Daisy Bates was a woman who decided to not submit to the white violence that black people were facing in the South. She is an interesting case because of her evolution from hatred to activism.
Scholars do not usually stress the role that Daisy Bates played within the Civil Rights movement –except when relating the Little Rock crisis- although she was a pillar of this movement and that is what I will discuss. I am interested in how this black woman became a symbol of a generation, a figure of strength and persuasion, a figure of activism and determination.
Indeed, “as a central participant in the 1957 Little Rock school integration crisis and head of the Arkansas State Conference of branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Bates became one of the earliest women activists in the movement to gain national recognition”. I choose to focus on a wider definition of leadership which was given by Victoria Gray that states “what defines a leader is not [necessarily] his or her position in terms of titles or recognition by the state, public, or international community but the ability to influence others”.
Besides, as Belinda Robnett argued “for most women, the ladder up to a position of formal leadership and power within a movement organization did not exist”. The Bates's case is an excellent example of an “exception”. She was one of the earliest women to gain legitimacy in the Civil Rights movement as a leader. Thus, as opposed to what wrote Payne that “men len and women organized” this perspective could not be correct. Indeed, Barnett showed that black woman in the Civil Rights movement they organized but that this “organization is an important aspect of leadership”.
Therefore, it is with all those paths that I will try to show that her activism was shaped by her childhood and that the gender perspective is important to bear in mind reading this analysis.
[...] Though analysis of Bates's activism from a gendered perspective we can also see that women played roles in the Civil Rights movement and that they served as leaders and organizers”. Through the story of Bates I showed that this is true: she symbolized and represented a potent impetus for the Civil Rights movement. Therefore, her leadership analysis shows that personal life and experiences can and are deeply influencing the future behavior of the person. Her several skills made her succeed somewhere everyone thought it was lost. [...]
[...] Her early activism took the form of denouncing white violence through her columns; it is like an intellectual engagement toward the Civil Rights movement: it is given a voice to it. She really used newspaper carry on the fight for Negro rights as nothing else can”. [She launched a]“crusade against discrimination, segregation, and police brutality”. The first article of the State Press related police abuses towards Northern black soldiers who were arriving at Camp Robinson, an army base near Little Rock. [...]
[...] At that point, we could qualify the leadership of Daisy Bates as a bridge- leader that is to say that she was indeed Daisy Bates was able to mobilize for civil rights activities (for example we saw that through her newspaper she pressured the Black men leaders to investigate to the killing of Mr Foster). Although, she did not acquire yet a national recognition and she was not a formal leader able to take decisions upon a group. On top of words, the activism on the field: the political implication Although, the newspaper could provide a voice to the cause she defended, it could not provide a base from “which to mobilize a direct and comprehensive assault on segregation”. [...]
[...] In the chapter two of her memoirs that she called ‘Rebirth', it appears that her childhood shaped her engagement into the Civil Rights movement. Her adoptive parents tried to do their best to protect her as long as they could from the harsh reality which was the racism and segregation. Though, facing racism in her everyday life, for example in school she explained that they had an potbellied stove [which] acted up during the winter [so they had] to sit in class all day with [their] coats”. [...]
[...] long shadow of Little the Daisy Bates's crusade for Black educational integration As I wrote formerly Little Rock was a moderate city, where desegregation and integration had already begun when the Brown decision was introduced by the Supreme Court. Even Daisy Bates thought that the Supreme Court decision of 1954 would bring changes in the educational system of Little Rock. She wrote in her autobiography that city had apparently accepted the board's plans; and there seemed little reason to except serious opposition, much less what followed”. [...]
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