Miriam Davis

Davis was a social activist and white liberal who had been drawn to the civil rights movement through her own experiences and her husband’s theology. From southern Illinois, which in the 1920s and 1930s felt much like the upper South, she had grown up in an entirely segregated world. As she became an adult she grew to realize how disabling this was, a viewpoint reinforced both by her minister father and her minister husband. Davis’ job was to stay with a woman in the Jackson white community and meet and talk to as many women in that community as possible. Davis would later say how greatly she had grown to respect her hostess, Mrs. Power Hearn.

Schedule
Davis received both phone numbers and a schedule of activities for her WIMS trip. Her contacts included Susie Goodwillie, the WIMS white staff member in Jackson and Marion Wright [Edelman] at the NAACP. Her schedule included where all of her team members stayed and their activities. Tuesday night she attended a concert at Tougaloo college. On Wednesday she went to Canton, where she visited a voter registration project, a freedom school, and a community center, and heard Annie Devine, Canton WIMS coordinator and Secretary of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, speak at lunch.
Report
After the Chicago WIMS team returned home, the group made an oral report recording their trip.
The "Rules" in Ruleville
When the three days were over, Miriam went with her sister-in-law, Jean Davis, to visit Ruleville. Jean Davis’ daughter Linda was working there for COFO for Freedom Summer. When Miriam Davis returned she wrote this description of the small Delta town.
Miriam Davis Oral History
Miriam Davis recorded her oral history with Holly Cowan Shulman on November 16, 2002. Here is that story, in part.
Photographs of Miriam Davis from the 1960s to the 1990s.