Janis Kearney to Speak About Daisy Bates

Janis F. Kearney

Janis Kearney interviews Governor Bill Clinton.

Janis Kearney with Daisy Bates.

Razorback Beauty Photo of Janis Kearney, 1973.

Photo Submitted

Cover image from Daisy by Janis F. Kearney. Used with permission from Writing Our World Press.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – In celebration of Black History Month, the University of Arkansas Libraries will host Janis Kearney, publisher, author and advocate. Kearney will discuss Daisy: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, a biography of civil rights leader Daisy Bates, written by Kearney and published by Writing our World Press, the micropublishing company she founded in 2004. Following her presentation, professor emeritus Roy Reed and professor Gerald Jordan, of the Walter J. Lemke department of journalism at the University of Arkansas, will join Kearney to discuss the civil rights movement in Arkansas and the nation. The event will be at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20, in the Helen Robson Walton Reading Room in Mullins Library. Daisy and other books from WOW! Press will be available for purchase, and Kearney will sign books following the program.

Kearney is one of 19 children born to Arkansas Delta sharecroppers and cotton farmers. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Arkansas. Kearney served as managing editor for Daisy Bates’ award-winning Arkansas State Press in 1987, later becoming the paper’s publisher and owner. Kearney took a sabbatical from newspaper work in 1993 to work with the Clinton administration. Her roles included White House media specialist; communications director, U.S. Small Business Administration; and personal diarist to President William Jefferson Clinton. 

Kearney was selected for a two-year W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship at Harvard University’s Center for African and African American Studies in 2001; a two-year appointment as Chancellor’s Lecturer at Chicago City Colleges in 2003; a two-year appointment as Humanities Fellow at Chicago’s DePaul University Center for the Humanities in 2005; and a one-year Visiting Humanities and Political Science Professorship at Arkansas State University in 2007.

“The Libraries are honored to host such an incredible advocate and historian,” said Carolyn Henderson Allen, dean of the Libraries. “Gerald Jordan and Roy Reed will enrich the discussion with their insight about the civil rights movement and its continued impact.”  

The event will feature an exhibit of photographs and publications that illustrate Kearney’s distinctive story. The materials in this exhibit represent only a fraction of the manuscript collections supporting research on civil rights in Arkansas and the nation. Collections that document this movement include the Daisy Bates Papers (MC 582), the Virgil T. Blossom Papers (MC 1364), the Arthur Brann Caldwell Papers (MS C127 209), and the Roy Reed Papers (MC 1083).

Parking in the Stadium Drive Parking Facility is recommended. The event is free of charge and open to the public.