We watched our children, the Little Rock Nine be stopped from entering Central High School in September 1957 by the armed national guard under Arkansas Governor, Orval Faubus and a white angry mob screaming, “we ain’t gonna integrate” only because we had won the case of Brown Vs Board of education in 1954 that put a stop to segregation in schools, with Thurgood Marshall as our lawyer. Bless him. Like petulant children, they were feisty for children a shade darker, could now attend all-white schools. You know, Langston Hughes in his poem I TOO said, “.....Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes....” and indeed we were starting to get seats at those tables but boy was it difficult. It required some kind of gall that I believe Daisy Lee Bates, who was at that time the president of the NAACP Arkansas branch, possessed. This lady, born on 11th November 1914, together with other NAACP board members, worked hard to desegregate schools. This involved recruiting students that would integrate the little rock schools that were only white. Bates even set up her home as some kind of headquarters, where the students would converge and also drove them to school so they would be protected from the racist crowds that could harm them. "Huh, these kids missed a chance to skip school with a valid reason I must add but chose to go back!! hmm,” May wondered loudly continuing, “because if an armed officer told me not to go to school I should come back home happy, and why I'm I fighting for the seat of school of all things?” “Well May,” grandma said, “you want to skip school because you want to not because someone told you to, it's a matter of choice and we should have been making those decisions concerning us, ourselves. Like Daisy Bates told the Little Rock Nine, “What is happening at little rock transcends segregation and integration this is a question of right or wrong. Some say to you we are rushing the civil rights issue, and I say we are 172 years late”. Fighting for the desegregation of schools. isn't all that Bates did. She and her husband L.C Bates publisher of the newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, became a voice for black people tackling topics that nobody dared to talk about such as segregation, racism, and other forms of inequality. This was portrayed when Daisy, covered the story of Sergeant Thomas P Foster, a black man that was killed by a white police officer. And of course, the newspaper's bluntness was not appreciated as some white readers not only boycotted it but in August of 1957 threw a stone in their home that read, “stone this time. Dynamite next”. In 1968, Daisy Bates was the only woman who spoke at the Washington March for jobs and freedom. Bates was acclaimed for her contribution to civil rights in several ways, she received the woman of the year award in 1957 by the National Council Of Negro Women, NAACP's Spingarn medal along with the Little Rock Nine in 1958, the Diamond Cross of Malta from the Philadelphia Cotillion Society in 1958 together with being named an honorary citizen of Philadelphia. And also the third Monday in February in Arkansas, is Daisy Bates day. And when she died in 1999 she became the first and is still the only African-American to lie in state in the Arkansas Capitol, the same building that was once inhabited by Governor Orval Faubus. “Allow me to provide the quote for this story grandma, Karma right?” May said to which grandma replied, “Hahaha that’s a good one but no. Audrey Lorde’s words fit too, “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid”. Next time I'll tell you about the strong black leader, Toussaint Louverture.