Clifford Davis (November 18, 1897 – June 8, 1970) was a Democratic

U.S. Representative The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they c ...

from

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

from 1940 to 1965.

Early life

Davis was born on November 18, 1897, in

Hazlehurst, Mississippi Hazlehurst is a city in and the county seat of Copiah County, Mississippi, United States, located about south of the state capital Jackson along Interstate 55. The population was 4,009 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Jackson Metropolitan S ...

, moving to

Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Memp ...

with his parents in 1911. There he completed the

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

curriculum of the public schools, and in 1918 he completed law school at the

University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi ( byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment ...

. In 1918 he was admitted to the Tennessee

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Public service

In 1923, Davis became a city judge in Memphis, serving in this post until 1927. From 1928 until 1940, Davis served as

vice mayor The deputy mayor (also known as vice mayor, assistant mayor, or mayor ''pro tem'') is an elective or appointive office of the second-ranking official that is present in many, but not all, local governments. Duties and functions Many elected depu ...

and Commissioner of Public Safety. He became a close associate of Memphis political "boss" E. H. Crump. Davis was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The result was relatively unquestioned violence against black residents of Memphis.

Congress

In 1940, the seat for the 10th Congressional District, which included Memphis, came open after three-term incumbent Clift Chandler was elected

mayor of Memphis This is a list of mayors of Memphis, Tennessee. See also * Timeline of Memphis, Tennessee References External linksMemphis Mayor's Office - MemphisTN.gov {{Memphis, Tennessee Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of ...

. Crump arranged for his colleague Davis to receive the Democratic nomination for the post. In those days, the Democratic nomination was

tantamount to election A safe seat is an electoral district (constituency) in a legislative body (e.g. Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combinati ...

in most of Tennessee (except for heavily Republican East Tennessee). Davis won the special election and took office on February 15, 1940. Davis was elected to a full term in November of that year and was reelected eleven times. His district was renumbered as the 9th District after Tennessee lost a district in the 1950 Census. Crump died in 1954, but many of his supporters remained in office for years afterwards. In fact, Davis was re-elected five times after Crump's death. During this time, Davis served as chairman of the House Special Committee on Campaign Expenditures, a group which was charged with attempting to find a legal way to control the influence of money on

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

and looked into the beginning of what became, many years later, became the system of campaign finance reform that started to be implemented after the

Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's contin ...

. Davis was one of five Representatives shot on March 1, 1954, when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the visitors' balcony into the chamber of the United States House of Representatives. Davis was shot in the leg, but was not seriously wounded. He was a signatory to the 1956 Southern Manifesto that opposed the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court in ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

''.

Defeat

The Memphis area became much friendlier to Republicans in the 1960s, in part due to a massive crossover of white voters from the Democrats. As evidence of this growing influence, Davis barely held onto his seat in 1962, defeating his Republican challenger, former city councilman Ed Davis, by only 1,200 votes. This was particularly shocking considering that he had been unopposed for reelection two years earlier. In 1964, Davis lost the August Democratic primary to Shelby County legislator

George W. Grider George William Grider (October 1, 1912 – March 20, 1991) was a United States Navy Captain, an attorney, and a Democratic U.S. Representative from Tennessee from 1965 to 1967. Early life Grider was born in Memphis, Tennessee, son of John McGa ...

, a retired naval officer and fellow attorney. Unlike Davis, Grider had no past ties to the Crump machine. Davis did not return to Memphis full-time, but maintained a residence in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

where he resumed the practice of law until his death. Davis died on June 8, 1970, in Washington, D.C. He was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis.

Legacy

The Clifford Davis Federal Building in

was named after him. As of May 2, 2007, the "Clifford Davis Federal Building" is designated the "Clifford Davis and Odell Horton Federal Building." On December 9, 2021, the U.S. Senate voted to remove Clifford Davis' name from the Federal Building in Memphis due to his ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

References

Sources

, - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Clifford 1897 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American politicians American segregationists American shooting survivors American Ku Klux Klan members Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee People from Hazlehurst, Mississippi Politicians from Memphis, Tennessee Tennessee lawyers University of Mississippi School of Law alumni