ultimate tribute, not only to Bates but to the new era she helped to initiate, by opening the Daisy Bates Elementary School. She periodically made public appearances with the Little Rock Nine, and swore in the Chicago Tribune, "I'll always continue to fight." On her 80th birthday, some 1,400 people gathered to celebrate her; and in 1996, wire services carried a photo of the wheelchair-bound activist carrying the Olympic torch in Atlanta, Georgia. The city's Journal-Constitution reported that she was met by a "mob scene," albeit one very different from those she had described in her harrowing book: "Friends, family and admirers, black and white, cheered, yelled encouragement and shed tears."

Bates died on November 4, 1999, in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Awards

Diamond Cross of Malta, Philadelphia Cotillion Society, 1958; honorary Doctor of Laws degree, University of Arkansas, 1984; National Book Award for reprint edition of The Long Shadow of Little Rock, 1988.

Further Reading

Books

• Bates, Daisy, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, McKay, 1962.

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 26, 1996.
• Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1993; February 20, 1994.
• Ebony, September 1984, pp. 93-94.
• Jet, September 21, 1987, p. 22.
• Additional information was provided by notes on the Daisy Bates Papers from the internet site of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

— Simon Glickman

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was a civil rights activist and newspaper publisher who was a key figure in the integration of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the late 1950s. When a storm of violent public protest swept Little Rock, Bates orchestrated the strategies that would reverse two hundred years of state-sanctioned segregation.

Bates was born in 1920 in Huttig, in the lumbering region of southeast Arkansas. When she was a baby, her mother was raped and murdered. No one was prosecuted for the crime, but suspicion in the town centered on three white men. After her mother's death, her father fled, leaving Bates with his best friends, Orlee Smith and Susie Smith, who adopted her and raised her as their only child. They were kind and indulgent parents and Bates grew to be a strong-willed and determined child. When she was eight, she learned of the circumstances of her birth and adoption. The painful knowledge of her parents' suffering and the harsh realities of life in the rural south became driving forces in Bates's life.

Although she grew up during difficult economic times, Bates's childhood was relatively comfortable. Her relationship with her adoptive parents was warm and loving, and she was especially close to her father. Nevertheless, Bates's childhood was not easy. Like other black children, she experienced the sting of racial discrimination from an early age. She attended a segregated public school, using worn textbooks handed down from the white children's school. Her school was little more than a room with a potbellied stove that gave so little heat she and her classmates often kept their coats on all day.

In 1941 Orlee Smith became gravely ill. When he knew he was going to die, he called his daughter to his side. He was aware of the anger and hurt she carried because of her mother's death and her father's disappearance, and because of the bigotry that was a part of their everyday life. He counseled her not to let hatred and hostility control her but rather to use her strong feelings as a catalyst to work for change. He said,

Don't hate white people just because they're white. If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliations we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum—then try to do something about it, or your hate won't spell a thing.

Smith's death became a kind of rebirth for Bates. She did not know it then, but his words would strengthen and sustain her resolve during the difficult struggles she was to face.

In 1942 Bates married Lucius Christopher Bates, an insurance agent and friend of her late father's, and settled in Little Rock. Her husband had majored in journalism at Wilberforce College, in Ohio, and the young couple pooled their savings and began publishing the Arkansas State Press. While writing and publishing the fledgling paper, Bates also enrolled in business administration and public relations courses at Shorter College, in Rome, Georgia. The State Press quickly became the largest and most influential black paper in Arkansas.

With the entry of the United States into World War II, Camp Robinson, near Little Rock, was reopened. The influx of soldiers, many of whom were black men from northern cities, caused racial tensions to rise in the city. The State Press had gained a reputation as an independent "voice of the people" and regularly attacked police brutality, segregation, and inequities in the criminal justice system. When the paper reported a particularly gruesome incident in which a black soldier was killed by a white policeman, many advertisers who were wary of antagonizing their white patrons withdrew their support, and circulation of the paper dropped. However, the Bateses were able to stay afloat and eventually regain their advertisers and rebuild the paper's circulation. Their tenacity paid off in changes in working and living conditions for blacks in Arkansas. For example, as a result of their reporting on police brutality in black neighborhoods, black police officers were hired to patrol those areas.

From their earliest days in Little Rock, Bates and her husband were active in the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1952, Bates was elected president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP branches. When the Supreme Court handed down its historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954)), in 1954, declaring that segregated schools are "inherently unequal," she and her colleagues began pressing for implementation of the Court's mandate to desegregate the schools "with all deliberate speed" (Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 at 301, 75 S. Ct. 753 at 756, 99 L. Ed. 1083 [1955]). Because of her prominent position with the NAACP, Bates found herself a central character in the integration battle that soon erupted in Little Rock.

The Little Rock School Board chose nine black students to be the first to integrate Little Rock Central High School. Planning and coordination of the activities of the group, which came to be known as the Little Rock Nine, fell to Bates. By September 1, 1957, angry crowds had begun milling around Central High to protest and try to prevent the enrollment of the black students. On September 2, the day before school was to open, Governor Orval Faubus dispatched the Arkansas National Guard and ordered it to surround Central. Claiming that he was protecting Little Rock's citizens from possible mob violence, he declared that no black students would be allowed to enter the school and that "blood [would] run in the streets" if any attempted to do so.

NAACP lawyers Wiley Branton and Thurgood Marshall (later a U.S. Supreme Court justice) promptly obtained an injunction against Faubus's interference, but Faubus refused to withdraw the troops. Bates decided to have the students enter the school in a group. She contacted eight of them and told them to assemble at a designated intersection the morning of September 4 and travel to school together. The ninth student, Elizabeth Eckford, did not receive word of the plan. Unaware of the maelstrom awaiting her, Eckford arrived at Central High alone and was taunted, jeered, and accosted by hundreds of white people as reporters and photographers from around the world observed and recorded the scene. The National Guard did not attempt to help Eckford but instead blocked her entrance to the school. Neither she nor any of the other members of the Little Rock Nine—who arrived later in a group, as arranged—were allowed to pass through the line of Guard members surrounding the school.

The attempt by Bates and the nine students to enter Central set off a series of violent incidents that went on for seventeen days. On September 20, attorneys Branton and Marshall obtained an injunction barring the use of the National Guard to interfere with integration at Central High. By this time, the Bateses' home had become the unofficial center of activity and communication for the integration effort. Reporters from all over the United States came and went, some staying days or weeks.

On September 23 all the Little Rock Nine met at the Bates home to try again to exercise their right to enter Central High. Traveling in two cars they drove to a side entrance of the building, away from the persistent throng, and were escorted into the school by police officers. Again mob violence spread through the city. Later in the day the students were secretly removed from the school through a delivery entrance, and the chief of police declared that Little Rock was under a reign of terror.

The next day the black students remained at home. The mayor and the chief of police appealed to the U.S. Department of Justice for assistance. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson to enforce the integration order. Wilson ordered one thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne ("Screaming Eagles") Division of the 327th Infantry Regiment into Little Rock to restore order.

On September 25 the Little Rock Nine assembled again at the Bates home. Under the protection of the paratroopers they were taken to Central High, where they entered under the watchful eyes of hundreds of reporters, photographers, and news camera operators. The paratroopers remained at Central until September 30, when they withdrew to Camp Robinson, twelve miles away. The federalized Arkansas National Guard remained on patrol at Central until the end of the school year. Although it was not necessary to recall the paratroopers, and the number of minority students in Little Rock's formerly white schools steadily increased, violence, hatred, and acrimony continued to plague the city for many years.

Bates endured many attempts to harass and intimidate her, including rocks thrown through her window, gunshots fired at her house, dynamite exploded near her house, and crosses burned on her lawn. In late October 1957 she was arrested under a newly enacted ordinance that required officials of organizations to supply information regarding membership, donors, amounts of contributions, and expenditures. Although she was found guilty under the ordinance, the conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court on grounds that the ordinance requirement interfered with the members' freedom of association (Bates et al. v. City of Little Rock et. al., 361 U.S. 516, 80 S. Ct. 412, 4 L. Ed. 480 [1960]). In 1959 she and her husband were forced to close the State Press for financial reasons.

Through all the harassment Bates remained determined to keep the wheels of the integration movement going forward. After closing the newspaper she traveled throughout the United States working on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Johnson administration's antipoverty programs. In 1965 she suffered a stroke and returned to Little Rock, but she continued to be active in the NAACP and in 1967 was elected to its national board. In 1968 she moved to Mitchellville, Arkansas, to organize the Mitchellville Office of Economic Opportunity Self-Help Project. The project was responsible for new water and sewer systems, paved streets, a community center, and a swimming pool.

In 1984 Bates revived the State Press and was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Arkansas and Washington University. In 1986 the University of Arkansas Press published a reprint edition of her autobiography, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, and in 1988 the book received the American Book Award, the first reprint edition to be given that honor.

In 1987 Bates sold the State Press but she remained a consultant for the paper. In spite of failing health, she continued to be active in community organizations.

For other people with this name, see Daisy Bates.

Daisy Bates

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (November 11, 1914 in Huttig, Arkansas – November 4, 1999 in Little Rock, Arkansas) was an American civil rights leader, journalist, publisher, and author who played a leading role in the Little Rock integration crisis of 1957.

Bates' mother was murdered while resisting three local white men who were attempting to rape her. Her father left the family shortly after her mother's death and she was raised by friends of the family, Orle and Susie Smith.

At the age of 15, Daisy became the object of an older man’s attention. L.C. Bates, an insurance salesman who had also worked on newspapers in the South and West. L.C. dated her for several years, and they married in 1942, living in Little Rock. The Bates decided to act on a dream of theirs, to run their own newspaper, leasing a printing plant that belonged to a church publication and inaugurating the Arkansas State Press. The first issue appeared on May 9, 1941. The paper became an avid voice for civil rights even before a nationally recognized movement had emerged.

In 1952, Daisy Bates was elected president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP branches.

Contents 1 Little Rock integration crisis 2 Later life 3 Honors and awards 4 References 5 External links

Little Rock integration crisis

Bates and her husband L.C. Bates were important figures in the Little Rock Integration Crisis in 1957. The Bates published a local black newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, which publicized violations of the Supreme Court's desegregation rulings.

Bates guided and advised the nine students, known as the Little Rock Nine, when they attempted to enroll at Little Rock Central High School, a previously all white school, in 1957. The students' attempts to enroll provoked a confrontation with Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who called out the National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. White mobs met at the school, threatening to kill the black students; these mobs harassed not only activists but also northern journalists who came to cover the story. Bates was a pivotal figure in that seminal moment of the civil rights movement. As a publisher and journalist, she was also a witness and advocate on a larger scale.

The city council instructed the Little Rock police chief to arrest Bates and other NAACP officials; she and the local branch president surrendered voluntarily. They were charged with failing to provide information about members for the public record, in violation of a city ordinance. Though Bates was charged a fine by the judge, NAACP lawyers appealed and eventually won a reversal in the United States Supreme Court.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and dispatching the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to ensure that the court orders were enforced.

Their involvement in the Little Rock Crisis resulted in the loss of much advertising revenue to their newspaper and it was forced to close in 1959. In 1960, Daisy Bates moved to New York City and wrote her memoir, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which won a 1988 National Book Award.

Later life

Then, Bates moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for the Democratic National Committee. She also served in the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson working on anti-poverty programs. In 1965, she suffered a stroke and returned to Little Rock.

In 1968, she moved to the rural black community of Mitchellville, Desha County, Arkansas. She concentrated on improving the lives of her neighbors by establishing a self-help program which was responsible for new sewer systems, paved streets, a water system, and community center.

Bates revived the Arkansas State Press in the 1980s after L.C. Bates, her husband, died in 1980.

In 1986, the University of Arkansas Press republished The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which became the first reprinted edition ever to earn an American Book Award. The following year she sold the newspaper, but continued to act as a consultant. Little Rock paid perhaps the ultimate tribute, not only to Bates but to the new era she helped initiate, by opening the Daisy Bates Elementary School and by making the third Monday in February "George Washington's Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day" an official state holiday.

Bates died in Little Rock, Arkansas on 4 November 1999.

Honors and awards

• 1988 American Book Award
• Arkansas General Assembly Commendation
• Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree, University of Arkansas, 1984
• Diamond Cross of Malta from the Philadelphia Cotillion Society
• Arkansas has established the third Monday in February as "George Washington's Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day," an official state holiday.
• The street that runs to the north of Little Rock Central High School, formerly 14th Street, has been renamed for her.
• The Daisy Bates Elementary School in Little Rock is named in her honor.
• Honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

References

• Daisy Bates
• Daisy Bates- Civil Rights Activist
• Daisy Bates organized the "Little Rock Nine"

External links

• Oral History Interview with Daisy Bates from Oral Histories of the American South
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture entry: Daisy Gatson Bates
• Daisy Bates at Find-A-Grave

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