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Frank Marshall Davis
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
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frank Marshall davis (december 31, 1905–July 26, 1987) kathryn Waddell takara In Chicago, between 1934 and 1948, Frank Marshall Davis embodied a Renaissance figure who played multiple roles: a poet, newspaper reporter, editor, columnist , labor and Civil Rights activist, photographer, radio personality, humanist , and often unacknowledged leader of the Chicago progressive community. As a Renaissance man and an African American writer, his professional task was to use the written and spoken word to expose and break down social and political barriers, destroying the construct of a preordained subordinate place for blacks in society, and to create and cultivate a literary and social consciousness . The indictment of white America as imperialistic, paternalistic, and racist remained a common theme in his writing. Davis was a courageous figure in Chicago’s radical urban renaissance experience from 1927, when he began his job as the editor of the Chicago Evening Bulletin, until his departure for Hawaii in 1948. There, he lived, raised his family, wrote, and experimented with a few business ventures for almost 40 years until his death in Honolulu in 1987. Frank Marshall Davis was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, in 1905. When his parents divorced the following year, he lived alternately with this grandmother and mother and stepfather, J. M. Boganey—a surname he would later use for an editorial column. Unlike many blacks, he lived in a predominately white working-class neighborhood where attitudes reflected the Jim Crow pattern of the day. To escape his loneliness and a low self-esteem due to isolation and alienation during his formative years, Davis developed a passion for books. His stepfather (who worked the railroad and got Davis summer jobs there) introduced him to the Black Press by sharing black newspapers with Davis at an early age. After graduation from Arkansas City High School in 1923, Davis worked for a summer on the railroads in secondary service jobs, worked as a busboy in an exclusive club, and in the fall took classes in nearby Wichita at Friends University. However, he left the school when he could no longer afford to attend due to the death of his grandfather. The following year Davis moved to Kansas City and enrolled at Kansas State Industrial and Agricultural College 162 • kathryn Waddell takara (now Kansas State University) where he began to study journalism. He wrote and published his first poems in 1924, having received encouragement from one of his English teachers, Miss Ada Rice, who recognized his talent.1 In 1927, Davis moved to Chicago where he got a job as night city editor and columnist for the Chicago Evening Bulletin, and wrote short somewhat sensational stories for the popular market under the name of Frank Boganey. In 1928 he wrote for the Chicago Whip before he accepted a position at the Gary American in Indiana where he was a reporter, editor, editorial writer, and columnist, writing sociopolitical columns under the pseudonym “Raymond Harper.”2 He also introduced “Jazzin’ the News,” which was to reappear as a column when he was an editor at the Atlanta World. During his first break from Kansas State Industrial and Agricultural College at the beginning of the Depression, Davis went to Gary, Indiana, for his first job in the newspaper field. Unfortunately, because of segregation (also known as Jim Crow), many blacks were denied access to most administrative and professional jobs outside of limited African American institutions and entertainment, the railroad industry, or sports. Consequently, some of the most gifted Black intellectuals like Davis found themselves in these alternative careers. A few chose traditional careers in medicine , science, teaching, and the arts, and still others, like Davis, chose journalism. He quickly experienced another kind of alienation when he discovered the rampant corruption of big city politics, and the exploitation of employees by factory owners and “Big Bosses.” His frustrations and feelings of impotence expanded as he began to understand the enormity of the problems of race and poverty.3 The tragic circle of domination and degradation encouraged whites to strengthen segregation and relegate African Americans to declining expectations of success. By 1929, Davis returned to Kansas State on a scholarship and resigned his position at the Gary American, only to return in 1930, when he wrote a column entitled “A Diplomat in Black.” In 1931, Davis was recruited by W. A. Scott to be managing editor of the biweekly Atlanta World, which he turned into a daily newspaper in 1932. While in Atlanta, he wrote editorials on many controversial race...