Daisy Gatson marries Lucius Christopher (L.C.) Bates, with whom she would co-found the Arkansas State Press newspaper.
On October 9, 1942, Daisy Gatson married Lucius Christopher (L. C.) Bates, an insurance agent and experienced journalist, in Arkansas. The marriage would prove to be both a personal and professional partnership that shaped the course of Arkansas civil rights history.
Shortly after their marriage, the couple moved to Little Rock and leased a Black church publication, transforming it into the Arkansas State Press, a weekly newspaper dedicated to reporting on racial injustice, police brutality, and civil rights issues that mainstream white newspapers ignored or downplayed. The paper quickly became one of the most influential African American newspapers in the state, and at its peak, one of the most widely circulated Black papers in the region.
Daisy Bates served as co-publisher and editor, honing the journalistic and organizational skills that would later prove essential during the Little Rock school integration crisis. The paper became a vehicle for advocacy journalism, exposing racial violence and discrimination, and cultivating relationships with the network of activists and community leaders that Bates would rely upon in her later NAACP leadership role.
The partnership between Daisy and L.C. Bates endured significant financial and personal risk, as the newspaper's advocacy work drew threats and economic retaliation from segregationists, foreshadowing the greater dangers the couple would face during the 1957 desegregation crisis.