Daisy Bates was born on November 11, 1914 to father Hezakiah Gatson and mother Millie Riley. She grew up in southern Arkansas in the small sawmill town of Huttig. Hezakiah Gatson supported the family by working as a lumber grader in a local mill. Her mother Millie Riley was murdered when Daisy was an infant, and the girl was given for care to her mother's close friends: Orlee Smith, a World War I veteran, and his wife Susie Smith. Her father Hezakiah abandoned her, and Daisy never saw him again. In "The Death of My Mother", Bates recounted learning, at the age of eight, that her birth mother had been raped and murdered by three local white men, and her body thrown into a millpond, where it was later discovered.