AISR's Richard Gray presents Parent Power film at NAACP “Daisy Bates” Conference (12/1-3)
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AISR's Richard Gray, Co-Director of Community Organizing and Engagement, will introduce Parent Power and lead the post-screening Parent Organizing panel — featuring Coalition for Educational Justice’s Zakiyah Ansari and Ocynthia Williams — at the NAACP’s “Daisy Bates” conference December 1-3 in Memphis. Richard will also lead a break-out session on Youth Organizing.
Who was Daisy Bates? Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (1914-1999) was a civil rights activist, publisher and writer who played a leading role in the Little Rock integration crisis of 1957. Bates was a mentor to the Little Rock Nine, the African American students who integrated Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. She and the Little Rock Nine gained national and international recognition for their courage and persistence during the desegregation of Central High when then-Governor Orval Faubus ordered members of the National Guard to prevent the entry of black students. She and her husband published the Arkansas State Press, a newspaper that dealt primarily with civil rights and other issues in the black community. As ardent supporters of the NAACP, both Bates and her husband were active in the Little Rock branch. In 1952, she was elected president of the Arkansas Conference of Branches, the umbrella organization for the state NAACP. She and her husband worked closely with other members of the Little Rock branch as the national strategy of the NAACP shifted in the 1950s from advocating a position of equal funding for segregated programs to outright racial integration.