The Daisy Bates Papers (MC 582)

About the Collection

Daisy Bates donated her papers to the University of Arkansas Libraries in 1986. The collection consists of twelve boxes of correspondence and other documents, photographs, audio cassettes, and film. The files include correspondence resulting from her work and that of her husband, L.C. Bates, with the NAACP between 1957 and 1974. Significant correspondents include Harry Ashmore, Dale Bumpers, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Orval Faubus, and Roy Wilkins. Other materials in the collection include honors and awards received by Mr. and Mrs. Bates, records of Mrs. Bates's work with the OEO Self-Help Project at Mitchellville, Arkansas, and a considerable file of newspaper clippings. The collection also contains audio-visual materials, including recordings of interviews, speeches, and radio and television broadcasts featuring Mrs. Bates, members of the Little Rock Nine and their parents, Orval Faubus, and others, regarding Little Rock school desegregation. More than four hundred photographs provide visual documentation of events in Mrs. Bates's career, and include pictures of the Little Rock Nine, whose advisor she was when they enrolled in Central High School.

About Daisy Bates

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was born about 1912 in Huttig in southern Arkansas. She married L.C. Bates, publisher of the weekly Arkansas State Press, in 1942. For eighteen years the paper was an influential voice in the civil rights movement in Arkansas, attacking the legal and political inequities of segregation.

Mr. and Mrs. Bates were active in the Arkansas Conference of NAACP branches, and Daisy Bates was elected president of the state conference in 1952. As mentor to the nine students who enrolled in Central High School in Little Rock in 1957, she was at the center of the tumultuous events that followed.

As a result of their civil rights activities, Mr. and Mrs. Bates lost so much advertising revenue that they closed the State Press in 1959. Mr. Bates served as field director for the NAACP from 1960 to 1971. In 1962 Mrs. Bates's memoir, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, was published. Later she worked in Washington for the Democratic National Committee and for anti-poverty programs in the Johnson administration. She returned to Arkansas after she suffered a stroke in 1965, but recovered sufficiently to work as a community development activist in Mitchellville, Desha County. In 1968 she was director of the Mitchellville OEO Self-Help Project. During the following four years the organization obtained significant community improvements, including new water and sewer systems, paved streets, and a community center and swimming pool. She revived the Arkansas State Press in 1984, after the death of Mr. Bates, and sold it three years later.

Mrs. Bates received many awards for her contribution to civil rights, including a commendation from the Arkansas General Assembly. In 1958 she received the Diamond Cross of Malta from the Philadelphia Cotillion Society, and was named an honorary citizen of Philadelphia. Also in 1958, she and the Little Rock Nine students were awarded the Springarn Medal of the NAACP. In 1984 she received an honorary degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. In 1988 The Long Shadow of Little Rock, reissued by the University of Arkansas Press, became the first reprint edition to receive the American Book Award.

The Department holds other significant manuscript resources for the study of civil rights and desegregation in Arkansas:

Papers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (MC1027), Citizens' Councils of America (MS C49), and Arkansas Council on Human Relations (MS Ar4 ACHR)

Papers of Arthur Brann Caldwell, Colbert S. Cartwright (MC1026), Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby (MC428), and Herbert Thomas (MC437), who participated in the desegregation crisis of 1957

Papers of Arkansas political figures, including Governor Orval Faubus and U.S. Representatives Oren Harris and Brooks Hays

Transcripts of oral history interviews with ten Little Rock residents, from the Columbia University Oral History Collection

Microfilm of the Arkansas State Press is housed in the Periodicals Room.

In 1966, Mrs. Bates contributed to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin a considerable quantity of papers, correspondence, and photographs pertaining to her life and work.

Access

A descriptive finding aid to the collection is available online.

Access to the Daisy Bates Papers is open to students, faculty, and others upon application to the staff. Researchers may direct inquiries to Special Collections, but extensive projects will require a visit to the department. To facilitate their work, researchers who wish to use the papers are advised to email, write, or telephone the department in advance.