Audrey Davis: Arkansas AM&N's Native Son

Although he is 83 years old and has been retired from the classroom for over two decades, Audrey Davis still possesses a scowl that would make even Darth Vader pause.? Gruff in nature, time has mellowed him somewhat, as he is a battle-hardened teacher of the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), where he served as an industrial arts teacher for 30 years.? Renowned for his craftsmanship, Davis pushed his students to excellence so that they would fully understand how to build furniture and other crafts by hand. ?Many of his former students are appreciative as they now either run their own carpentry businesses or have acquired rental properties that they repair and maintain themselves.

??? He did pretty well for himself despite Davis not coming from "blue blood" stock, nor his young life ever being a crystal stair.? Raised in the segregated Black community of Morrilton, Arkansas, called "Hickory Hill," Davis's dad was a farmer who only had a fourth-grade education, and his mother, who was a teacher in the community, only had an eighth-grade education.? Raised with 12 other siblings in a house with no running water or lights, Davis experienced tragedy early on when one of his brothers—who also had a twin sister—died from pneumonia.? The next tragedy came years later when another brother was killed in a hunting accident.?? However, the specter of death was still not through with the family.?Davis lost his mother to breast cancer when she was just 37 years old; he was 16 years old.? The force and resilience were strong with him.? Davis eventually made his way to Arkansas AM&N in Pine Bluff, graduating in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Technology with an emphasis in tailoring.?

???? After completing college, Davis made his way to Kansas City, Missouri.? However, his first career choice was not teaching.? Like many from down South during the Great Migration of Blacks to the North, he worked at an automotive plant, General Motors, at their Leeds Assembly in Leeds, Missouri.? It was not until several years later—while working the night shift—that he took advantage of the company's college reimbursement program.? Carpooling with several others to Warrensburg, Missouri, during the day, he attended classes at Central Missouri State University (CMSU), now known as the University of Central Missouri (UCM).? At UCM, Davis became certified to teach Woodwork, Beginning Electricity, Crafts, and Metalwork.?

???? Throughout his career, he taught at various schools throughout the KCPS: Manual High School, Southeast High School, Metro Technical High School, and Fairview Alternative High School, the last being that from which he retired.? Davis is a man who is known to be straightforward.? His delivery comes off like a potent, intoxicating drink served at a bar: a shot of whiskey with no chaser.? The following is his story and the story of the region he is from.?

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???? Although much of Arkansas was socially and politically contentious well into the late 1800s, perhaps no other area in the state represents the partisan divisions and potential for violence as Conway County.? While the upper northeast region was hilly and rocky, making it unsuitable for cotton cultivation, the southeast section bordering the Arkansas River made it fertile enough for the crop.? And the county's social and political differences resembled that of the county's terrain.? The upper part, not needing enslaved people, had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War—producing "hillbilly" unionists for the North—while southeast Conway County had sided with the Confederacy because its economic viability was tied to cotton.? After the war ended, these regional differences might not have been as significant had the Black population—just 8% prior to the Civil War—remained stagnant.?

???? However, as the migration of Blacks into the state increased, the Black population grew exponentially.? “In the late 1870s, more than 1,000 Black Tennesseans and South Carolinians moved to Conway County, lifting African Americans from 8 to 25 percent of the county's population between 1870 and 1880” (City of Conway, Arkansas African American Historic Context Society, 2021, pg. 25). ?Many African-Americans were located in the Howard Township, Menifee, and Plumerville areas. ?In prior years, when the Ku Klan Klan first became active, Black and white Republican militias, under the direction of Governor Powell Clayton, had pounded the KKK into submission, making them seek armistice.? After Reconstruction ended and the Democrats took back control, the Klan was not needed.? Why resort to violence when political emasculation was enough to hinder Black progress?

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???? Despite Republicans being politically impotent after Reconstruction, the party still gained some measure of respect in pockets throughout the state with sizeable Black populations.? This is one of the reasons why, in the 1884 election, Democrats lost control in Conway County.? Predictably, by 1885 the area's Klan rose again, terrorizing Blacks and any white person who had the temerity to ally themself with Blacks.? Because of this, the state elections (scheduled for September) and the federal elections (scheduled in November) of 1888 were, in all parlances of the phrase, a hot, contested mess.?????

???? “In the weeks before the September 1888 state election, Democrats in the county seat of Morrilton formed a militia, led by a banker and armed by the Democratic governor, which paraded in the town’s streets nearly every day in an obvious attempt to intimidate the party’s opponents.? On election day, they refused to let duly appointed Republican election judges observe the balloting, and they severely beat the editor of the local Republican newspaper when he tried to distribute his party’s ballots outside the polling place” (Barnes, K. 1998, pg. 67). ?

???? However, what came next was perhaps more scandalous and egregious.? Sometime during the night on January 29, 1889, John Middleton Clayton, the younger brother of former Reconstructionist Governor Powell Clayton, was assassinated in a boarding home in Plumerville, shot through a window with buckshot.? “The blast almost severed his head from his body” (Barnes, 1993, pg.68).? John Clayton had run for the U.S. House seat of central Arkansas, losing by just two-tenths of all votes cast.? He had come to Conway County to investigate voting irregularities there.? In the November 1888 Federal elections, white Morrilton businessmen—organized by Deputy Sherriff Oliver Bentley—had stolen the ballot box in Plumerville, where Blacks comprised two-thirds of the population.

???? "In the next state election, in September 1890, state legislators were chosen who enacted 'election reform' laws, which would deprive Blacks and some poor whites of their votes.? While they were at it, they went on to pass the Jim Crow laws that established legal segregation of the races in Arkansas” (The Journal of the Fort Worth Historical Society, 2009, pg.23).?

???? This is the region's historical legacy approximately 60 years later, out of which Audrey Taylor Davis was born.? Raised on the outskirts of Morrilton, Arkansas, in a Black community called Hickory Hill, Davis did not have much contact with whites growing up.? He states that he did not have a white teacher until later in life when he was in graduate school.? He remembers once, though, that when a white man had brought a wagon with horses to their farm to buy hogs, a precarious situation had arisen.? Before being able to buy anything, the white man died from a massive heart attack in front of their house.? Davis' mother worried that white people would think the family had done something to him and would seek retribution, but nothing ever came of it.??

???? A brown-skinned, medium-height man with speckled gray and black hair on his head, Davis casts a commanding aura.? Picking 100 lbs of cotton a day by the time he was five years old, he is the quintessential man's man of the South: driven, hardworking, and focused.? No longer possessing the size and strength of his youth, there is evidence his bones once held a stockier, more muscular frame.? However, although his physicality has diminished, Davis is often more mobile and adept than many millennials.? With a gaze that is both overpowering and angry—if a look can be such a thing—he comes off as a leader.? Direct and straight to the point, he does occasionally, however, exudes enough wry country boy wit and charm to let everyone know that he does not take life too seriously.?

???? Having taught in the Kansas City Missouri School District for 30 years and retired since 1998, Davis is enjoying his old age.? However, he continues to stay busy with activities through church and personal family projects.? When a mistake is made early during his interview—a statement about his family being sharecroppers when he was younger—Davis' face contorts into an ugly, perverse shape, as though someone with profound, lousy body odor just walked by.?

???? “No,” he immediately exclaims, “my family OWNED our land!? We weren’t sharecroppers.? We were farmers!”

???? If not distracted by the sudden, aggressive inflection of his voice, one can sense the underlying pride in it.? Sharecropping, the system of economic oppression that replaced slavery in 1865, shackled many Southern families and kept them indebted to white owners of the land.? Davis' acerbic retort and clap back at the error is understandable.? When he was born—October 30, 1940—sharecropping was still very much a fact of life for many Black families in the South.?

???? “By 1900, of 178,694 farms in Arkansas, 81,140 (45.4 percent) were operated by landless tenants or ‘croppers’ (among Black farmers only, the percentage was 75 percent).? Of the total number of tenants and sharecroppers in 1900, 34,997 (43 percent) were Black, and 46,178 (57 percent) were white”).? Indeed, until the Great Depression (1929—1939), 40 percent of all Blacks in America earned their living nationally through sharecropping; almost all lived in the South.?? The reasons for their migration to the North are both simple and complex.?

???? However, the short answer is that Blacks moved in masses to escape continued persecution by whites: social, economic, and political.? In some form or fashion, sharecropping contained portions of these dynamics, and even those Blacks not directly involved with sharecropping felt its sting.? With many poor and indebted, how could there be any economic power?? Likewise, politics begets nothing without a money machine pushing it.? With no monetary might or political power, the social dynamics of a race are invariably thrown into chaos.?

???? When asked why he moved from Arkansas to Missouri after graduating from Arkansas AM&N, Davis said, "I just knew that I didn't want to pick cotton and corn all of my life.? So, I went to college and got the hell out of Arkansas."

???? Arkansas AM&N wasn’t Davis’s first choice for a college.? He didn't pick it because it was an HBCU, although he knew there were many colleges where Blacks weren't welcomed.? He initially had selected Philander Smith College in Little Rock because of an aunt who worked there.? However, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis soon after his senior year of high school.? This was discovered when Davis had gone to Wisconsin to work for the Green Giant Pea Company for the summer.?

???? He began spitting up blood.? After he was diagnosed, he was sent to Arkansas and placed in a sanitarium.? He was only supposed to be there for one to three months.? Yet because of an administrative mix-up, Davis stayed in the sanitarium for 13 months!

???? He then picked Arkansas AM&N because his cousin, Willie Hampton, had already enrolled there and encouraged him to visit the campus.? Once he did, Davis said he fell in love with how it was laid out and manicured and how friendly the people were.? Since he was good with his hands, he was encouraged to get into industrial technology.? However, Davis always knew in the back of his mind that to make a decent living and to live like he wanted, he would have to leave Arkansas.

???? In her book The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Wilkerson, 2010), Isabel Wilkerson talks about the movement of Blacks from the South to the North from 1915 to 1970.? While discussing the overall motivations of individuals and Blacks as a whole, she paints a very harrowing picture of the adversities African Americans in the South faced after slavery ended.?? Many ex-slaves lacked technical skills or education.? With career choices bleak, most opted to stay on the plantations of their oppressors to work the land.? After all, although they may have been newly freed, freedom did not provide places for them to live, put food into their mouths, or money into their pockets.? Sharecropping solved this conundrum but proved to be a pyrrhic victory overall.

???? Former masters, robbed of their labor force after the Civil War, were all too willing to find a cheap replacement.? In some ways, sharecropping was better than slavery for former plantation owners: one usually did not have to look for people to work the land, and one did not necessarily have to pay them up front.? Since the concept of credit was virtually nonexistent at the time, sharecroppers were given a house—frequently a one-bedroom shack—on a tract of land and were directed by former plantation owners as to what would be planted during the year.? If the sharecropper needed anything—like clothes (most raised their livestock and other food)—it was given to them.? Once the harvest was collected, the money was deducted from what the sharecropper owed.? Rent for the year and items gifted, such as shoes and other clothing, were factored in.? However, after the subtractions, Blacks were often told that the landowners had not profited from the harvest for the year.? In fact, many landowners flat-out lied or used subterfuge to make the sharecroppers believe they consumed more than they produced.? In this way, Backs were eternally shackled to the same land on which they had been enslaved.? For scores of them, nothing had changed.?

???? Though two-thirds of sharecroppers were white, compared to one-third of Blacks, Wilkerson states that landowners preferred Blacks because it was harder for them to challenge the system—those who often faced physical retribution.? Telling the story of a Black sharecropper named Budross, she writes, "…Budross went to a schoolhouse down in the field and learned to read and count.? When it came time to settle up over the tobacco George's grandmother Lena had raised, the uncle stood by while the planter went over the books with her.? When they got through, George's uncle spoke up. ?'Ma, Mr. Reshard cheatin' you.? He ain't addin' them figures right.' The planter jumped up.? 'Now you see there, Lena, I told you not to send that boy to school!? Now he done learn how to count and now done jumped up and called my wife a lie, 'cause my wife figured up these books.' The planter’s men came and pistol-whipped the uncle right then and there. ?The family had to get him out that night" (Wilkerson, 2010, pp. 54-64).

???? According to anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker, during the 1930s only a quarter to a third of sharecroppers received proper credit for each year's harvest.? Escaping sharecropping, as Wilkerson discusses, was not that simple for Backs.? Some had nowhere to go—nor the means to do so—and many stayed out of fear.? The Ku Klux Klan and landowners were visceral and brutal in their treatment of sharecroppers.? Frequently, if word got out that a Back family was attempting to flee to the North, they would be harassed, beaten, or outright killed.? Those who usually escaped the South did so at night with few belongings.??

???? Davis's family had somehow in the past managed to escape this ugly legacy by acquiring land.? Ownership meant better control of one's destiny.? It also meant that 100 percent of all money raised went back to his family.? Another thing that helped Blacks get ahead—whether they were sharecroppers or farmers—was having a big family.? Having more children meant more hands in the fields and better earning potential.? Some sharecroppers were allowed to make money on the side—working odd jobs for other land owners—or raising a few agricultural items to sell.? In this way, sharecroppers could put money away to accumulate enough to buy their tract of land perhaps someday.? Davis's mother had 13 children, so the family had plenty of earning potential.? They might not have been rich, but they were not poor.? Reflecting on his past, however, he doesn't think his family's situation was all that bad.

???? “We didn’t have some of the things that maybe others had,” he said with characteristic ambivalence, “but to me, we had everything we needed.”

???? Still, one question had to be asked.? How does a five-year-old come to pick cotton in the brutal Arkansas heat?

???? "That's easy," he responds as though it is a silly question.? "To a child, everything looks like fun.? They see everyone else out in the field—all of the adults picking cotton—so they want to do it, too.? You give them a little sack and let them go behind you or work with you on the side.? When they get tired, you simply let them sleep on the sack of cotton they've been picking.? It's nice and soft."

???? When asked why little kids were not left at home with someone or at a daycare, he turned bellicose, his face betraying that he believed it was a stupid question.

???? "You know why?" he asked, then paused for dramatic effect.? "Because there wasn't anyone to WATCH them at home, that's why!? Everyone was out in the fields, working!? Couldn't nobody afford daycare.? We did not KNOW about daycare!"??

???? Davis admits his life was much different from today's Black students in terms of daycare or schooling.? For one, his day typically started between 5:30 a.m. - 6:00 a.m.? Before he went to school, his brothers, sisters, and he were responsible for gathering the eggs from the chickens, milking the cows, and ensuring their mother had enough wood for a fire.? They then had to walk approximately two miles to school and be there either by 8:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. (his memory is foggy).

???? When his brothers, sisters, and he returned from school at the end of the day, they had to repeat some of the same chores, plus additional ones.? They could only study once they completed their chores and then had to light a kerosine lamp in the rooms to see.

???? While Davis cannot compare the schools that whites attended to those that Blacks attended—because he had minimal contact with whites—he does know that all of their textbooks came from white schools.? They were always secondhand because the white students always received new books.? When asked if any of his teachers taught him any Black history, Davis' brow bunches up, and he shakes his head.

???? "No…not that I can remember.? The first time I even heard about that stuff that happened in Oklahoma all those years ago (The Tulsa Race Massacre), my son informed me about it, because he is so into Black history."?????

???? While today's students might not know about doing chores as Davis did, he never thought much about them or any other manual labor he had to do for much of his childhood.? All of the other Black families in Morrilton were doing the same thing.?

???? "A little bit of work ain't never killed anybody," he retorted, a sly smile overcoming his face.? Davis has always prided himself on his work ethic.? It was something he learned from his father, Garland Davis.? Picking cotton was one of the manifestations of that work ethic.

???? Audaciously, he brags, “My brothers and I picked so much cotton so fast, they used to call us the Cotton Gin!"? He also admits that it was a frequent practice to urinate in the sacks of cotton for added water weight.? A person was paid by how much his/her sacks of cotton weighed.? The extra coins earned might have been minimal, but every cent counted.?Although the Davis family was contracted to pick cotton, they raised peas, cucumbers, peanuts, and sorghum (molasses) for their consumption on their land and for the marketplace, putting money back into the family's bottom line.? They raised and slaughtered their hogs and hunted for squirrels, rabbits, possums, pheasants, and other protein.

???? By today's standard of living, Davis's upbringing was primitive.? Heat throughout the house was distributed in one of two ways: from a wood-burning stove in the kitchen or from a wood-burning furnace in the living room.? Whenever someone needed to use the bathroom, they utilized the outhouse in the backyard to relieve themselves.? Woe to the lonely individual who had to use it at night, or they could go to a corner of the woods to handle their business.? Baths were generally only taken once a week as they were labor-intensive.? Water was drawn from a well, poured into a deep, elongated tub, and heated by fire to the desired temperature.? If there was ironing to do, Davis—who learned how to be domestic from his mother—would place two solid metal irons on a heated stove to warm them up.? He put water, sometimes starch, on the shirt or trousers, using one of the irons until it became cold.? Then he would put it back on the stove, pick the other up, and use it, alternating between the two until he was done.

???? Despite his somewhat archaic early life, Davis still, at times, managed to get in trouble.? Going on hunting trips with his brothers and using a shotgun by the time he was 12, he tells the story of getting a whupping from his father for the misuse of his firearm.

???? “Pop had given me and Cleophus (his brother) a little land where we could plant some peas,” he said, explaining his devilment.? “And he told us we could sell whatever we made and keep the money.? Well, my patch was doing pretty good, but I came back from church one Sunday and caught the mule and one of the cows in my peas, eating them!?? I went back and got my shotgun and just went to blasting!”

???? Davis knew the shot wouldn't kill the animals—he was far enough away, and the buckshot was low enough grade—that it would only bruise them.? He caught both in the rear quarters but had the misfortune of damaging one of the cows' udders.? His father had to pay a veterinarian to repair the damage.? A good dairy cow was worth its weight in gold.

???? "Honestly, I probably never would have shot the animals, but Pop had always threatened to shoot the mule anyway because he was ornery.? He should not have been talking about it so much."

???? When Davis left to attend Arkansas AM&N, his father was poor and had no money to give him.? However, he gave Davis some produce to take with him since they were farmers and he had plenty of that to offer.

???? Two racial incidents stood out to Davis when he lived in Arkansas.? The first was when Black students attempted to integrate Little Rock Central High School in 1957.? The other was closer to home and occurred in Pine Bluff in 1963.? Students from Arkansas AM&N and other Blacks from the community of Pine Bluff staged a sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counters.? Davis remembers that the college’s president, Lawrence A. Davis, Sr., talked to the students beforehand and told them that if they were going to participate, they had to believe in non-violence and could not retaliate, no matter what someone white did to them.

???? Davis joked, "Hell, I knew right then and there I wasn't the right man to participate in that protest.? Someone sic a dog or spit on me?? I'm going to go upside their head!"

??? Spoken like a true veteran teacher and graduate of Arkansas AM&N.

Works Cited

African Americans. (2014). Retrieved from Encyclopediaofarkansas.net: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/african-americans-407/

African Americans and The New Deal. (2021). Retrieved from Digialhistory.uh.edu: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3447

Barnes, K. (1998). Who Killed John Clayton? Political Violence and the Emergence of the New South, 1861-1893.London, England, Great Britian: Duke University Press.

Barnes, K. C. (1993, Winter). Who Killed John M. Clayton? Political Violence in Conway County. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 4(52), pp. 371-404.

Barnes, K. C. (2009, September 9). The Life and Death of John Clayton Powell. The Fort Smith Historical Society Journal, 33(2), 16-23.

(2021). City of Conway, Arkansas African American Historic Context Study. Ciry of Conway. Conway: McDoux Preservation LLC.

Davis, A. T. (2024, June 27). The Golden Boyz Interviews: Audrey Davis. 1. (N. Shabazz, Interviewer)

Little, B. (2023, July 19). How Power Grabs in the South Erased Reforms After Reconstruction. Retrieved from History.com: https://www.history.com/news/voter-suppression-after-reconstruction-southern-states

Milewski, M. (2018). Litigating Across the Color Line. New York, New York, USA: Oxford University Press.

The Journal of the Fort Smith Historical Society. (n.d.).

Wilkerson, I. (2010). The Wealth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Vol. 1). New York, USA: Penguin Random House.

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