Research Catalog

Benjamin J. Davis papers

Title: Benjamin J. Davis papers, 1949-1964.
Author: Davis, Benjamin J. (Benjamin Jefferson), 1903-1964.
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Item details
Status	Container	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	r. 4	Moving image	Use in library	Sc Micro R-6129 r. 4	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	r. 3	Moving image	Use in library	Sc Micro R-6129 r. 3	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	r. 2	Moving image	Use in library	Sc Micro R-6129 r. 2	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	r. 1	Moving image	Use in library	Sc Micro R-6129 r. 1	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Additional Authors

Description

2.3 lin. ft.
4 microfilm reels.

Summary

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.

Donor/Sponsor

Schomburg NEH Automated Access to Special Collections Project.

Alternative Title

Smith Act (Alien Registration Act of 1940)

Subject

Note

Photographs transferred to the Photographs and Prints Division.

Access (note)

Researchers are restricted to microfilm copy.

Additional Formats (note)

Collection available on microfilm;

Biography (note)

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 of the United States of America.

Processing Action (note)

Processed.
Cataloged.
Updated.

Call Number

Sc Micro R-6129

OCLC

NYPW91-A145

Author

Davis, Benjamin J. (Benjamin Jefferson), 1903-1964.

Title

Benjamin J. Davis papers, 1949-1964.

Access

Researchers are restricted to microfilm copy.

Additional Formats

Collection available on microfilm; New York Public Library; call number Sc Micro R-6129.

Biography

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 of the United States of America. Davis 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. He later served as an editor and publisher to the "Daily Worker" and its weekly successor, "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.

Davis was elected to the New York City Council in 1943 as a Communist Party candidate. He was reelected in 1945, but was defeated in 1949 by a coalition candidate of the Republican, Democratic and Liberal parties. 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. 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.

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Finding Aid

Added Author

Foster, William Z., 1881-1961.

Dennis, Eugene, 1905-1961.

Jones, Claudia, 1915-1964.

Griswold, Erwin N. (Erwin Nathaniel), 1904-

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968.

Robeson, Paul, 1898-1976.

Wilkins, Roy, 1901-

Patterson, William L. (William Lorenzo), 1890-1980.

Lowenfels, Walter, 1897-1976.

Aptheker, Herbert, 1915-2003.

Briggs, Cyril V., 1888-

Robeson, Eslanda Goode, 1896-1965.

Resnick, Sidney I.

Jackson, Esther.

Added Title

Smith Act (Alien Registration Act of 1940)

Research Call Number

Sc Micro R-6129

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