Daisy Bates

Daisy Bates was born Daisy Lee Gatson in Huttig, Arkansas and was raised by her mother's friends after her mother was killed by three white men when she was three years old. She met her husband as a teenager and they both started their own newspaper the Arkansas State Press dedicated to the civil rights movement in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bates worked as both an editor and an author. She was also the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP and encouraged black students to enroll at white schools. In 1957 Bates helped to select nine students to attend the newly integrated Central High School and served as their mentor. These students would become known as the "Little Rock Nine." In 1960 Bates moved to New York City and then to Washington D. C. where she served for a time in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson working on anti-poverty programs. In 1958 she spoke at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church as their Women's Day speaker and also was elected to the executive committee of the SCLC. The Arkansas State Press closed in 1959. She was the only woman to speak at the 1963 March on Washington and in 1968 she moved to Mitchellville, Arkansas.