Frank m davis biography

1905-1987

Poet, journalist

A central figure in African-American literary history, Frank Marshall Davis was a poet whose work drew on and put a personal stamp on many of the trends in black poetry of the 1930s and 1940s.

He was influenced by jazz and tried to evoke its rhythms in words. He drew detailed portraits of urban African-American life.

Frank m davis biography

And like Langston Hughes and many of his other contemporaries, he was a social activist who used literature to illustrate injustice in no uncertain terms.

Davis was also a pioneering figure in the field of African-American journalism.

Insufficient recognition of the role Chicago writers played in African-American cultural life contributed to a long-lasting underestimation of Davis's work, as did his move to Hawaii in midlife, under threat from a growing wave of anticommunist repression.

Davis was rediscovered enthusiastically, however, by politically oriented black writers of the later twentieth century.