When nine African American teenagers integrated Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School in 1957, they were supported by many within their families and community. One of the key supporters and strategists behind them was a woman named Daisy Bates, a Litte Rock black newspaper publisher and activist who was president of the state NAACP. Daisy met with the students regularly throughout their first year at Central High, working to keep them safe, sane, and calm in an environment of constant danger, hostility and degredation. Judith and Dennis Fradin’s biography chronicles Daisy’s early years in a childhood marked by tragedy and injustice, and her growth into an activist as an adult in a biography that also presents a stirring portrait of those turbulent times when children were on the front lines of the battle for civil rights. The Fradin’s extensive research included interviews with many individuals, including two of the Little Rock Nine. (Ages 12–16)

The life of civil rights leader Daisy Bates is vividly detailed in this stirring new biography by an acclaimed husband-wife team. Throughout her life, Daisy Bates worked tirelessly for civil rights as an activist, journalist, and organizer. She first captured national attention as the mentor of the nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. During this crisis President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to use federal troops to insure the admission of the students, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. In 1999, just hours after her funeral, President Bill Clinton bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal on the Little Rock Nine, and two years later Daisy Bates was honored by a state holiday in Arkansas.
In this noteworthy companion to their other distinguished biographies of African Americans, Dennis and Judith Fradin have drawn upon a trove of archival material including papers, correspondence, and photographs of her life and work. They also interviewed some of her living relatives and members of the Little Rock Nine. The result is a compelling, inspiring book about the courage and determination of one woman in the face of prejudice and intolerance. Endnotes, bibliography, index.