Davis, Benjamin J.

DAVIS, BENJAMIN J. (1903–1964). A two-term Communist representative on the New York City Council (1943–1947), Benjamin J. Davis grew up in a privileged Black family in Atlanta. His father, a member of the Republican National Committee, was able to send him to Amherst College and Harvard Law School. Davis’s radicalization began when he assumed the defense of Angelo Herndon, a Black Communist charged with “attempting to incite insurrection” as a result of his Great Depression-era organizing among Atlanta’s unemployed. Conducting his defense before a white-supremacist judge and jury, Davis found inspiration in the Communist Party’s advocacy of interracial solidarity and its outspoken criticism of racial segregation. He joined the Party during the trial, but threats to his life forced him to leave Atlanta shortly after Herndon’s conviction.

Moving to New York, Davis became editor of the Harlem Liberator and an editor of the Daily Worker. Active in the National Negro Congress and numerous Harlem campaigns against racial discrimination, Davis became a popular figure in the community, with ties to ministers and politicians as well as Party activists. When Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., launched his campaign for Congress in 1942, he designated Davis as his chosen successor on the New York City Council. Winning Communist and American Labor Party endorsements, Davis won the election and was reelected by a larger margin in 1945. Popular with his constituents, Davis only lost his seat in the midst of Cold War tensions that led most of his former allies to break with him in the same year that proportional representation in council races was ended. In 1948 Davis was indicted under the Smith Act along with other members of the Communist Party’s National Committee. He was convicted and spent several years in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. When he was released, he returned to Harlem, but with the Communist Party a shell of its former self, he never recovered his popularity or influence.

Davis, Benjamin J. Communist Councilman for Harlem. New York: International Publishers, 1969.

Horne, Gerald. Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party. London: Associated University Presses, 1994.

Howard, Walter T. We Shall Be Free!: Black Communist Protests in Seven Voices. Philadelphia. PA: Temple University Press,2013.