John P. Davis
Encyclopedia
John Preston Davis was an American lawyer and activist intellectual became prominent for his work with the Joint Committee on National Recovery and the founding of the National Negro Congress
in 1935. He went on to found Our World magazine in 1946, a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. He also published the American Negro Reference Book covering virtually every aspect of African-American life, present and past.
.
in Lewiston Maine. He graduated in 1926, earning an A.B. and double honors in English and Psychology. At Bates, Davis was president of Delta Sigma Rho, honorary debating fraternity, and editor of the student publication, The Bobcat.
He toured Europe representing the Bates College debating team. He was the first among African American men to be sent overseas under the auspices of the American University Union to engage in international debate when his team met and defeated Cambridge University. While he was an undergraduate at Bates College, he was nominated for the Rhodes scholarship and contributed short stories to the Crisis and Opportunity Magazine.
His literary proclivity drew him into Harlem Renaissance
. For a time, he replaced the celebrated scholar . E. B
writers of the period - Zora Neale Hurston
, Langston Hughes
, Gwendolyn Bennett, Wallace Thurman
, Aaron Douglas
, Richard Bruce to produce Fire!!
Press. Fire!! Press was a magazine devoted to young African American Artist.
Davis had a fellowship to Harvard University from 1926 to 1927, where he received his Masters Degree in Journalism. He left Harvard to join the staff of Fisk University
where he served as Director of Publicity from (1927 to 1928). He later returned to Harvard University
in (1933) and earned an LLB degree from Harvard Law School
in (1933).
later appointed the first black member of a Presidential Cabinet, William Hastie
, who would become the first black federal judge, and Ralph Bunche
who was destined to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace.
These friends remained important throughout his career. During their student years they discussed race and politics, especially the inadequacy of the black Republican leadership. When the Great Depression
intensified the social and economic problems confronting black America, Davis and his colleagues looked to the example of Reconstruction, the use of federal power to redress the plight of the slaves. They called on the federal government to ensure black civil and political rights. The New Deal seemed to offer the possibility of similar federal intervention for economic justice.
Davis married Marguerite DeMond the daughter of Reverend Abraham Lincoln DeMond and Lula Watkins Patterson DeMond. Marguerite DeMond attended Avery Normal Institute in Charleston, South Carolina, operated by the American Missionary Association and the Congregationalist Church. Even before the Civil War, Avery Normal Institute's racially integrated faculty was providing quality educations for African Americans.
She graduated from Syracuse University in 1931 and came to Washington, D.C. with her mother in 1932, after the death of her father. Marguerite DeMond went to work as a researcher for African American historian Carter G. Woodson's Association for the Study of Negro Life. After a one-year courtship Marguerite DeMond and John P Davis were married. They had five children, Michael DeMond Davis
, Miriam Judith Davis Nason, Marguerite Davis, Michelle Demond and John Preston Davis, Jr.
Davis and Weaver organized the Negro Industrial League to pressure New Deal agencies to address the needs of blacks. They monitored the hearings of the National Recovery Administration
to ensure that blacks benefited from the program.
Their efforts led to the establishment of the Joint Committee on Economic Recovery, a group of twenty-six national groups including the Young Woman Christian Association, National Urban League (NUL), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored (NAACP). Davis became Executive Secretary of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, a position he held until 1936, where he functioned as legislative lobbyist.
The committee lobbied for fair inclusion of African Americans in government-sponsored programs and publicized incidents and patterns of racial discrimination. The implementation of a National Recovery Program, however, promised to have immediate and long-term consequences for African Americans. As more established African American leaders deliberated about how to respond to the flurry of New Deal legislation.
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, James Ford of the Communist Party, Lester Granger
and Elmer Carter of the Urban League, and Charles Hamilton Houston
of the NAACP—was truly significant in two respects. Davis was one of the original founders of the National Negro Congress (NNC) and remained Executive Secretary and guiding spirit from the NNC's inception in 1935 until 1942.
The NNC represented one of the first sincere efforts of the 20th century to bring together under one umbrella black secular leaders, preachers, labor organizers, workers, businessmen, radicals, and professional politicians, with the assumption that the common denominator of race was enough to weld together such divergent segments of black society. It also signaled the Communist Party’s movement into the mainstream of black protest activity. In particular, the evolution of the National Negro Congress
dramatized the growing convergence of outlook between Communists and activist black intellectuals that had taken shape in the protests of the early Depression years and reached full fruition during the years of the Popular Front.
In 1943 the first lawsuit challenging segregated schools in the Washington, D.C was brought in Michael D. Davis's name by John P. Davis. The Washington Star was sharply critical of an African American lawyer legally challenging the District's Dual school system when the principal of Noyes School refused to admit Mike Davis at the age of 5-years old. The Washington Star paper said the District citizens had long accepted separate schools for blacks and whites and that the suit brought by John P. Davis would cause even deeper divisions in the nation's capital.
The U.S. Congress in response to John P. Davis's suit appropriated federal funds to construct the Lucy D. Slowe elementary school directly across the street from his Brookland
home in the neighborhood of Washington, D.C..
Our World portrayed black America as no other national publication had ever done. Its covers featured entertainers’ Lena Horne
, Marian Anderson
, Harry Belafonte
, Eartha Kitt
, Ella Fitzgerald
, Louis Armstrong
, Duke Ellington
and Nat King Cole
.
National Negro Congress
The National Negro Congress is an organization which was put into place by the Communist Party of the United States of America in 1935 at Howard University. It was a popular front organization created with the goal of fighting for Black liberation and was the successor to the League of Struggle for...
in 1935. He went on to found Our World magazine in 1946, a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. He also published the American Negro Reference Book covering virtually every aspect of African-American life, present and past.
Biography
John P. Davis born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dr. William Henry Davis and Julia Davis. Davis grew up in the bosom of the small dignified black middle class of Washington D.C. His father, Dr. William H. Davis was a graduate of Howard University. During World War I, Dr. Davis served as Secretary to Dr. Emmett Scott, Special Assistant to the United States Secretary of War. In the 1920s, Dr. Davis served as Secretary to the Presidential Commission investigating the economic conditions in the Virgin IslandsVirgin Islands
The Virgin Islands are the western island group of the Leeward Islands, which are the northern part of the Lesser Antilles, which form the border between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean...
.
The early years
John Preston Davis attended segregated schools in Washington, D.C, graduating from the elite Dunbar High School. In 1922 he enrolled in Bates CollegeBates College
Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...
in Lewiston Maine. He graduated in 1926, earning an A.B. and double honors in English and Psychology. At Bates, Davis was president of Delta Sigma Rho, honorary debating fraternity, and editor of the student publication, The Bobcat.
He toured Europe representing the Bates College debating team. He was the first among African American men to be sent overseas under the auspices of the American University Union to engage in international debate when his team met and defeated Cambridge University. While he was an undergraduate at Bates College, he was nominated for the Rhodes scholarship and contributed short stories to the Crisis and Opportunity Magazine.
His literary proclivity drew him into Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
. For a time, he replaced the celebrated scholar . E. B
writers of the period - Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, Gwendolyn Bennett, Wallace Thurman
Wallace Thurman
Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.-Early life:...
, Aaron Douglas
Aaron Douglas
Aaron Douglas was an African American painter and a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.-Early life:...
, Richard Bruce to produce Fire!!
Fire!!
Fire!! was an African American literary magazine published in 1926 during the Harlem Renaissance. The publication was started by Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P...
Press. Fire!! Press was a magazine devoted to young African American Artist.
Davis had a fellowship to Harvard University from 1926 to 1927, where he received his Masters Degree in Journalism. He left Harvard to join the staff of Fisk University
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
where he served as Director of Publicity from (1927 to 1928). He later returned to Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in (1933) and earned an LLB degree from Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
in (1933).
Harvard University
At Harvard, Davis cemented lifelong friendships with a small core of black students, including fellow Dunbar High School Alumni Robert C. WeaverRobert C. Weaver
Robert Clifton Weaver served as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1966 to 1968. He was the first African American to hold a cabinet-level position in the United States.As a young man, Weaver had been one of 45 prominent African Americans appointed by...
later appointed the first black member of a Presidential Cabinet, William Hastie
William H. Hastie
William Henry Hastie, Jr. was an American, lawyer, judge, educator, public official, and advocate for the civil rights of African Americans...
, who would become the first black federal judge, and Ralph Bunche
Ralph Bunche
Ralph Johnson Bunche or 1904December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first person of color to be so honored in the history of the Prize...
who was destined to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace.
These friends remained important throughout his career. During their student years they discussed race and politics, especially the inadequacy of the black Republican leadership. When the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
intensified the social and economic problems confronting black America, Davis and his colleagues looked to the example of Reconstruction, the use of federal power to redress the plight of the slaves. They called on the federal government to ensure black civil and political rights. The New Deal seemed to offer the possibility of similar federal intervention for economic justice.
Davis married Marguerite DeMond the daughter of Reverend Abraham Lincoln DeMond and Lula Watkins Patterson DeMond. Marguerite DeMond attended Avery Normal Institute in Charleston, South Carolina, operated by the American Missionary Association and the Congregationalist Church. Even before the Civil War, Avery Normal Institute's racially integrated faculty was providing quality educations for African Americans.
She graduated from Syracuse University in 1931 and came to Washington, D.C. with her mother in 1932, after the death of her father. Marguerite DeMond went to work as a researcher for African American historian Carter G. Woodson's Association for the Study of Negro Life. After a one-year courtship Marguerite DeMond and John P Davis were married. They had five children, Michael DeMond Davis
Michael DeMond Davis
Michael DeMond Davis was a Pulitzer-prize nominated journalist and a pioneer in African American journalism, opening the doors for many African-American writers. Davis authored Black American Women in Olympic Track and Field and co-authored the Thurgood Marshall biography.-Early life:He was born...
, Miriam Judith Davis Nason, Marguerite Davis, Michelle Demond and John Preston Davis, Jr.
The Joint Committee for National Recovery
In the summer of 1933 John P. Davis, a new graduate of Harvard Law School and Robert C. Weaver, a doctoral student at Harvard, acted to ensure that African American interests were represented. The two men returned to their hometown of Washington, D.C. and established an office on Capitol Hill, where they fought successfully against the racial wage differential and the integration of Negro families into the program of the Homestead Subsistence Division in the first recovery program.Davis and Weaver organized the Negro Industrial League to pressure New Deal agencies to address the needs of blacks. They monitored the hearings of the National Recovery Administration
National Recovery Administration
The National Recovery Administration was the primary New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices...
to ensure that blacks benefited from the program.
Their efforts led to the establishment of the Joint Committee on Economic Recovery, a group of twenty-six national groups including the Young Woman Christian Association, National Urban League (NUL), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored (NAACP). Davis became Executive Secretary of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, a position he held until 1936, where he functioned as legislative lobbyist.
The committee lobbied for fair inclusion of African Americans in government-sponsored programs and publicized incidents and patterns of racial discrimination. The implementation of a National Recovery Program, however, promised to have immediate and long-term consequences for African Americans. As more established African American leaders deliberated about how to respond to the flurry of New Deal legislation.
National Negro Congress
In May 1935 a conference on the economic status of the Negro was held at Howard University in Washington, D.C., out of which emerged a major civil rights coalition that was active in the late 1930s and 1940s. The National Negro Congress—whose sponsors included John P. Davis of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, Ralph J. Bunche and Alain Locke of Howard University, A. Philip RandolphA. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph was a leader in the African American civil-rights movement and the American labor movement. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly Negro labor union. In the early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the March on Washington...
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, James Ford of the Communist Party, Lester Granger
Lester Granger
Lester Blackwell Granger was an African American civic leader who organized the Los Angeles, California, chapter of the National Urban League ....
and Elmer Carter of the Urban League, and Charles Hamilton Houston
Charles Hamilton Houston
Charles Hamilton Houston was an African American lawyer, Dean of Howard University Law School and NAACP Litigation Director who played a significant role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws and trained future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.Houston was born in Washington, D.C. His father...
of the NAACP—was truly significant in two respects. Davis was one of the original founders of the National Negro Congress (NNC) and remained Executive Secretary and guiding spirit from the NNC's inception in 1935 until 1942.
The NNC represented one of the first sincere efforts of the 20th century to bring together under one umbrella black secular leaders, preachers, labor organizers, workers, businessmen, radicals, and professional politicians, with the assumption that the common denominator of race was enough to weld together such divergent segments of black society. It also signaled the Communist Party’s movement into the mainstream of black protest activity. In particular, the evolution of the National Negro Congress
National Negro Congress
The National Negro Congress is an organization which was put into place by the Communist Party of the United States of America in 1935 at Howard University. It was a popular front organization created with the goal of fighting for Black liberation and was the successor to the League of Struggle for...
dramatized the growing convergence of outlook between Communists and activist black intellectuals that had taken shape in the protests of the early Depression years and reached full fruition during the years of the Popular Front.
In 1943 the first lawsuit challenging segregated schools in the Washington, D.C was brought in Michael D. Davis's name by John P. Davis. The Washington Star was sharply critical of an African American lawyer legally challenging the District's Dual school system when the principal of Noyes School refused to admit Mike Davis at the age of 5-years old. The Washington Star paper said the District citizens had long accepted separate schools for blacks and whites and that the suit brought by John P. Davis would cause even deeper divisions in the nation's capital.
The U.S. Congress in response to John P. Davis's suit appropriated federal funds to construct the Lucy D. Slowe elementary school directly across the street from his Brookland
Brookland, Washington, D.C.
Brookland is a neighborhood in the Northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., historically centered along 12th Street NE. Brookland is bounded by 9th Street NE to the west, Rhode Island Avenue NE to the south, and South Dakota Avenue to the east...
home in the neighborhood of Washington, D.C..
Our World magazine
John Preston Davis was founding publisher of Our World magazine, a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. Its first issue, with singer-actress Lena Horne on the cover, arrived on the nation's newsstands in April 1946. Our World was a premier publication for African American men and women covering contemporary topics from black history to sports & entertainment with regular articles on health, fashion, politics & social awareness, was headquartered out of New York City.Our World portrayed black America as no other national publication had ever done. Its covers featured entertainers’ Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century...
, Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
, Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...
, Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
and Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
.
The American Negro Reference Book
In 1964 Davis's position as editor of special publications for the Phelps-Stokes fund, he used his resources and talents to create a single volume a reliable summary on the main aspects of Negro life in America and to present it in sufficient historical depth to provide the reader with a true perspective. The American Negro Reference Book was the result covering virtually every aspect of African American life, present and past.Further reading
- Days of Hope - Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era by Patricia Sullivan
- Urquhart, Brian. Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993) [Paperback edition titled Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, 1998]
- Documentary Film: "Lift Every Voice. John Preston Davis and the National Negro Congress" 1990.
- The Rise of an African American Left: John P. Davis and the National Negro Congress from Hilmar L. Jensen III, Bates Collecge
- The Myth of Brown November 2005 published by The Pocket Part a Companion to the Yale law Review
- Before Brown Reflections on Historical Context and Vision 2003 published by American University Law Review
- Mirror to America : The Autobiography of John Hope FranklinJohn Hope FranklinJohn Hope Franklin was a United States historian and past president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Franklin is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and...
by John Hope Franklin (Hardcover - November 2, 2005)
- Remembering John P. Davis: The Forgotten Civil Rights Leader November 2005 published by International News Agency
- Succeeding Against the Odds by John H. Johnson
- The American Negro Reference Book. John P. Davis. Prentice-Hall, 1966.
- "What the ‘New Deal’ Means for the Negro," 1935. From John P. Davis, "A Black Inventory of the New Deal," The Crisis 42 (May 1935), 141-42, 154.
- The Overcoat," John P. Davis
- Charles Hamilton Houston and John P. Davis Critique the Lily-White Tennessee Valley Authority, 1934
- Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench by Michael D. Davis and Hunter Clark
- John P. Davis Wins Debating Honors in the British Isles - The Washington Post July 5, 1925
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. New York Public Library.