William Boyd Allison Davis (1902 - 1983)

Born 14 Oct 1902 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Died 21 Nov 1983 at age 81 in Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States

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Biography

Allison Davis is Notable.

William Boyd Allison Davis was an American educator, anthropologist, writer, researcher, and scholar.

He is best remembered for his research on southern race and class during the 1930s and on intelligence quotient (IQ) tests in the 1940s and 1950s, and for his support of "compensatory education," an area in which he contributed to the intellectual genesis of the federal Head Start Program.

William was born in 1902 to John Abraham Davis and Gabrielle Beale, ^[1] to a civically engaged family in Washington, D.C. His father chaired the anti-lynching committee of Washington D.C.'s chapter of the NAACP. His grandfather was an abolitionist lawyer. He had a sister, Dorothy, and a brother, John Aubrey Davis, Sr who became a political science professor and the lead academic researcher on the Brown v Board of Education (1954) case.

In 1920, the family lived in Washington, DC. ^[2] He graduated from Dunbar High School as valedictorian, which gained him a scholarship to Williams College through a school-specific arrangement. He earned his MA in Literature at Harvard and PhD in Anthropology at University of Chicago.

When he joined the faculty at University of Chicago in 1942, he became the first African-American to hold a full faculty position at a major white university.

He passed away in 1983 in Chicago. ^[1]

Wikipedia shows one wife: Elizabeth Stubbs. His Chicago death record states his wife as Lois L Lucas. ^[1]

Davis is depicted on a 29-cent United States postage stamp issued on February 1, 1994

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} "Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1871-1998," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGN8-BJ4M : 18 March 2018), Allison Davis, 21 Nov 1983; citing Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States, source reference , record number , Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm .
2. ↑ "United States Census, 1920", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MNLY-RYC : 1 February 2021), Allison Davis in entry for John A Davis, 1920.

• Wikipedia: Allison Davis (anthropologist)