Belva Davis (born Belvagene Melton; October 13, 1932) is an American television and radio
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
. She is the first
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
woman to become a television reporter on the
U.S. West Coast
The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...
. She has won eight
Emmy Awards
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
and been recognized by the
American Women in Radio and Television
The Alliance for Women in Media (AWM) is a nonprofit organization created by women in 1951 that works to support women in the media in the United States.
About
The mission of the organization is to "advance the impact of women in broadcasting a ...
and
National Association of Black Journalists
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is an organization of African-American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C., by 44 journalists, the NABJ's stated purpose is to provide quality p ...
.
After growing up in
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
, Davis began writing
freelance
''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
articles for magazines in 1957. Within a few years, she began reporting on radio and television. As a reporter, Davis covered many important events of the day, including issues of race, gender, and politics. She became an anchorwoman and hosted her own talk show, before retiring in 2012.
Early life
Belvagene Melton was born on October 13, 1932, to John and Florence Melton in
Monroe, Louisiana
Monroe (historically french: Poste-du-Ouachita) is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and parish seat of Ouachita Parish. With a 2020 census-tabulated population of 47,702, it is the principal city of the Monroe metropolita ...
. She is the oldest of four children.
[ Her mother was 14 years old at Belva's birth, and Belva spent her early years living with various relatives.][ When she was eight years old, Belva and her family, including aunts and cousins, moved to a two-bedroom apartment in the ]West Oakland
West Oakland is a neighborhood situated in the northwestern corner of Oakland, California, United States, situated west of Downtown Oakland, south of Emeryville, and north of Alameda. The neighborhood is located along the waterfront at the Po ...
neighborhood of Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
. Eleven people lived in the apartment. Davis later said about her youth, "I learned to survive. And, as I moved from place to place, I learned to adapt. When I got older, I just figured I could become whatever it was that I needed to become."[
By the late 1940s, her parents were able to afford a house in ]Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
. Davis graduated from Berkeley High School in 1951, becoming the first member of her family to graduate from high school. She applied and got accepted into San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
but couldn't afford to attend college. She went to work as a typist Typist is a person who types, a clerical worker who writes documents, using a typewriter.
Skills and occupations
Typist may also refer to:
*Data entry clerk, someone who types data into a database via a computer or terminal.
* Audio typist, someone ...
at the Oakland Naval Supply Depot, earning $2,000 a year.[
]
Journalism career
Davis accepted a freelance
''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
assignment in 1957 for '' Jet'', a magazine focusing on African American issues, and became a stringer
Stringer may refer to:
Structural elements
* Stringer (aircraft), or longeron, a strip of wood or metal to which the skin of an aircraft is fastened
* Stringer (slag), an inclusion, possibly leading to a defect, in cast metal
* Stringer (stairs), ...
for the publication. She received $5 per piece with no byline
The byline (or by-line in British English) on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name of the writer of the article. Bylines are commonly placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines (notably ''Reader's D ...
. Over the next few years, she began writing for other African American publications, including the '' Sun Reporter'' and '' Bay Area Independent''.[ Davis edited the ''Sun Reporter'' from 1961 through 1968.][
In 1961, Davis became an on-air interviewer for KSAN, a San Francisco AM radio station broadcasting a ]rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...
music format, targeting black listeners in the Bay Area. She made her television debut in 1963 for KTVU
KTVU (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Oakland, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's Fox network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside San Jose†...
, an Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
-based television station, covering an African American beauty pageant
A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on judging and ranking the physical attributes of the contestants. Pageants have now evolved to include inner beauty, with criteria covering judging of personality, intelligence, ...
.[ She worked as a ]disc jockey
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music f ...
for KDIA, a soul-gospel radio station (also based in Oakland) when the 1964 Republican National Convention
The 1964 Republican National Convention took place in the Cow Palace, Daly City, California, from July 13 to July 16, 1964. Before 1964, there had been only one national Republican convention on the West Coast, the 1956 Republican National Conven ...
, located at the Cow Palace
The Cow Palace (originally the California State Livestock Pavilion) is an indoor arena located in Daly City, California, situated on the city's northern border with neighboring San Francisco. Because the border passes through the property, a por ...
in nearby Daly City, California
Daly City () is the second most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, with population of 104,901 according to the 2020 census. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its ...
, inspired her to become a reporter. According to Davis' account, while she was covering the convention with Louis Freeman, the two were chased out of the Cow Palace by convention attendees throwing food at them and yelling racial slurs.[ It would not be the last time she encountered racism on the job: In 1967 she covered a march during the ]Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
in Forsyth County, Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
, and attempted to interview a white woman who spat in her face.[
Davis worked for ]KNEW
KNEW may refer to:
* The ICAO code for New Orleans Lakefront Airport, located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
* KNEW (AM), a radio station on 960 kHz, licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, that carries the KNEW call s ...
, an AM radio station located in Oakland, as an announcer in 1966.[ She became the first female African American television journalist on the ]West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to:
Geography Australia
* Western Australia
*Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia
* West Coast, Tasmania
**West Coast Range, mountain range in the region
Canada
* Britis ...
when she was hired by KPIX-TV
KPIX-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's CBS network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside CW ...
, the CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
affiliate based in San Francisco, in 1966. She spent the next three decades working for KPIX, becoming an anchorwoman in 1970, and a few years later moved to the local NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...
affiliate, KRON-TV
KRON-TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, KRON-TV maintains studios on Front Street in the c ...
. Stories she covered include the Berkeley riots of the Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of B ...
, the Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. New ...
, the mass suicide-murder at Jonestown
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationall ...
, the Moscone–Milk assassinations
On November 27, 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed in San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White. On the morning of that day, Moscone intended to announce that the ...
, the AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
and crack epidemic
The crack epidemic was a surge of crack cocaine use in major cities across the United States throughout the entirety of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This resulted in a number of social consequences, such as increasing crime and violence in Ameri ...
s, and the 1998 United States embassy bombing in Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
.[
Davis was highly regarded for her coverage of politics and issues of race and gender,][ as well as her calm demeanor. Rita Williams, a reporter for KTVU, said "Belva knew instinctively how to keep everyone in check. Amid all these prima donnas, she had so much class, so much presence, so much intuition. Belva has always been the grande dame."][
Her ]autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
, entitled ''Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman's Life in Journalism'', was published in 2010. In the foreword
A foreword is a (usually short) piece of writing, sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Typically written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the ...
he contributed for her 2010 autobiography, Bill Cosby
William Henry Cosby Jr. ( ; born July 12, 1937) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and media personality. He made significant contributions to American and African-American culture, and is well known in the United States for his eccentric ...
wrote she also had symbolic value to the African American television audience, as "someone who sustained us, who made us proud." He wrote that "We looked forward to seeing her prove the stereotypical ugliness of those days to be wrong."[
Davis hosted "This Week in Northern California" on ]PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
member station KQED, starting in the 1990s. She retired in November 2012.[ Her final broadcast included a taped interview with ]Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and ...
, a personal friend, as she wanted the theme of her final show to be friendship.[
]
Personal
Belva married Frank Davis on January 1, 1952. The couple had two children, and a granddaughter. Davis met her second husband, Bill Moore, in 1967 while working at KPIX-TV. Davis and Moore used to live in the San Francisco neighborhood of Presidio Heights
San Francisco, in the US state of California, has both major, well-known neighborhoods and districts as well as smaller, specific subsections and developments. While there is considerable fluidity among the sources, one guidebook identifies five m ...
, but now live in Petaluma, California
Petaluma (Miwok languages, Miwok: ''PĂ©ta LĂşuma'') is a city in Sonoma County, California, Sonoma County, California, located in the North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Its population was 59,776 a ...
. Belva Davis, a private person, for most of her journalistic life separated her personal life from her professional life. In 1975, Davis allowed an African American woman and American Women in Radio and TV member, Kathleen H. Arnold (today anthropologist Kathleen Rand Reed), to produce ''Belva Davis – This is Your Life''. Davis mentored Reed for decades.
Davis serves on the boards of Museum of the African Diaspora
The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) is a contemporary art museum in San Francisco, California. MoAD holds exhibitions and presents artists exclusively of the African diaspora, one of only a few museums of its kind in the United States. Locate ...
, the Institute on Aging, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The permanent collection of the ...
.[ Davis raised $5 million for the Museum of the African Diaspora in one year.][ ]
Quotes
* “Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.”
Honors
Davis won eight Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
s from the San Francisco / Northern California chapter. She is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. () is the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of sixteen stud ...
. She has received lifetime achievement awards from the American Women in Radio and Television
The Alliance for Women in Media (AWM) is a nonprofit organization created by women in 1951 that works to support women in the media in the United States.
About
The mission of the organization is to "advance the impact of women in broadcasting a ...
and National Association of Black Journalists
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is an organization of African-American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C., by 44 journalists, the NABJ's stated purpose is to provide quality p ...
.[
]
Bibliography
*
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Belva
Living people
1932 births
People from Monroe, Louisiana
African-American women journalists
African-American journalists
American broadcast news analysts
American radio reporters and correspondents
Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area
Mass media in the San Francisco Bay Area
Emmy Award winners
Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) alumni
Television personalities from San Francisco
African-American history in the San Francisco Bay Area
African-American women writers
American autobiographers
Writers from Oakland, California
Women autobiographers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American women writers
Journalists from California
American women television journalists
American women radio journalists
21st-century African-American women
21st-century African-American writers
20th-century African-American people
20th-century African-American women