Davis, Frank Marshall (1905–1987), poet, journalist, and autobiographer. During the Depression and World War II, Frank Marshall Davis was arguably one of the most distinctive poetic voices confronting W. E. B Du Bois's profound metaphor of African American double consciousness. Complementing a career that produced four collections of poetry was one as a foremost journalist, from 1930 to 1955. Through the “objective” view of a newspaperman and the “subjective” vision of a poet, Davis struggled valiantly to harmonize Du Bois's dilemma of the color line.
Frank Marshall Davis was born on 31 December 1905 in Arkansas City, Kansas,“ … a yawn town fifty miles south of Wichita, five miles north of Oklahoma, and east and west of nowhere worth remembering” (Livin’ the Blues). His mention of interracial schools suggested a harmonious small-town life; the reality, however, barely concealed deeper racial tensions. Housing, jobs, movie theaters, and all facets of life were tacitly divided by the color line. Retrospectively, he describes his life in “Ark City” as suspended uncertainly in limbo, between the worlds of Euro- and African Americans.
At Kansas State College, Davis nurtured his twin passions of journalism and poetry from 1923 to 1926 and again from 1929 to 1930. His successful careers as newsman and poet rendered unimportant the fact that he never received a baccalaureate degree. For over thirty years he served as editor, managing editor, executive editor, feature writer, editorial writer, correspondent, sports reporter, theater and music critic, contributing editor, and fiction writer for the Chicago Evening Bulletin, Chicago Whip, Gary (Ind.) American, Atlanta World, Chicago Star, the Associated Negro Press, Negro Digest, and the Honolulu Record. In a rather difficult period for publishing African American poetry, he brought out Black Man's Verse (1935), I Am the American Negro (1937), Through Sepia Eyes (1938), and 47th Street: Poems (1948). These two modes of self-expression effectively placed him in a unique position to observe African American cultural development and to advocate social change.
Davis's various news writings generally challenged such persistent lies as the position that African Americans had no cultural past and therefore had contributed very little to American cultural development. In this case, Davis made “Rating the Records” and “Things Theatrical,” two of his weekly features for the Associated Negro Press, collectively imply a composite history of African American music. The social consequences of this strategy were enormous. The columns demonstrated West African roots of African American music; provided, in their promotion of racially integrated bands, a model for American society to aspire to; and demonstrated African Americans’ contributions to American cultural distinctiveness.
Davis found poetry to be a complementary mode of self-expression. Esteemed critics like Harriet Mon-roe, Stephen Vincent Benét, Alain Locke, and Sterling A. Brown perceived much to celebrate in Davis's poetry. In Black Man's Verse (1935), they saw “authentic inspiration,” technical innovation, wonderfully realistic portraiture, and vivid images. Davis's verse is characterized by robust statements of urban themes, a fierce social consciousness, a strong declamatory voice, and an almost rabid racial pride. Technically, he found free verse to be the best form to “contain” his thought since, like jazz and improvisation, it represented a rebellion against conventional or standardized forms of poetry. Davis's poem “Lynching,” for instance, offers “stage” directions for performing the poem to the accompaniment of orchestral music. But the experiment with music, mood, and language did not consistently win critical approval. Other Davis poems sometimes invited disagreement about whether they achieved epic sweep or simple oratory.
By moving to Hawaii in 1948, Davis removed himself from the vortex of civil rights and labor activity on the mainland. The larger significance of his relocation was that it took him away from his best chance for a sustained literary career. In 1973 Davis rose from the depths of historical anonymity when Dudley Randall, Stephen Henderson, and Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs brought him to the attention of the younger, Black Arts poets. From that time until his death in 1987, Davis enjoyed a brief celebrity. His older poems were reprinted; he also wrote, in addition to new poems, three autobiographical narratives, including Livin' the Blues (1992), “That Incredible Waikiki Jungle,” and Sex Rebel: Black (1968).
The recovery of Davis's life and work has profound significance for redrawing traditional boundaries of African American literary history and cultural criticism. Guided by Alain Locke's designation of “newer Negro,” Davis assists us in extending the usual geographical site and era for the so-called Harlem Renaissance. At the same time, his discovery by the 1960s Black Arts movement causes us to reconsider the conflicted relationship of younger writers to their literary ancestors. Finally, as we seek to understand more fully the age of the Depression and World War II, cultural critics will find Davis's wide-ranging news writing to be indispensable.
Bibliography
- W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.
- Alain Locke, “Deep River: Deeper Sea: Retrospective Review of the Literature of the Negro for 1935,” Opportunity
14 (1936): 6–10. - Harriet Monroe, review of Black Man's Verse, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 48.5 (1936): 293–295.
- Jean Wagner, Black Poets of the United States, 1973.
- Frank Marshall Davis, “Mystery Man: An Interview with Frank Marshall Davis,” interview by Dudley Randall, Black World
23.3 (1974): 37–48. - Frank Marshall Davis, Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet, ed. John Edgar Tidwell, 1992.
- Langston Hughes, “Chicago's South Side Comes Alive,” review of 47th Street: Poems, Associated Negro Press News Release, 18 Aug. 1948, 4–5.
- Special Issue on Frank Marshall Davis, Langston Hughes Review 14 (Spring-Fall 1996)
John Edgar Tidwell
