Fred Davis is dead. But the changes he inspired endure
Fred Davis wasn’t one to know his place. And Memphis is a better place because he didn’t.
The founder of the Mid-south’s first black-owned insurance company died this week at 86. But back in the days when African Americans were expected to remain on society’s lowest rungs, Davis apparently didn’t get the memo. Or maybe he just tossed it out.
That’s why he and his friends went to the Fairgrounds Amusement Park on a Sunday when black people were only allowed there on Tuesdays.
That led to them being threatened. Called the n-word. Thrown in jail.
But at Davis’ trial, the judge decided to open up the park to African Americans every day.
All because Davis didn’t know his place. Then in 1967, Davis decided to run for a seat in a predominantly white district on the new City Council that replaced the old commission system.
But many white people didn’t think it was his place to do that.
“In those days, we had cars that had sound systems on them,” Davis said in a Rhodes College oral history interview. “He [Davis’ opponent] went through some neighborhoods and said: ‘Elect me or you’ll have a [n-word] for a councilman.’”
That nastiness, however, did more to inspire white people like James Jalenak, who was a young attorney at the time, and George Lapides, then-sports editor of the Memphis Press-scimitar, to support Davis. Lapides died in 2016.
So, they worked to help him win. “George and I were looking at the candidates in the paper, and we said: Clearly Fred is the most qualified, and other people are being racist in this election, and we need to do something about it,” Jalenak said.
“So, we went to his home in Orange Mound, and we knocked on his door, and we said, ‘We want to campaign for you.’
“And that’s what we did for the next two months… we’d go to Coke parties in people’s backyards, and we’d make speeches for Fred…”
Davis triumphed.
“And that was the first time a black person won in a predominantly white district in Memphis,” Davis said in the oral history. Then, Davis worked to help other people rise above the places where society was determined to shackle them.
Davis supported the sanitation workers in 1968, when they went on strike for enough money to support their families and working conditions that wouldn’t saddle them with waste tubs that leaked maggots onto their backs. Davis’ fight for their dignity, which led him to march next to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he came to Memphis, even earned him death threats.
Yet in a way, it’s easy to see how Davis — who amassed scores of awards and achievements during his life, including being founding director and president of the Mid-south Minority Business Council and the Humanitarian Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews — came to believe he could transcend societal expectations.
He’d been doing it since he was a child.
His earnings from picking cotton went to buy clothes for school, Davis said in his oral history. He had to cook, and he also had to wash his own clothes when he around five or six years old.
“Early on, I was stirring cornbread, and I had to stand on a chair to stir it,” Davis said in the Rhodes oral history. “I was washing my clothes with a washboard.”
He later worked his way through Tennessee State University and volunteered for the Army during the Vietnam War. Davis was stationed in France, where he learned to speak French and served as an interpreter.
But Davis was always troubled by the racism he experienced in the service.
“On post, you didn’t have to look far to find Southern racism,” he said in the oral history. “That was difficult for me, and that’s why I didn’t want to stay in the Army any longer than I had to.”
So, when Davis returned to Memphis, he used his strength and his anguish to not only defy racism, but to bring others along in defying it.
That’s why he and his friends went to the fairgrounds on the day when only white people were supposed to be there.
That’s why he ran for a City Council seat in a mostly-white district.
That’s why one of his first acts on the council was to stand up for the striking sanitation workers.
That’s why he remains a symbol of strength for Memphians such as Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Roshun Austin, CEO of The Works, Inc., and countless youths in Orange Mound.
“A lot of people who vilified me have had dinners in my honor,” Davis said. “I think it’s a question of integrity.” Jalenak agrees.
“Fred was a cutting-edge guy,” he said. “He was so genuine, so approachable, that even though he may disagree with people, he wasn’t disagreeable. “I’ve lost a very good friend.”
As has Memphis.