Gray Davis
Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis Jr. (born December 26, 1942) is a retired American politician and attorney who served as the 37th Governor of California from 1999 to 2003. A member of the Democratic Party, only a few months into his second term, in 2003 Davis was recalled and removed from office, the second state governor successfully recalled in U.S. history. Prior to serving as governor, Davis was chief of staff to Governor Jerry Brown (1975–81), a California State Assemblyman (1983–87), California State Controller (1987–95) and the 44th Lieutenant Governor of California (1995–99). Davis holds a B.A. in history from Stanford University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service as a Captain in the Vietnam War.
L. Clifford Davis
Davis was born October 12, 1924, in Wilton. Since the town's educational opportunities for black students ended in the eight grade, Clifton attended high school at Dunbar High School in Little Rock. He graduated from Philander Smith College in 1945. The state paid tuition for Davis to attend a school out of state to avoid having him in a classroom with white students, but when Davis realized the higher cost of living at Howard University in Washington, D.C. far outweighed the cost of tuition, he insisted on applying to U of A. In 1947, after applying to the University of Arkansas Law School for two years, he was granted admission under the circumstance that he would not be allowed to enter a room with white students in it, including classrooms, the library and the restrooms. Davis instead completed his law degree at Howard University in 1949 and then returned to Arkansas. He passed the bar and set up a practice in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 1952 he moved to Waco, Texas to teach at Paul Quinn College. He took and passed the bar in Texas and in 1954 became one of only two black lawyers in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1956, he filed a federal lawsuit which resulted in a court order for integration of the public schools in Mansfield, Texas, although the threat of violence from white students kept those schools segregated for some time. In 1959, in "Flax v. Potts", he won a suit forcing the Fort Worth schools to integrate. He organized the Fort Worth Black Bar Association in 1977. In 1983, Governor Mark White appointed him to a judgeship in criminal district court. He continued to serve as a judge until he lost an election in 1988, then continued as a visiting judge until 2004.