Daisy bates

Daisy Bates was an author, activist, and champion for school integration. May her indelible impact on America's school system forever be remembered.

The story of Daisy Bates, a forgotten civil rights icon who forced Little Rock's Central High School to desegregate.

It didn't end when Central High School was integrated.

After having learned at 8 years old that her mother was brutally raped and murdered by three white men, Daisy Bates dedicated her life to fighting inequality. She was an American civil rights activist, journalist, lecturer, and a woman who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. When she was just 15, Daisy met her future husband and settled in Little Rock, Arkansas where they started their own newspaper, The Arkansas Weekly. It was one of the only African…

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In 1957, Daisy Bates became a household name when she fought for the right of nine Black students to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Daisy Bates outside her home with four of the Little Rock Nine. The students are Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Melba Pattillo, and Thelma Mothershed.

Tens of thousands of women participated in the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. But none of the female civil rights leaders marched in the procession with Dr. King, nor were any of them invited to speak to the enormous crowd.

Bates' work with the NAACP transformed the Civil Rights Movement.

editorial illustration civil rights portrait of Daisy Bates