{"id":2132,"date":"2022-02-25T09:16:32","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T15:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/?p=2132"},"modified":"2023-08-07T11:12:56","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T16:12:56","slug":"papers-of-civil-rights-trailblazer-june-davis-now-at-iwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/2022\/02\/25\/papers-of-civil-rights-trailblazer-june-davis-now-at-iwa\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Rights Trailblazer June Davis Donates Papers to IWA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post is by Archives Assistant Heather Cooper.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Iowa Women\u2019s Archives recently received the first installment of a new collection of personal papers from Norma June Wilson Davis. Davis, who later became an administrator at the University of Iowa, was at the forefront of the student civil rights movement in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960s. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1940, Davis recalled that she realized she was different at a young age and resisted expectations that she sit at the back of the bus or drink at the water fountains marked for African Americans\u2019 use when she went into town with her mother. Primarily known as \u201cNorma\u201d prior to her marriage, Wilson moved to Atlanta in 1957 to attend Spelman College and was part of a community of students from several Black colleges and universities who were inspired to organize their own protest movement after the first student sit-ins took place in Greensboro, North Carolina. Wilson was a central figure in what became known as the Atlanta Student Movement (ASM). Announcing their presence on the civil rights stage, representatives took out full-page advertisements in several newspapers, outlining their grievances and objectives. In \u201cAn Appeal for Human Rights,\u201d Atlanta students declared that \u201cToday\u2019s youth will not sit by submissively, while being denied all of the rights, privileges, and joys of life. \u2026 [W]e plan to use every legal and non-violent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great Democracy of ours.\u201d As chair of the ASM\u2019s Action Committee, Wilson played a major role in organizing the rallies, picket lines, economic boycotts, and sit-ins that swept Atlanta and the region from 1960 to 1961. The IWA is honored to preserve the papers of N. June Davis in our repository.<\/p>\n\n\n

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From “An Appeal for Human Rights,” March 9, 1960<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Macon News, December 7, 1960. Norma Wilson center.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Although her name is far less known than some other civil rights activists, Wilson was a trailblazer in the student movement. Readers are likely familiar with the \u201cFreedom Rides\u201d organized by James Farmer and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in 1961 \u2013 a campaign to challenge segregation in interstate travel and accommodations. Six months before Farmer organized the first so-called \u201cFreedom Rides,\u201d Norma Wilson and other members of the ASM led their own effort to challenge segregation in facilities for interstate travelers. In 1960, Wilson and two other students boarded a Greyhound bus on the Atlanta-to-Jacksonville route. When the bus stopped at a station in Macon, Georgia, they tried to dine in the all-white cafeteria and were subsequently taken into police custody. Davis recalled, \u201cSo, we went to the police station and the police chief and I talked and I said, \u2018You know we haven\u2019t broken any laws.\u2019 And he said, \u2018We don\u2019t serve you.\u2019 And I said, \u2018The Supreme Court just said you will.\u2019 So, he left the office and went out, conversed with some people, and found out I was right.\u201d One newspaper noted that it was \u201cthe first such integration attempt reported in Macon.\u201d Davis remembered that, after reading about the bus station confrontation in the newspaper, James Farmer called ASM leader Lonnie King and said, \u201c’I like the idea of the rides that you took. I think I\u2019m going to call them Freedom Rides.'” “And that,” Davis said, “is how the Freedom Rides were born.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson and her colleagues were not actually arrested in Macon, but arrest was a regular occurrence for students and others who participated in sit-ins and other public demonstrations. The President of Spelman College actually sent letters to parents to inform them that students\u2019 participation in demonstrations \u201con the desegregation front\u201d could lead to arrest and time in jail. Wilson was sentenced to time in a number of different facilities, including two weeks in a work camp where male prisoners worked on a chain gang and female prisoners picked crops and worked in the kitchen or laundry. Davis recalled, it was \u201cnot a safe situation \u2026 for the women.\u201d Following one of Wilson\u2019s arrests, the Dean of Women at Spelman telegrammed Wilson\u2019s mother: \u201cREGRET DAUGHTER IN JAIL. REFUSES BAIL.\u201d Wilson and others often refused bail and organized a \u201cjail without bail\u201d campaign in order to pack the jails and \u201chopefully strain the financial resources of the county.\u201d It was another attempt to use economic pressure to force change. Two years before Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous \u201cLetter from a Birmingham Jail,\u201d Wilson and other participants in the \u201cjail without bail\u201d program issued a public statement from the Atlanta city jail: \u201c[T]he only way we can achieve our freedom is by being willing to endure and suffer the hardships that are encountered in the achievement of freedom. I only wish that each of you were here to share the darkness of this room, this hard bunk, the smell of the place, and the filth, but yet the light of freedom is slowly slipping in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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This blog highlights just a few moments in June Davis\u2019s story. This first installment in our new collection of Davis\u2019s personal papers includes fascinating material from her years in Atlanta, including correspondence and a journal from her time in jail, original newspapers and movement publications, and the transcript of an oral history about her work in the ASM. We look forward to receiving and exploring more material that sheds light on Davis\u2019s life and work in Iowa. After moving here with her family in 1968, Davis continued to be a community activist, serving, for example, on an advisory committee that investigated racism in the Iowa City school system. Davis also had a long career at the University of Iowa, where she worked in Residence Services, Finance and University Services, and the Office of Affirmative Action. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is by Archives Assistant Heather Cooper. The Iowa Women\u2019s Archives recently received the first installment of a new collection of personal papers from Norma June Wilson Davis. Davis, who later became an administrator at the University of Iowa, was at the forefront of the student civil rights movement in Atlanta, Georgia, in theContinue reading “Civil Rights Trailblazer June Davis Donates Papers to IWA”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":2136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,5,1],"tags":[165,171,180,141,389,390],"syndication":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2236,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions\/2236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=2132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}