Daisy Bates
Monday is Martin Luther King Day, and Circle Cinema will have free screenings of "Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock."
The acclaimed documentary is part of the Community Cinema series playing monthly at the historic theater, and this edition honors a long-forgotten civil rights activist.
The picture will play in the Circle's smaller screening area, the Quad, at 12 S. Lewis Ave., at noon, 2 p.m., 4 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Monday.
"Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock" is the story of a woman who fought for justice and relished the spotlight that it gave her (a little too much, some say).
Among her battles was for the rights of nine black students to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. As the director of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, she became a well-known figure on national television and in newspapers.
Director Sharon La Cruise spent seven years on the project, she said, to show Bates "on her long and lonely walk from orphaned child to newspaperwoman to national Civil Rights figure to her last days in Little Rock."
"Bates's journey, full of triumphs and defeats, parallels the ongoing struggle of generations of African-Americans who have challenged America to live up to what it claims to be for more than 200 years," La Cruise said.
Below is a trailer for the documentary, which is also coming to the PBS program "Independent Lens" in February.
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