Daisy Bates

Daisy Lee Gatson was born on the eleventh of November 1914 in the sawmill town of Huttig, in Union County, southern Arkansas. Sources identify her father as Hezekiah Gatson, an African American man who worked in the local lumber mill, and her mother as Millie Riley. While Daisy was still very young, her mother was murdered by three local white men, and her father soon left. She was raised by family friends, Orlee Smith, a World War I veteran, and his wife Susie, who gave her a home and a name.

The wound of that early loss shaped a lifelong refusal to bow to injustice. In 1941 Daisy and her husband, L. C. Bates, founded the Arkansas State Press, a weekly newspaper that unflinchingly reported on racial violence and civil rights across the state. Her voice as a journalist and publisher made her a force long before the crisis that would carry her name into history.

In 1952 she was elected president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP Branches, an office she held until 1961. When nine Black students sought to enter all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957, Daisy Bates became their mentor, shield, and strategist — advising them, driving them, and standing between them and the mob during the desegregation crisis that drew the eyes of the nation.

She endured threats, boycotts, and the loss of her newspaper for that work, yet never yielded. Daisy Bates died on the fourth of November 1999. Arkansas honors her memory with a state holiday bearing her name. Let it be remembered that she stood, unbroken, so that children could walk through doors once closed to them.