William Henry Davis was born in Louisville Kentucky, February 18, 1872. The son of former slaves Jerry and Susan Davis. Davis graduated form Louisville Colored High School in June 1888 at the age of 16, second in his class of eighteen students. Davis delivered the graduation address he titled, "The Dignity of Labor".
After graduation Davis applied to Louisville's Bryant and Stratton Business College, but the dean brusquely told him the college did not admit black students. The dean explained to Davis that though the college had no intention of admitting a black student it had every intention of hiring a black janitor, and if he wanted the
job it was his.
Undaunted by the dean's unveiled insult Davis
accepted the job immediately. He got shorthand and typewriting books from J.C. Wright, an itinerant black teacher from Chicago, Illinois and quickly taught himself stenography and typing by copying the white students' lessons from the school's black boards before he washed them each night.
In September 1889 the Cary & Spindle law firm employed Davis as a stenographer and typist. One of the firm's partners, Willis Overton Harris, was a former Kentucky judge who took an amused interest in Davis mastery of stenography and typing because he had never seen a black person with those secretarial skills. Judge Harris, equally impressed by Davis eagerness to learn,
suggested he spend lunch hours in the firm's second-floor library reading law books and reviewing case folders.
When Davis became familiar with legal terms and procedures, he became stenographer in two of Louisville's celebrated criminal trials - the Kilkenny murder case and the Catherine Fehler abortion trial.
Four years later, in 1892, Thaddeus W. Spindle, one of the firm's senior partners, was appointed manager of Louisvill's branch of the Germania Safety Vault and Trust Company. He hired Davis as the bank's stenographer. Davis found himself at the age of 21 with a good salary and a rare white-color position in one of the city's leading financial institutions
In 1895 Davis campaigned in the black community for a slate of Republican candidates seeking election to Louisville's City Council. Because William Davis and his family held prominent church offices it was not difficult to rally many members of the Fifth Street Baptist Church congregation to support the Republicans. His older brother, Leslie Davis, was Sunday school clerk and his younger brother,
John Bull Davis, was Sunday school librarian. His sister, Rachel, taught Sunday school and William Davis was clerk of the Young Peoples' Union and a member of the junior choir.
On Election Day, in November 1895, Davis drove voters to the polls in the same horse-drawn wagon his father, Jerry Davis, used todeliver Dr. Bull's patent medicines. The Republicans won control of the City Council on the strength of their faithful support from voters in the city's heavily black-populated ninth and tenth wards, where Davis had organized voters.
In January 1896, Davis' own political reward was appointment as Mayor Todd's private stenographer and he became associate editor of Todd's weekly black newspaper, "The Kentucky Standard."
