Will Mercer Cook served as the United States ambassador to the Republic of Niger from 1961 to 1964. Cook directed U.S. economic, social, and cultural programs in Niger, which included the Peace Corps. During the mid-1960s he also became the special envoy to Gambia and Senegal.
Will Mercer Cook was born on March 30, 1903, in Washington, D.C., to Will Marion Cook, a composer and Abbie Mitchell Cook, an actress and classical singer. Cook had one sibling, Abigail, an older sister. During his childhood, he frequently traveled with his family as they performed at various venues throughout the United States and abroad. Jazz superstar Duke Ellington lived on the same block in Cook’s middle class Washington, D.C. neighborhood.
Cook attended Washington, D.C. public schools and graduated from the historic Paul Laurence DunbarHigh School in the city. In 1925 he earned his bachelor’s degree in French language and literature from Amherst College in Massachusetts and a teacher‘s diploma the following year from the University of Paris in France. In 1929 Cook married Vashti Smith and they had two sons, Mercer and Jacques. Cook earned a master’s degree in French language and literature in 1931 from Brown University in Rhode Island and a doctorate from the same institution in 1936.
Left to right: Senegalese poet Papa Ibra Tall, Will Mercer Cook, and Langston Hughes, ca. 1960 Courtesy Howard University
While still a graduate student, Cook was hired as an assistant professor of romance languages for one year at Howard University in Washington, D.C. After he earned his doctorate, Cook joined the foreign language faculty of Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia where he taught French until 1943.
During his career at Atlanta University, Cook received the prestigious Rosenwald Fellowship to conduct research abroad in Paris and the French West Indies. In 1943 Cook also became a professor at the University of Haiti. While in Haiti he authored the Handbook for Haitian Teachers of English and other studies related to the Haitian experience.
Cook completed his tenure in Haiti in 1943 and moved that same year to Washington, D.C. to accept what would become a permanent position as professor of romance languages at Howard University. While at Howard, Cook continued to produce scholarship on Haiti and he translated the works of African authors.
During the late 1950s Cook shifted his career to focus more on international relations. In 1958 he became foreign representative for the American Society of African Culture and later an administrator in the Congress of Cultural Freedom. President John F. Kennedy, in 1961, appointed Cook to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Niger, a position he held until 1964. Cook also served from 1964 to 1966 as special envoy to Senegal and Gambia.
Upon the completion of his foreign relations service, Cook rejoined the faculty of Howard, serving as chair of the department of romance languages. He also became a visiting professor at Harvard University. During the final phase of his teaching career, Cook continued to produce scholarship and translate texts of African and Caribbean scholars. In 1969, he co-authored with Stephen Henderson the groundbreaking anthology The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States. In 1970 Cook retired from teaching, but continued to publish books and articles.
On October 4, 1987, Will Mercer Cook died of pneumonia at the age of 84 in a Washington, D.C. hospital.
Will Mercer Cook(March 30, 1903 – October 4, 1987), popularly known asMercer Cook, was an American diplomat and professor. He was the first United States ambassador tothe Gambiaafter it became independent, appointed in 1965 while also still serving as ambassador toSenegal.[1]He was also the second American ambassador toNiger.[2][3]
Will Mercer Cook was born on March 30, 1903, in Washington D.C., toWill Marion Cook, a famous composer of musical theatre, andAbbie Mitchell Cook, a soprano singer. She became best known for playing the role of "Clara" in the premier production ofGeorge Gershwin'sPorgy and Bess(1935). Cook's sister, and only sibling, was born Marion Abigail Cook in 1900. As a child, Cook traveled extensively in the United States and Europe with his parents as they pursued their respective careers in the entertainment industry. They placed their daughter to be raised by family because of their performance schedules. In Washington, DC, the Cook family lived across the street from the legendary jazz musicianDuke Ellington.
Cook attended Dunbar High School in Washington D.C., a predominantly black academic school. He graduated from Amherst College with a bachelor's degree in 1925 and went to Paris for further study. He received his teacher's diploma from the University of Paris in 1926.
After his return, in 1929, Cook married Vashti Smith, a social worker. The couple had two sons, named Mercer, Jr. and Jacques. Smith also influenced Cook to convert to Catholicism.[4]
Cook earned a master's degree in French from Brown University in 1931 and a doctorate in 1936. He returned to Paris in 1934, on a fellowship from the General Education Board.
While completing his graduate education, Cook worked as an assistant professor of romance languages at Howard University from 1927 until 1936. Upon completing his doctorate, Cook became a professor of French at Atlanta University, serving from 1936 until 1943. During that time, he received a Rosenwald Fellowship to study in Paris and the French West Indies. In 1942, he received another General Education Board Fellowship to the University of Havana. From 1943 to 1945, Cook worked as a professor of English at the University of Haiti. During this time, he wrote the Handbook for Haitian Teachers of English. He also wrote the literary criticism titled Five French Negro Authors and edited an anthology of Haitian readings.
After two years in Haiti, Cook returned to Washington, D.C., to work as a professor of romance languages at Howard University, where he stayed until 1960. During this time, Cook continued to write about Haiti, and he also translated works of African and West Indian writers from French to English. Most notably, in 1959, Cook translated the works of Leopold Senghor, who was a former president of Senegal and an established French author.
Cook became active in international relations in the late 1950s. From 1958 to 1960, he served as a foreign representative for the American Society of African Culture. The following year, he worked as the director of the African program for the Congress of Cultural Freedom.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Cook as the U.S. ambassador to Niger.[5] Niger was a French colony that had achieved independence in 1960. Cook's duties as ambassador included overseeing U.S. economic aid programs in the country, administering the Peace Corps, and supervising U.S. information and cultural activities in the country. His wife was also involved in many social programs, including a project to distribute medical supplies across the country and participation in women's groups.
In 1963, Cook was also designated as an alternate delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations. He served as the United States Ambassador to Niger until 1964 when he was selected to be the US Ambassador to the Republic of Senegal.[5]
In 1966, Cook returned to Howard University to become head of the department of romance languages. He worked as a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1969.
In 1969, Cook published The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States, co-authored with Stephen Henderson of Morehouse College. The book consisted of expanded versions of speeches delivered by the two men at a 1968 conference in Madison, Wisconsin, called "'Anger and Beyond:' The Black Writer and a World in Revolution." In his essay, Cook described a half-century tradition of protest among African poets and novelists. Cook concluded his essay by stating: "In the main, statements by the Africans seem to me less extreme and violent than many by West Indian and North American blacks."
Cook retired from academia in 1970. He continued to write and publish professionally in the 1970s. Cook died of pneumonia in Washington, D.C., on October 4, 1987.
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About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
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Will Mercer Cook, a former Ambassador to Niger and Senegal, died of pneumonia Sunday at the Washington Hospital Center. He was 84 years old.
He was named Ambassador to Niger in 1962 and was there three years before he was named Ambassador to Senegal, a post he held for two years.
Mr. Cook, a native of Washington, was chairman of the romance language department at Howard University, from which he retired in 1970. He was on the faculty at Howard in the 1940's and 50's.
A major figure in Harlem community politics and the Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s, Benjamin Davis, Jr. was born into a prominent African American family in Atlanta, Georgia in 1903. He migrated north to Massachusetts to attend college at Amherst, where he was an all-American football player, and in 1932 graduated from Harvard Law School. After returning to Atlanta to practice law, Davis rose to national prominence as the lead attorney for Angelo Herndon, a black Communist charged under an archaic slave law with inciting insurrection after he attempted to organize unemployed workers. The experience radicalized Davis, who was impressed with the Communist Party’s commitment to racial justice and joined the Party during the trial.
Amid threats on his life in the aftermath of the Herndon trial, Davis moved to Harlem in 1934 where he replaced Cyril Briggs as editor-in-chief of the Harlem Liberator. Davis’ arrival was part of a larger transition in Harlem Communist Party leadership as the first generation of black Communists, led by West Indian-born nationalist revolutionaries like Briggs and Richard Moore, gave way to American-born blacks like Davis and James Ford who advocated more rigid Party discipline and closer, more pragmatic alliances with white workers.
Davis quickly became a popular figure both inside the Party and in the community. He was appointed to the Communist Party’s National Committee and played a key role in building the Popular Front organization, the National Negro Congress. He also helped organize a number of community-centered campaigns against racial discrimination including protests for improved housing and employment. In 1942, running on the Communist Party ticket, Davis was elected to fill Adam Clayton Powell’s seat on the New York City Council. Following a successful second term on the city council from 1945-1948, Davis fell victim to the post-war “Red Scare.” Along with several other members of the Communist Party National Committee, he was prosecuted under the Smith Act and sent to federal prison. After his release Davis returned to Harlem but could never regain his former influence in the changed political atmosphere of the Cold War.
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This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
Benjamin J. Davis, a top leader of the American Communist party, who had twice been elected to the City Council here, died Saturday night in Beth Israel Hospital. He would have been 61 years old Sept. 8. His home was at 710 Riverside Drive.
Mr. Davis had been ill since February and had been hospitalized since Aug. 8. He had earlier been in the hospital for 25 days in July.
He was one of 11 Communist party leaders convicted in 1919 of conspiring to teach and advocate the forcible overthrow of the United States Government.
In a statement at the news of his death, the Communist party hailed Mr. Davis as ”fiercely partisan in his ardent defense of the pioneer path which the Soviet Union had hacked out of the wilderness of capitalism.” The statement said he had fought in the Council against slums and police brutality and for fair‐employment practices.
At his death, Mr. Davis and Gus Hall, whom the party calls its chief spokesman, had been awaiting trial under an indictment filed March 15, 1962, for failure to register the party as agents of the Soviet Union under the McCarran Act.
The party statement said Mr. Davis had vowed that “before we answer falsely that we are witches and traitors” or “cooperate to destroy political freedom in America, we will sit in jail until we rot.”
Mr. Davis was the‐ third internationally known Communist to die within six weeks. The others were Maurice Thorez and Palmiro Togliatti, chiefs of the French and Italian parties, respectively.
In his 31 years as a member of the party, Mr. Davis saw it reach its period of greatest influence in the Depression and the era of good feeling toward the Soviet Union in World War II and then slide almost to dissolution.
He successfully negotiated the often serpentine twists in the party line that led to the ouster of the less surefooted. Mr. Davis, who held important posts for a quarter of a century, was named national secretary in 1959.
More recently officials of the party have concealed their titles for fear of prosecution for failing to register as agents of the Soviet Union, but until his final illness Mr. Davis, along with Mr. Hall and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, was known as one of its major official spokesmen.
Throughout his party career, Mr. Davis was closely associated as a writer and executive with The Daily Worker, which was suspended in January, 1958, and then with the weekly Worker. He was one of the party's experts on racial affairs, but. as recently as 1958 he acknowledged that its efforts to penetrate the major civil‐rights organizations had failed.
He was elected to the Council from Manhattan in 1943 under the proportional representation system, polling 44,334 votes in the borough, while the late Councilman Peter V. Cacchione, the only other Communist ever elected to office here, was polling 69,149 in Brooklyn. Communist party officials believe that only one other person was ever elected as a party candidate in the United States—a mayor in a Montana community no longer recalled.
In 1945, Mr. Davis was reelected with 63,498 votes, and Mr. Cacchione with 75,000. By 1948, Mr. Davis and 11 other top Communist leaders had been indicted under the Smith Act conspiracy charge. He continued to sit in the Council during the nine‐month trial. And the Council even held lateafternoon sessions to permit him to attend after court.
But in November, 1949, following his conviction he was expelled by unanimous vote. Mr. Davis was by then, in any case, a lame duck. Proportional representation had been abolished, and running as the Communist and American Labor party candidate in the 21st State Senatorial District, covering the Upper West Side and part of Harlem, he was badly defeated by Earl Brown, the coalition candidate of the Democratic, Republican and Liberal parties.
During the trial, before Judge Harold R. Medina in Federal Court here, Mr. Davis and the other defendants and their lawyers repeatedly denounced the proceedings as “political persecution” and “Hitlerian slander.”
Mr. Davis remained free on bail until July, 1951, when the Supreme Court upheld the convictions. He then surrendered and began serving a five‐year sentence at the Federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
Released after three years and four months, he was jailed for another two months in Pittsburgh on contempt charges growing out of his appearance as a witness in one of the many trials of secondary party leaders.
In the years following his release, he became an ally of the late William Z. Foster, the national chairman, in demanding a Stalinist hard‐line Communist policy.
After the disclosures by Premier Khrushchev of the excesses of the Stalin era, the two men defeated efforts to turn United States Communism to a more moderate national course, and Mr. Davis defended the Soviet intervention in Hungary, which caused many important figures to leave the party, in what they called a grim but painful necessity.
In addition to being a member of the national committee and national secretary, Mr. Davis had also been chairman of the Harlem region of the Communist party, chairman of its national commission on Negro affairs and chairman of the New York State district, the party's largest. He had also been publisher of The Worker.
Mr. Davis, who was generally known as Ben, was a tall, heavy‐set man whose affable, open manner failed to resemble the stereotype of the left‐wing political activist.
For relaxation he played the violin and tennis, both skillfully. In the Council he specialized in Negro affairs, introducing bills and demanding investigations on such questions as segregated housing, alleged police brutality. Inadequate fire protection in Harlem and the color bar in major‐league baseball.
He was born in Dawson, Ga., on Sept. 8, 1903. His father was an editor of religious publications and was once a Republican national committeeman.
The family moved to Atlanta while Mr. Davis was a boy. He attended Morehouse College, a Negro institution there, for a year and then transferred to Amherst College. He was an active figure on the Massachusetts campus, playing varsity football and tennis, singing in the choir and taking part in intercollegiate debates.
From Amherst Mr. Davis went to the Harvard Law School. He was graduated in 1929. Soon after, he returned to Atlanta to practice.
On the stand at his trial, Mr. Davis recalled that he had decided to join the party in 1933, while defending a Communist agitator, a Negro youth named Angelo Herndon, who faced the death penalty under a Georgia insurrection law for leading an unemployment protest march.
“It was a turning point in my life,” he said. “In the course of trying that case “I suffered some of the worst treatment, along with my client, with the judge calling me ‘nigger’ and ‘darkie’ and threatening to jail me.
“I could see there the whole treatment of the Negro in the South. I felt if there was any thing I could do to fight against this thing, strike a blow against the lynch system I would do it.”
In 1935 Mr. Davis came to New York. He became editor of The Liberator, a party periodical directed at Negroes. The next year he joined The Daily Worker as a writer and music critic.
By 1939 he was a member of its managing board. The paper's movie critic, the late Howard Rushmore, who later became an expert on subversion for the Hearst newspapers, publicly complained that he had been dismissed at Mr. Davis's order for refusing to condemn “Gone With the Wind” as an “insidious glorification of the slave market.”
Mr. Davis is survived by his widow, the former Miss Nina Stamler, whom he married after release from his prison term in Terre Haute; their daughter, Emily, who is 6 years old, and a sister, Mrs. Johnnie Carey.
The body will be on view at the Unity Funeral Home, 2352 Eighth Avenue, at West 126th Street, tomorrow from noon to 8 P.M., and Wednesday from noon to 5 P.M. A funeral service will be held Wednesday at 8 P.M. at the First Corinthian Baptist Church, 1912 Seventh Avenue, at West 116th Street.
Benjamin Jefferson Davis Jr.(September 8, 1903 – August 22, 1964), was anAfrican-Americanlawyer andcommunistwho was elected in 1943 to theNew York City Council, representingHarlem. He faced increasing opposition from outside Harlem after the end ofWorld War II. In 1949 he was among a number of communist leaders prosecuted for violating theSmith Act. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
Benjamin J. Davis Jr. – known to his friends as "Ben" – was born September 8, 1903, in Dawson, Georgia to Benjamin Davis Sr. and Jimmie W. Porter.[1] The family moved to Atlanta in 1909, where Davis's father, "Big Ben" Davis, established a weekly black newspaper, the Atlanta Independent.[2] It was successful enough to provide a comfortable middle-class upbringing for his family. The elder Benjamin Davis emerged as a prominent black political leader and served as a member of the Republican National Committee for the state of Georgia.[3][4]
The younger Ben Davis Jr. attended the high school program of Morehouse College in Atlanta.[5] He left the South to study at Amherst College, where he earned his B.A. in 1925.[6] Davis continued his education at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1929. Davis worked briefly as a journalist before starting a law practice in Atlanta in 1932.[7]
Benjamin Davis leaving the Federal Courthouse in New York City in 1949
Davis became radicalized through his role as defense attorney in the 1933 trial of Angelo Herndon, a 19-year-old black Communist who had been charged with violating a Georgia law against "attempting to incite insurrection", because he tried to organize a farm workers' union. Davis asked the International Juridical Association to review his brief.[8] During the trial, Davis faced angry, racist opposition from the judge and public. He was impressed with the rhetoric and bravery of Herndon and his colleagues. After giving concluding arguments, he joined the Communist Party himself.[9]
Herndon was convicted and sentenced to 18–20 years in jail. He was freed after April 26, 1937, when, by a 5-to-4 margin, the United States Supreme Court ruled Georgia's Insurrection Law to be unconstitutional.[10]
Davis moved to Harlem, New York in 1935, joining the Great Migration of blacks out of the South to northern cities. He worked as editor of the Communist Party's newspaper targeted to African-Americans, The Negro Liberator. He later became editor of the CPUSA's official English-language daily, The Daily Worker.
In 1943, Davis was elected under the then-used system of proportional representation to fill a city council seat being vacated by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to run for Congress. Davis was reelected in 1945, this time to a four-year term.
Davis lost his 1949 bid for re-election due to a number of factors. First, two years earlier, New York had ceased to use proportional representation and Harlem was broken up into three districts, diluting the black vote.[citation needed] Second, Davis's opponent in the new 21st district was journalist Earl Brown, a fusion candidate for the Democratic, Republican, and Liberal parties.[11] Finally, in July 1948, Davis was charged with conspiring to overthrow the federal government under the Smith Act – a World War II-era charge that rested on Davis's association with the Communist Party.[3] He was tried along with eleven other defendants for their communist beliefs and party affiliation in the Smith Act trials. Paul Robeson, noted actor, singer, and civil rights activist publicly advocated for Davis and his fellow defendants. His conviction was announced on October 13, only a few weeks before the election.
With only a month remaining in his last term, Davis was expelled from the city council, a requirement under state law.[12] His former colleagues even passed a resolution celebrating his ouster.[13] He appealed his conviction for two years all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, without success. On March 1, 1955, after serving three years and four months in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, Davis was freed.[14] However, he was immediately transferred to the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to serve an additional 60-day term for contempt of court. He had appeared there in 1953 as a defense witness for another group of five Communists charged under the Smith Act, but was asked and refused to answer questions about unrelated individuals involved in the Communist Party's National Commission of Negro Work.[15] In 1957, the Supreme Court revisited the Smith Act and reversed itself in Yates v. United States,[16] which held that the First Amendment protected radical and reactionary speech, unless it posed a "clear and present danger."
In subsequent years, Davis engaged in a speaking tour of college campuses and remained politically active, promoting an agenda of civil rights and economic populism. Davis' 1962 speaking circuit drew crowds at schools such as Harvard, Columbia, Amherst, Oberlin and the University of Minnesota.[17] But the City College of New York – in the New York council district he represented in the 1940s – barred Davis from speaking on its campus in this period. After a student protest, Davis was allowed to speak outside, on the street.[17] He was close to Communist Party chairman William Z. Foster. Davis continued to publicly defend the actions of the Soviet Union, including the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.[14]
In 1962 Davis was charged with violating the Internal Security Act.[14] He died shortly before the case came to trial.[18]
Ben Davis died of lung cancer in New York City on August 22, 1964. He was less than one month shy of his 61st birthday at the time of his death, and was in the midst of a campaign for New York State Senate on the People's Party ticket.
While in prison, Davis had written notes for a memoir. These were confiscated by prison authorities and not released until after his death. They were posthumously published under the title Communist Councilman From Harlem (1969), with a foreword by his Smith Act codefendant Henry Winston.[19]
^Davis, Benjamin J (1969). Communist councilman from Harlem: autobiographical notes written in a Federal penitentiary. International Publishers. OCLC802430991.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division 515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801 Second Floor
Collection available on microfilm; New York Public Library; call number Sc Micro R-6129
Divided into four series, Correspondence, the Smith Act Trial, Writings and Printed matter, the Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. Papers document Davis's life and political career from 1949 to the time of his death. The Correspondence series is grouped into general correspondence and condolence letters. Correspondents include William Z. Foster, fellow Smith Act defendants Eugene Dennis and Claudia Jones, Harvard Law School Dean Erwin N. Griswold, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, William Patterson, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., author Walter Lowenfels, Herbert Aptheker, Cyril Briggs, Eslanda Robeson, Communist Party members Sid Resnick and Esther Jackson, and several supporters and friends.
Biographical/historical information
Born in Dawson, Ga. in 1903, Benjamin Jefferson Davis, Jr. was a civil rights lawyer, a former New York City councilman, an author and editor, a Marxist theoretician and a leader of the Communist Party U.S.A. His father was a National Republican Committeeman and a prominent newspaper publisher in the South. Davis graduated from Amherst College in 1929 and the Harvard Law School in 1932. He joined the Communist Party in 1933 during his court defense of Angelo Herndon, a young African American Communist organizer who faced the death penalty in Georgia for leading a protest march of white and black unemployed workers.
Davis moved to New York in 1935, and became the editor of The Negro Liberatoras well as a regular contributor to various Communist Party publications. He later served as the editor and publisher of the Daily Workerand its successor, the weekly The Worker,and as a member of the editorial board of Political Affairs,the theoretical journal of the Communist Party. He is also the author of an extensive autobiography and of several pamphlets on Communism and blacks.
Elected to the New York City Council as a Harlem representative in 1943, Davis was one of two Communist Party candidates to have ever been elected to office in the United States. He was reelected in 1945 but was defeated in 1949 by a coalition candidate of the Democratic, Republican and Liberal parties. He was expelled from his seat in the City Council, however, before the end of his second term, after his indictment and arrest under the Smith Act for alleged subversive activities. As an elected official, Davis organized several mass campaigns against police brutality and against segregation in education, housing and sports.
In 1949, Davis was one of eleven communist leaders convicted of conspiring to overthrow the United States government. He went to jail in 1951 and spent three years and four months at the Federal Prison at Terre-Haute, Indiana. He continued to fight against racial discrimination during his incarceration, and filed two suits in the U.S. District Court to stop the segregation of African American inmates in federal penitentiaries. At the end of his sentence, he served an additional two months at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pa. for having refused, in 1953, to reveal the names of people belonging to the Communist Party's Commission on Negro Work. Two weeks after his release, Davis married Nina Stamler, his fiancee before he went to jail and the daughter of a Bronx dentist. A daughter, Emily, was born of this union. At the time of his death, Davis was again under indictment, under the McCarran Act, for his refusal to register as an agent of the Soviet Union.
Davis was a prominent Communist Party leader and an internationally known theoretician on the status and struggles of blacks in the United Status. He led the Party's New York State district and was the chairman of its Commission on Negro Work.
Elected to the National Committee in 1959, he also served as the Party's National Secretary. Following Stalin's death in 1953, he sided with William Z. Foster, then National Chairman of the Communist Party, in defeating a revisionist tendency within the party, on the so-called “American road to socialism.” Benjamin Davis was a well-known and honored figure in the Harlem community at the time of his death.
Scope and arrangement
Divided into four series, CORRESPONDENCE, the SMITH ACT TRIAL, WRITINGS, and PRINTED MATTER, the Benjamin Davis Papers document Davis's life and political career from 1949 to the time of his death. Some personal items are filed at the beginning of the collection.
The Benjamin J. Davis papers are arranged in four series:
The CORRESPONDENCE series is grouped into General Correspondence,arranged chronologically, and Condolence Letters,arranged alphabetically. Letters received at the Allegheny Jail, are also arranged alphabetically by first or last names, when available. Many correspondents did not sign their full name for fear of government persecution. Unsigned letters are filed separately. Several letters bear brief notations and directives from Davis to his fiancee and future wife Nina Stamler. A two page letter signed “Steve” and dated March 30, 1955, carries on its verso a penciled statement by Davis, to be released through his attorney, in response to the decision by the District of Columbia Federal Court to his suit against segregation in the federal prison system. Correspondents include William Z. Foster, fellow Smith Act defendants Eugene Dennis and Claudia Jones, Harvard's Law School Dean Erwin N. Griswold, Martin Luther King, Jr., Paul Robeson, Roy Wilkins, William Patterson, Chairman of the Civil Rights Congress, author Walter Lowenfelds, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Herbert Aptheker, Cyril Briggs, Eslanda Robeson, Communist Party members Sid Resnick and Esther Jackson, and several supporters and friends.
The SMITH ACT TRIAL series documents Davis's trial for sedition, his imprisonment at Terre-Haute and Pittsburgh, and his challenge of racial segregation in federal prisons in the United States. It consists of legal correspondence between Davis, his lawyers and supporters on the one hand, and the Bureau of Prison, the Parole Board and the warden at the Terre-Haute penitentiary on the other, in addition to briefs, affidavits, petitions, court rulings and printed matter.
WRITINGS consist of a 1,038 page, handwritten autobiography written while in detention at the Terre-Haute penitentiary, and typescripts of articles and speeches by Davis, along with clippings of articles by and about the author. The autobiographical manuscript was confiscated by the Terre-Haute warden daily as it was being written by the author. Released to his family after 1965, it was published posthumously in a shortened edition under the title Communist Councilman from Harlem(New York: International Publishers, 1969). Writings by Davis also include the typescripts of several articles and drafts of speeches and inner party documents written after 1956. Published works in this series consist of clippings of Davis's column “Face to Face” and other articles published in The Worker.Writings about Davis include obituaries and articles by a variety of columnists, including J.A. Rogers, George Schuyler, Lester B. Granger, James L. Hicks, Chester Higgins. Several articles by Eslanda Robeson, Walter Lowenfels, Henry Winston and Paul Robeson are also part of this series.
Davis's 1949 reelection campaign is documented in the PRINTED MATTER series with campaign announcements, petitions, press releases, brochures, handbills and newspaper articles. Other articles detail his struggle for free speech and against discrimination by insurance companies. Also included are several pamphlets and single issues of Political Affairswith articles written by or about Davis.
Administrative information
Source of acquisition
Gift of Nina D. Goodman, 1989.
SCM 89-38
Processing information
Processed by Andre Elizee; Machine-readable finding aid created by Apex Data Services; revised by Terry Catapano.
Separated material
The following items were removed from:
Name of Collection/PapersBENJAMIN J. DAVIS PAPERS, 1949-1964
Accession NumberSCM 89-38
Donor:Mrs. Nina D. Goodman
Date received:1989
Date transferred:1991
The item(s) listed below have been sent to the division indicated, either to be retained or disposed of there. Any items that should receive special disposition are clearly marked.
Schomburg Photographs and Print Division:
-- Five portraits of Benjamin Davis
-- Three group portraits of Benjamin Davis with Lena Horne and Cab Calloway, Thurgood Marshall, and the Smith Act 11.
-- Thirteen snapshots of Benjamin Davis during his City Council days and materials of the Free Ben Davis campaign. A portrait of Benjamin Davis, Sr. is also included.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division 515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801 Second Floor
Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., was chairman of the New York State district of the Communist Party and an acquaintance of Martin Luther King, Jr. King and Davis were both from prominent Atlanta families, and despite their ideological differences, their relationship was characterized by a great degree of mutual respect. In a letter to Davis, King once wrote: “Your words are always encouraging, and although we do not share the political views I find a deeper unity of spirit with you that is after all the important thing” (Papers 5:442).
Davis was born in Dawson, Georgia, on 8 September 1903, to Benjamin Davis, Sr., and Jimmie W. Porter. In 1909 the family moved to Atlanta, where Benjamin, Sr., became active in Republican Party politics and founded the Atlanta Independent, a weekly African American newspaper. A graduate of Amherst College, Davis, Jr., earned a degree from Harvard Law School in 1929 and began practicing law three years later in Atlanta. The young attorney gained international attention when he was hired in 1932 by the International Labor Defense to represent Angelo Herndon, a young African American Communist. Defending Herndon not only brought Davis great renown, but also intensified his own Communist sensibilities. In 1935, he left the legal profession in Atlanta for New York City where he become the editor of the American Communist Party’s periodicals the Negro Liberator and, later, the Daily Worker. In New York he became active in municipal politics, succeeding Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., as Harlem’s representative on the New York City Council in 1943. Davis encountered legal problems of his own surrounding his involvement with the Communist Party and, in 1949, lost his bid for a third term on the City Council. He was convicted later that year for violating the Smith Act, a 1940 law that criminalized any act that was seen as advocating an overthrow of the United States government, and spent five years in a federal penitentiary.
Although Davis remained a member of the Communist Party until his death in 1964, throughout the 1950s he developed an increasing admiration for King. Following King’s stabbing in 1958 by Izola Curry, Davis donated blood at Harlem Hospital to help the injured leader, writing in a letter: “Had the blood been needed it was there. Just as blood knows no race or color—it knows no politics.” In that same letter Davis called support for King “a duty” and wished the minister “the best of everything and great success in your work” (Davis, January 1959). King later wrote to Davis that “a friend like yourself … gives me renewed courage and vigor to carry on” (Papers 5:443).
In 1962, Davis was again indicted for his association with the Communist Party, this time for violating the McCarran Internal Security Act by failing to register the Communist Party as an agent of the Soviet Union. Davis remained committed to his political ideology and died in 1964 while awaiting trial for these charges.
