Corneal Davis. Born in Mississippi in 1900, Davis heard about
life under slavery from “the real people” (former slaves) he
encountered through his preacher grandfather. This inspired a
lifelong determination to fight racial injustice wherever he
found it. He enlisted in the Army in 1917 and was sent to
France. He was a medical corpsman on the front line during the
Meuse-Argonne offensive and was headed to Metz when the
armistice was signed. Back in the United States, having
graduated from Mississippi’s Tougaloo College, Davis followed
his parents to Chicago, attending the Legion’s St. Louis Caucus
with friends along the way. He served in the Illinois National
Guard for 12 years, attended John Marshall Law School, and then
turned his attention to civil rights. Along with future Supreme
Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Davis successfully fought for
equal pay for black teachers in a southern Illinois town. A
Republican in his early years, he switched to the Democratic
party in support of President Franklin D. Ro