Daisy Bates Research Paper

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Civil rights activist, Daisy Bates was at the core of the school desegregation catastrophe in Little Rock, Arkansas in September 1957. Bates used her position as president of a local Arkansas branch of the NAACP to strategically destroy the segregated school system. Her civil rights work involved changing the policies of the Arkansas Public School System that promoted segregation of school students, which in turn denied equality of educational resources and qualitative instruction to Arkansas’ Negro students. This fight for civil rights for students of color caused a fundamental shift in how the state educated its students both Black and White. Her plan halted the nation to expose the segregation in the Arkansas school district. Bates advocated for Black children to attend public schools that had been segregated arguing that the school system needed to be desegregated. As a result of argument, Bates became the mentor to nine African-American students, who enrolled in …show more content…

There was belief that she may have had a white father who lived in Louisiana. Assumed to be an only child in the Smith house, she formed relationships with adopted cousins that sought to bring closure to her identity. Growing up in the Smith household, she grew close to her adopted father Orlee Smith, a World War I veteran. In her autobiography, ‘The Long Shadow of Little Rock’ Daisy boasts of her adoration for her father Smith. Bates admiration for the man was sure as she mentioned in her memoirs that he was a man strong, apt to listen to her, behaved respectfully towards her, an unselfish gentleman. In addition to the attribution of the activist attributed her strong sense of self to these characteristics that her adopted father exhibited that shifted her social perceptions. It had been Smith, who shaped the young woman into the person that she would later become training her how to cope with racism in the

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