She was born in Claiborne Parish to Grant and Laura Stewart Billiard as one of 10 children. Her mother died when Alice was nine. She claims her father, a farmer, was born a slave. Alice picked cotton as a child, and plowed with mules. The family grew sweet and Irish potatoes, sugar cane, corn, and cotton. "We didn't buy anything but flour, sugar, and coffee," she says. By age nine she made her first quilt. She recalls washing clothes with a rub board and tub, and with soap made of "grease" from hogs. Alice ended her education at the seventh grade at Mount Olive School. She left home "in thirty-something," she says, and cooked at a Minden cafe. She married Arthur Willie Bates in 1935. Together they would have six children, 31 grandchildren, 71 great-grandchildren, and 41 great-great grandchildren. The couple worked on a plantation where her husband was overseer. They later moved to Shreveport where Alice began working at the Washington-Youree Hotel. Her husband was killed in a traffic accident in Nacogdoches, Texas.