Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram on September 1957 regarding the Central High School and Little Rock Nine crisis. King's purpose was to encourage Bates to "adhere rigorously to a way of non-violence", despite being "terrorized, stoned, and threatened by ruthless mobs". He assured her, "World opinion is with you. The moral conscience of millions of white Americans is with you." King was a guest of the Bateses in May 1958 when he spoke at the Arkansas AM&N College commencement. Soon after the commencement, King asked Daisy Bates to be the Women's Day speaker at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church later that year in October. The same year that she was elected to be a speaker at the Baptist church, she was also elected to the executive committee of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).