JOHN P. DAVIS THE FORGOTTEN CIVIL-RIGHTS LEADER A year-long 100th anniversary program celebrated, reevaluated, and built upon our inheritance from John P. Davis. The centenary ran from January 2005 through January 2006.  It was planned by the John P. Davis Centenary Committee and coordinated by the John P. Davis Collection. This website is maintained to provide  information about Centenary activities, as well as background information about John P. Davis, the forgotten civil rights leader.   Centenary John P. Davis and his sister, Sara Davis Taylor at President Truman's Inaugural Ball    "There could not have been a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a Robert Moses or a Martin Luther King organizing in the south if there had not been a John P. Davis training a whole generation of young people in the NNC and its youth arm, the Southern Negro Youth Council in the 1930’s and the 1940’s.  A lot of those young people became activist in the 1950’s and the 1960’s and marched with Martin Luther King and organized in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Many went to Washington, D.C and lobbied in the great tradition of John P. Davis." Although they may not have known his name, his spirit is very much apart of what the civil-rights movement accomplished   Historian, Hilmar Jensen ©2006 John Preston Davis Collection for African and African-American Documentation         Centenary