Bates, Daisy Lee Gatson

By: V. P. Franklin

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Bates, Daisy Lee Gatson

Sex:  Female

Born:  Huttig, Arkansas, United States
11 November 1914

Died:  Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
4 November 1999

Activity/Profession:  Print Journalist, Civil Rights Activist

(b. 11 November 1914; d. 4 November 1999),
civil rights activist, journalist.

Daisy Lee Gatson was born in Huttig, a small town in the lumbering region of southeast Arkansas. Raised by her adoptive parents, Orlee and Susie Smith, Bates never knew her real parents. In the autobiographical sections of The Long Shadow of Little Rock (1962), she revealed that as a child she was told that her mother had been ravished and murdered, allegedly by three white men, and that her father was forced to flee Huttig for fear of reprisals from whites should he attempt to prosecute the suspects. The Smiths were childless friends of Bates's real parents and had agreed to adopt her.

Bates's relationship with the Smiths was warm and supportive, and she was raised as a somewhat spoiled and willful only child. Bates attended the segregated public schools in Huttig, where the black students were forced to use the worn-out textbooks handed down from the white schools. For Bates, the poor physical condition of the school buildings and facilities for black children symbolized the inadequacy and injustice of Arkansas's Jim Crow educational system.

When Bates was fifteen years old and still in high school, she met Lucius Christopher Bates, an insurance agent and close friend of her father. L. C. Bates was born in Mississippi, attended segregated county schools, and went on to Wilberforce College in Ohio, where he majored in journalism. Upon graduation, he worked on the Kansas City Call in Missouri, but soon lost this position because of the hard times created by the Depression. Bates turned to selling insurance and was quite successful, but he wanted to return to journalism.

Orlee Smith died in 1941. Shortly afterward, L. C. Bates proposed to Daisy Lee, and she accepted. They were married that year and eventually settled in Little Rock. L. C. soon persuaded his wife to join him in a newspaper venture, and the Bateses used their savings to lease a newspaper plant from a church group and to begin a weekly newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. Within the first few months, the paper reached a circulation of ten thousand, and Daisy Bates enrolled in business administration and public relations courses at Shorter College in Little Rock to learn more about running a business. Initially, the paper was quite successful and attracted a large number of advertisers from the local business community.

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates with her husband, L. C. Bates, in January 1959. The Bateses, both civil rights leaders, published the first weekly African American newspaper in Arkansas, the Arkansas State Press.

Arkansas History Commission

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With the outbreak of World War II, nearby Camp Robinson was reopened at the request of local businessmen and politicians and was used to train black soldiers. Soon, large numbers of African American servicemen filled the streets of Little Rock on weekends. Incidents of police brutality involving African Americans were regularly exposed by the State Press, and at times the investigative reporting by the courageous newspaper publishers angered local white businessmen, who threatened to withdraw their advertisements. In March 1942, after the State Press reported the gruesome details of the killing of a black soldier by a Little Rock policeman, many advertisements were withdrawn and the Bateses had to double their efforts, working twelve to sixteen hours a day, to keep their enterprise afloat. Gradually, circulation began to increase, and within a year the newspaper reached twenty thousand readers.

The State Press gained a reputation as an independent “voice of the people” and worked for the improvement of the social and economic circumstances of African Americans throughout the state. In Little Rock, the State Press continued to expose police brutality, and eventually it was successful in forcing some changes. Black policemen were hired to patrol black neighborhoods, and the state of race relations improved noticeably. By the end of World War II, Daisy Bates believed that Little Rock had gained “a reputation as a liberal southern city.”

The State Press had been vigorous in its support of the programs and activities of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1952, Daisy Bates accepted the position of president of the Arkansas state conference of NAACP branches. With the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision on 17 May 1954, the NAACP won its fight to overturn the legal basis for public school segregation. When public school officials in Little Rock attempted to slow the pace of school integration, Daisy Bates led the black community's campaign against this policy of gradualism. With assistance and advice from officials in the NAACP, Daisy Bates began helping African American children to enroll in all-white public schools. When the children were denied admission, Bates recorded and later reported each incident to the local newspapers. Under increasing pressure from black parents and the NAACP, the superintendent of the Little Rock Public School District, Virgil Blossom, announced a plan to begin the desegregation process with Central High School in September 1957.

White opponents in Little Rock were outraged and brought litigation to hold or delay the implementation of the plan, to no avail. In the summer of 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced his opposition to public school integration; and on 2 September, the first day of school, he ordered units of the Arkansas National Guard to Central High School to prevent the possibility of disorder and violence. Two NAACP lawyers—Wiley Branton and Thurgood Marshall—obtained an injunction from the federal courts against the governor's action, but the troops were not removed.

The nine African American teenagers who were chosen to participate in the integration of Central High School came to be known as the Little Rock Nine. Their activities were planned and coordinated by Daisy Bates, who stood with the children during the ordeal. Violence erupted around Central High School and throughout the city when Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine students, mistakenly went to the school alone on the morning of 22 September 1957. Her grace under pressure while she was jeered at and taunted by white mobs came to symbolize the strength and determination of an entire generation of African American students.

The following day, when the police escorted Daisy Bates and the children into the school in secrecy, mob action escalated, and they had to be removed because the chief of police could no longer guarantee their safety. The violence continued until the police chief requested the assistance of the U.S. Justice Department. The next day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized all Arkansas National Guard units and sent in 1,000 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to carry out the orders of the federal courts. The following day, 25 September 1957, the paratroopers, under the leadership of Major General Edwin A. Walker, escorted Daisy Bates and the nine students into Central High School. The paratroopers were withdrawn to nearby Camp Robinson on 30 September, but Arkansas National Guard units were to remain on patrol at Central High throughout the school year.

On 31 October 1957, the Little Rock city council ordered the arrest of Daisy Bates and other members of the Arkansas NAACP for failure to supply the city clerk's office with information about the NAACP's membership, contributors, and expenditures. At the trial in December 1957, Daisy Bates was convicted and fined $100, plus court costs. The conviction was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Daisy Bates kept in close contact with the black students at Central High School, and she always accompanied them and their parents to meetings with school officials when incidents occurred. Eventually, white school officials and students learned that anyone who bothered “Daisy Bates's children” would also have to deal with Daisy Bates personally. Her vigilance in the protection and support of her children earned for Daisy Bates the resentment and enmity of most Arkansas whites, and a secure place for herself in twentieth-century African American history.

The State Press was forced to close in 1959, but Daisy Bates remained active on the lecture circuit, in voter registration campaigns, and in community revitalization programs. In 1985 the Bateses again began to publish the Arkansas State Press, which continued to serve the important social, economic, and political needs of African Americans in Little Rock. Despite some illness, Daisy Bates remained active in a variety of community organizations and was sought by the press, politicians, and the people to provide her perspectives on the contemporary problems facing the African American community.

In 1987 the University of Arkansas Press reissued Bates's autobiography. Inaugurated in 1992, the Daisy Bates Education Summit helped evaluate the progress of America's school districts in ensuring equal access and quality education to students of all colors. In 2001, the Arkansas legislature signed a bill honoring Bates with a state holiday, and the National Park Service officially designated Bates's Little Rock home as a National Historic Landmark. Daisy Lee Gatson Bates died in Little Rock after a series of small strokes.

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