John Aubrey Davis, Sr.

For other people named John Davis, see John Davis (disambiguation).

Dr. John Aubrey Davis, Sr. (May 10, 1912 - December 17, 2002) was an African-American political science professor and American Civil Rights activist who served as the head academic researcher on the historic Brown v. Board of Education case.

Civil rights work

Davis's career as a civil-rights activist began in 1933, when he formed the New Negro Alliance with Belford Lawson, Jr. and M. Franklin Thorne in response to the white-owned businesses in African-American neighborhoods that would fire and/or refuse to hire African-American workers. To protest this practice, the Alliance organized the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign in the height of the Great Depression and called for boycotts and picketing of these businesses. Most businesses, afraid of losing revenue in a shaky economic period, caved in to the protests. Others fought back and sought an injunction against the group. Initially, the lower courts sided with the businesses, but the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which sided with The Alliance in 1938. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall represented The Alliance in the case, which was known as New Negro Alliance vs. Sanitary Grocery Company Inc., forming a close lifelong friendship with Davis in the process.

In 1953, Marshall appointed Davis to head the academic research task force for the historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case. Working with a team of more than 200 scholars that included Horace Mann Bond (father of future NAACP president Julian Bond), C. Vann Woodward, William Robert Ming, Jr., Alfred Kelly and John Hope Franklin, Davis compiled the factual evidence that was presented in Marshall's arguments against the "separate but equal" doctrine, proving that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination.

Following Davis's work on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, he was appointed to the New York State Commission on Discrimination by Gov. W. Averell Harriman in 1957.

Personal life

Davis was born in the Washington, D.C. area in 1912 to John Abraham Davis and Gabrielle Dorothy Beale Davis. He and his two older siblings (African-American anthropologist Allison Davis and sister Dorothy Davis Lucas) were raised on a farm in Virginia and graduated from Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.), which their father had also attended.

Davis married Mavis Wormley, with whom he had two sons, John A. Davis, Jr. and Smith W. Davis.

Academics

Like his brother before him, Davis graduated from Williams College in 1933. Upon graduation from Williams, he sought a master's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin in 1934 and a doctorate degree in political science from Columbia University in 1949. He taught at Howard University in the mid-1930s and became a full professor at Lincoln University.

After receiving his doctorate, he taught at Howard University until his appointment as a full political science professor at Lincoln University. In 1953, he was named an associate professor at City College of New York and was eventually promoted as the graduate professor of government and chairman of the department of political science at City University.