Griffith J. Davis photographs and films, 1946-1991

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Access note. Collection contains fragile audiovisual/photographic formats. Digital viewing files for all still image negatives are available directly through this collection guide. Moving image...
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Summary

Creator:
Davis, Griffith J., 1923-1993
Abstract:
Griff Davis (1923-1993) was a photojournalist, diplomat, and film maker from Atlanta, Georgia. The collection contains photographic materials and papers related to three photo essays illustrated by Davis: one on African American writer Langston Hughes; another on artists Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston; and one on the Palmer Memorial Institute, a private preparatory school for African Americans in Sedalia, N.C. Films in the collection were taken by Davis and include two home movies and six color and black-and-white 16mm films documenting people, politics, and agricultural life in Liberia during William Tubman's presidency in the early 1950s. Completing the collection is a photo album, "Progress in Liberia, Nov. 1949-Feb. 1950," containing twenty large black-and-white photographs, assembled to promote a partnership between the government of Liberia and the Liberia Mining Company. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.
Extent:
6 Linear Feet (7 boxes; 1 film reel container)
Language:
Material in English
Collection ID:
RL.00292

Background

Scope and content:

The Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Films collection dates from 1949-1991 and comprises two main series: films and a photo album made in the 1950s in Liberia and documenting life there during part of William V. Tubman's presidency; and photographs, contact prints, hundreds of digitized nitrate and safety negatives, and related papers documenting three photo-essays, one on African American author Langston Hughes; another on artists Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston; and one on the Palmer Memorial Institute, a private junior and senior high school for African Americans in Sedalia, N.C. The digitized negatives are also available through the Duke Libraries Digital Collections website.

Photographic materials include two sheets of photographic contact prints taken by Davis when he visited Methodist missionaries Mr. and Mrs. George Way Harley in Ganta, Liberia. Subjects include African masks and the Ganta Mission. A letter written by Davis describes his visit with the Harleys.

Other Griff Davis images in the collection are found in an album entitled "Progress in Liberia, November 1949 - February 1950," containing a map of Liberia and twenty large black-and-white gelatin silver prints with typed captions. Subjects feature Liberian landscapes, construction projects, bridges, railroads, and port scenes, with some images featuring native Liberian workers. The album was assembled to promote the partnership with the Liberian government and the Liberia Mining Company; in the first image, President Tubman is signing a contract with mining officials.

The audiovisual components include two home movies taken in Monrovia, and six color and black-and-white films taken in Liberia by Davis in the 1950s during William V.S. Tubman's presidency. Davis was asked by Tubman to document modern life in Liberia in 1952. In 1956 and 1957 he made films while stationed in Liberia with the United States technical assistance mission and the Liberian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Films depict a wide range of subjects, activities and events, including the country's people, industry, leaders, and rural life. Titles include Pepper Bird Land (1952), Liberia 1956 Presidential Inauguration of William V. S. Tubman & William R. Tolbert, President and the Press Exhibit (1956), Gold Coast Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah Visits Liberia (1953), Progress Through Cooperation (1957), home movie Coketails for Dorothy, Monrovia Children's Birthday Party (1956), and Night Village Dancing in Liberia (1956).

Biographical / historical:

Griffith J. Davis, known as "Griff," was born in Atlanta, Georgia on April 18, 1923. He was introduced to photography during high school. After serving in World War II, Davis returned to Atlanta where his photojournalism career flourished as he worked while at Morehouse College for the Atlanta Daily World, Time, and Ebony, who authorized him to do a photojournalism spread on his sister's high school, the Palmer Memorial Institute, a private boarding school in North Carolina.

Griff Davis' journalistic career introduced him to many political and cultural players of the time, including Langston Hughes, who was one of his earliest mentors. Davis received his M.A. in journalism from Columbia in 1949, the only Black student in the program. As a journalist for the Black Star photo agency, New York Times, Ebony, and many other publications, Davis traveled in the United States, Africa, and Europe during the forties and fifties. In 1952 the Republic of Liberia sponsored Davis' one-man show "Liberia, 1952," at the American Museum of Natural History, and in the years that followed he produced three documentary films, including one narrated by the then-unknown actor Sidney Poitier.

In 1952 Davis joined the U.S. Foreign Service, spending most of his time advancing Truman's Point Four program for foreign aid (later USAID), chiefly in Liberia. He also served in Tunisia and Nigeria, and retired in 1985. In 1993, Morehouse College awarded Davis the Bennie Trailblazer Award, named for his former mentor and president of Morehouse, Benjamin Mays, for personal and professional achievements. Griff Davis passed away in 1993 in Atlanta, Georgia at the age of 70.

[Adapted from Wikipedia website biography and "Still Here: The Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archive in Context," University of South Florida exhibit website, introduction by Dorothy Davis, viewed July 1, 2021]

Charles Alston was an African American painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist and teacher based in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. He was active in the Harlem Renaissance. Alston was born in 1907 in Charlotte, N.C. His father had been born into slavery in 1851 in Pittsboro, North Carolina. After the Civil War, Alston gained an education and graduated from St. Augustine's College in Raleigh. Through marriage, he became close to artist Romare Bearden and his family. Alston designed and painted murals at the Harlem Hospital and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building. He passed away in 1977.

[Source: Adapted from Wikipedia website biography, viewed July 1, 2021]

Langston Hughes (1902-1967), who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of Black life in America from the 1920s through the 1960s. Hughes wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem "Montage of a Dream Deferred" (Holt, 1951). His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance.

[Source: Adapted from Wikipedia website biography, viewed July 1, 2021]

Hale Aspacio Woodruff (1900-1980) was an American-born painter, draftsman, printer, and educator who is probably best known for his murals, especially the Amistad Mutiny Murals (1939) at the Savery Library at Talladega College in Alabama. Woodruff studied in France from 1927 to 1931, and was greatly influenced by African art and cubism. However, upon his return to the United States he concentrated on social issues, including scenes of Southern poverty and depictions of lynchings.

[Source: Adapted from Wikipedia website entry, viewed July 1, 2021]

Acquisition information:
The Griffith J. Davis photographs and films were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library as gifts and a purchase from 1999 to 2011.
Processing information:

Processed and described by Meghan Lyon, February 2009.

Addition 2011-0104 processed and finding aid updated by Paula Jeannet, December 2011.

Film digitization and film description by Craig Breaden, January 2020.

Data for negative scans and enhanced description created and encoded by Paula Jeannet, July 2021.

Accessions from 1999, 2003-0247, and 2011-0104 are represented in this finding aid.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Contents

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Restrictions:

Access note. Collection contains fragile audiovisual/photographic formats. Digital viewing files for all still image negatives are available directly through this collection guide. Moving image films are closed to general use; viewing copies are available. Contact Research Services for more information.

Terms of access:

The copyright interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the copyright section of the Regulations and Procedures of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

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Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Griffith J. Davis photographs and films, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University

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