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ARKANSAS
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Ar kansas
PRESS
Publisher Weekly
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Vol. 14 | No. 8 | Thursday, February 21, 2019
ASSOCIATION
Serving Press and State Since 1873
Daisy Bates’s legacy and impact on Arkansas lives on This week, on a day set aside to honor the memory of Arkansas civil rights icon Daisy Gatson Bates, the Arkansas Senate voted to commemorate Bates’s contributions to the state with a statue at the U.S. Capitol. As we recognize Black History Month, Arkansans recall the importance of Bates’s work as a newspaper publisher. Bates and her husband, L.C. Bates, published the groundbreaking Arkansas State Press. The State Press made a significant impact on the civil rights movement. The Arkansas State Press was the largest black-owned newspaper in the state in the 1950s.
on the third Monday of February every year with “Daisy Gatson Bates Day.” This year, the Arkansas General Assembly is
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, white advertisers began boycotting the State Press in 1957 after the Little Rock Central crisis. Threats and intimidation of black newspaper carriers also posed a problem, and the State Press was forced to close in 1959. “Unfortunately, they lost it in 1959 during the time they were working the hardest to make a difference for the state,” Kearney said. Daisy Bates restarted the Arkansas State Press in 1984. She sold it to Kearney in the late 1980s. Kearney served as publisher for five years before relocating to Washington to serve on President Clinton’s staff. The State Press published its last issue in 1997.
“The State Press meant so much to Arkansas and the South, and we are just so proud of what the Bateses did,” said Janis Kearney, who took over While there are publishing the State Press fewer black-owned from Daisy Bates. “They Then-Publisher Daisy Bates, left, with then-Managing Editor Janis F. Kearney, right, of the newspapers in Arkansas were recognized all over the Arkansas State Press. now, Kearney speculated country for being that niche, the reason why may be serving that niche so needed in the 1940s from a perceived lack of need. deciding whether to replace the state’s and ‘50s.” two existing statues at the Capitol in “For many years, especially during the Daisy Bates was a mentor to the Little Washington with statues of Bates and civil rights struggle, there were so many Rock Nine during the desegregation Arkansas native Johnny Cash. The African-American newspapers,” Kearney crisis of the 1950s, and her newspaper Senate approved the measure this week, said. “That need hasn’t completely gone advocated consistently for civil rights and it is currently being considered by the away, but of course after the civil rights struggle and integration, many of the and integration. Arkansas honors Bates House.