Daisy Bates Biography

Daisy Bates

civil rights leader whose tireless efforts led to the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas' Central High School. She guided nine students in their 1957 crusade to enroll in the white school. The students' initial effort was rebuffed, and the governor, Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to stop the students at the door. President Eisenhower intervened, and the students were admitted. She reported when schools violated the Supreme Court's 1954 decision, Brown v. the Board of Education, that outlawed segregation, in Arkansas State Press, the newspaper she and her husband published. Her memoir, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, won a 1988 National Book Award.