Bates' childhood included attendance in Huttig's segregated public schools, where she learned firsthand the poor conditions to which black students were exposed. Orlee Smith died when Bates was a teenager, leaving her with her mother. Daisy deeply appreciated her father, leading to her own assumption that she married her husband because he shared similar qualities with her father. Bates had great adulation for the man where she couldn't "remember a time when this man I called my father didn't talk to me almost as if I were an adult". In contrast to their relationship, Daisy had an austere relationship with her mother. Susie Smith would punish Daisy and, "often clobbered, tamed, switched, and made to stand in the corner". Even after the death of Orlee Smith, the two had a falling out.