"John Audrey Davis,Sr."(May 10,1912-December 17,2002)

Was an African American political science professor and American Civil Rights activists who served as the head academic researcher on the historic Brown v.Board of Education case.John's career as a civil-rights activist began in 1933,when he formed the New Negro Alliance with Belford Lawson,Jr and N Franklin Thorne in response to the white owned bussinesses in African American neighborhoods that would fire and/or refuse to hire African American workers.To protest this practice,the Alliance organized the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work "campaign in the height of the Great Depression and called for boycotts and picketing of these  businesses.Most businesses,afraid of losing revenue in a shaky economic period,caved in to the protests.Others fought back and sought an injuction against the group.The lower courts sided with the businesses,the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court,which sided with The Alliance in 1938.Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall represented the Alliance in the in the case,which was known as New Negro Alliance vs.Sanitary Grocery Company Inc.,forming a close lifelong friendship with John in the process.In 1953,Thurgood marshall appointed John to head the academic research task force for the historic Brown v.Board of Education of Topeka case.Working with a team of more than 200 scholars that included Horace Mann Bond (father of future NAACP president Julian Bond ),C.Vann Woodward,William Robert Ming,Jr.,Alfred Kelly and John Hope Franklin,John complied the factual evidence that was presented in Thurgood's arguments against the "separate but equal"doctrine,proving that the Fourteenth Amendment was created to prohibited racial discrimination.Following John's work on Brown v.Board of Education of Topeka,he was appointed to the New York State Commission on Discrimination by Governor W.Averell Harriman in 1957.