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Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas. By Grif Stockley. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Pp. x, 340. $30.00, ISBN 1-57806-801-0.)
Grif Stockley has provided a carefully researched and densely written narrative of Daisy Bates, a civil rights activist who is largely unknown outside of Arkansas. Born an orphan in the mill town of Huttig, Arkansas, Bates never knew her father. It was rumored around town that her mother had been raped and killed by three white men. Bates is best known as the mentor to the Little Rock Nine when they integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Stockley follows Bates's life before, during, and after this event as she experienced the trauma of challenging the status quo and facing white resistance in...