John Aubrey Davis, Sr.

John Aubrey Davis Sr. (May 10, 1912 – December 17, 2002) was an African-American political science professor and activist of the Civil Rights Movement. He served as the head academic researcher on the historic Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation of public schools, including universities, was unconstitutional. He had taught at Howard University, Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, and became chair of the department of political science at City College of New York.

Early life, education and marriage Davis was born in the Washington, D.C. area in 1912 to John Abraham Davis and Gabrielle Dorothy (Beale) Davis. He and his two older siblings (anthropologist Allison Davis and sister Dorothy Davis Lucas) were raised on a farm in Virginia. They attended and graduated from Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.), a top academic high school for black students, which their father had also attended.

Like his older brother Allison, Davis attended Williams College, where he graduated in 1933. Upon graduation from Williams, he continued in postgraduate studies, earning a master's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1934, and a doctorate degree in political science from Columbia University in 1949.

Davis married Mavis Wormley. They had two sons together, John A. Davis Jr. and Smith W. Davis.

In 1953, Marshall appointed Davis 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, who included Horace Mann Bond (father of Julian Bond, a future NAACP president), historian C. Vann Woodward, William Robert Ming Jr., Alfred Kelly, and historian John Hope Franklin, Davis compiled the factual evidence that was presented in Marshall's arguments against the "separate but equal" doctrine, proving that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination.

Following this project, Davis was appointed in 1957 to the New York State Commission on Discrimination by Governor W. Averell Harriman. As president of AMSAC, he served as vice chair of the United States Committee for the First World Festival of Negro Art (1966).

Later years After years in Washington, DC, Davis lived in New Rochelle, New York while teaching at City University. He retired in 1980 and later moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he died in December of 2002.