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John W. Davis

John William Davis (April 13, 1873 – March 24, 1955) was an American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served under President Woodrow Wilson as the Solicitor General of the United States and the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He was the Democratic nominee for president in 1924, losing to Republican incumbent Calvin Coolidge.

For other people named John W. Davis, see John W. Davis (disambiguation).

John W. Davis

John William Davis

(1873-04-13)April 13, 1873
Clarksburg, West Virginia, U.S.

March 24, 1955(1955-03-24) (aged 81)
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.

Julia McDonald
(m. 1899; died 1900)
Ellen Bassel
(m. 1912; died 1943)

1

Cyrus Vance (cousin; later adopted son)

Davis was born and raised in West Virginia, where his father, John James Davis, had been a delegate to the Wheeling Convention and served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1870s. Davis joined his father's legal practice and adopted many of his father's political views, including opposition to anti-lynching legislation and support for states' rights. Davis served in the U.S. House from 1911 to 1913, helping to write the Clayton Antitrust Act. He held the position of solicitor general in the Justice Department from 1913 to 1918, during which time he successfully argued for the unconstitutionality of the grandfather clause in Oklahoma's constitution, which had a discriminatory effect against African-American voters, in Guinn v. United States.


While serving as ambassador to Britain from 1918 to 1921, Davis was a dark horse candidate for the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination. After he left office, Davis helped establish the Council on Foreign Relations and advocated for the repeal of Prohibition. The 1924 Democratic National Convention nominated Davis for president after 103 ballots. He remains the only major party presidential nominee from West Virginia. Running on a ticket with Charles W. Bryan, Davis lost in a landslide to incumbent President Coolidge. Davis did not seek public office again after 1924.


He continued as a prominent attorney, associated with several law firms over the years, and represented many of the largest companies in the United States from the 1920s onwards. Davis argued 140 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.


In addition to his legal work, Davis was also involved in the New York City Bar Association, serving as its president from 1931 to 1933. In 1933, he represented J.P. Morgan, Jr. and his companies during a Senate investigation into private banking and the causes of the Great Depression. During the last two decades of his career, Davis represented large corporations before the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality and application of New Deal legislation. He lost many of these cases but he scored a major victory in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), in which the Supreme Court ruled against President Harry Truman's seizure of the nation's steel plants. Davis unsuccessfully defended the "separate but equal" doctrine in Briggs v. Elliott (1952), one of the companion cases to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in which the Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

Family and early life[edit]

Family background[edit]

Davis's paternal family had roots in western Virginia and what became West Virginia. His great-grandfather, Caleb Davis, was a clockmaker in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1816, his grandfather, John Davis, moved to Clarksburg in what would later become West Virginia. Its population then was 600–700, and he ran a saddle and harness business. His father, John James Davis, attended Lexington Law School, which later became the Washington and Lee University School of Law. By the age of twenty, John J. had established a law practice in Clarksburg. He was a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly, and after the northwestern portion of Virginia broke away from the rest of Virginia in 1863 and formed West Virginia, he was elected to the new state's House of Delegates and later to the United States House of Representatives.[1]


John W. Davis's mother Anna Kennedy (1841–1917) was from Baltimore, Maryland, daughter of William Wilson Kennedy and his wife Catherine Esdale Martin. Kennedy was a lumber merchant. Catherine was the daughter of Tobias Martin, dairy farmer and amateur poet, and his wife, a member of the Esdale family. The Esdales were members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who had settled near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Reportedly they helped provide support for the Continental Army under George Washington, which had camped there in the winter of 1777–1778.[2]

Early years[edit]

Davis's Sunday school teacher recalled that "John W. Davis had a noble face even when small." His biographer said, "[h]e used better English, kept himself cleaner, and was more dignified than most youngsters. He was also extraordinarily well-mannered."[3]

Death and legacy[edit]

Davis was a member of the American Bar Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Freemasons, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Kappa Psi. He was a resident of Nassau County, New York, and practiced law in New York City until his death in Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 81. He is interred at Locust Valley Cemetery in Locust Valley, New York.


The John W. Davis Federal Building on West Pike Street in Clarksburg, West Virginia, is named for him. The building housing the Student Health Center at Washington and Lee University is named for him, as is the Law School's appellate advocacy program, and an award for the graduating student with the highest grade point average.[34][35]


In the 1991 television film Separate But Equal, a dramatization of the Brown case, Davis was portrayed by the famed actor Burt Lancaster in his final film role.

John W. Davis (D) – 20,370 (48.9%)

Charles E. Carrigan (R) – 16,962 (40.7%)

A.L. Bauer () – 3,239 (7.8%)

Socialist

Ulysses A. Clayton () – 1,099 (2.6%)

Prohibition

Brown v. Board of Education

Guinn v. United States

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer

Tucker, Garland. High Tide of American Conservatism: Davis, Coolidge, and the 1924 Election (Greenleaf, 2012).

Harbaugh, William Henry (1973). . Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-501699-8., a standard scholarly biography.

Lawyer's lawyer: the life of John W. Davis

Lambert, Jeremiah, and Geoffrey S. Stewart. The Anointed: New York’s White Shoe Law Firms—How They Started, How They Grew, and How They Ran the Country (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

online

McWilliams, Tennant S. (1988). "John W. Davis and Southern Wilsonianism". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 64 (3): 398–416.  26437693.

JSTOR

Southwick, Leslie (1998). Presidential Also-Rans and Running Mates, 1788 through 1996 (Second ed.). McFarland.  0-7864-0310-1.

ISBN

Thompson, Sydnor (January 1, 1996). . Washington and Lee Law Review. 52 (5): 1679–1697.

"John W. Davis and His Role in the Public School Segregation Cases - A Personal Memoir"

John W. Davis papers (MS 170). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

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