W. Harry Davis

W. Harry Davis
Davis published his memoirs in 2002 and 2003.
Born	(1923-04-12)April 12, 1923 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Died	August 11, 2006(2006-08-11) (aged 83)
Occupation	Civic leader, businessman, boxing coach
Employer	Onan, Star Tribune, Cowles Media Company
Known for	Civil rights activism, desegregation, Golden Gloves boxing, public education
Political party	Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
Spouse(s)	Charlotte Davis
Children	Rita Lyell, Harry Davis Jr., Richard Davis, Evan Davis

William Harry Davis, Sr. (April 12, 1923 – August 11, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, amateur boxing coach, civic leader and businessman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He overcame poverty, childhood polio, and racial prejudice to become a humanitarian. Davis is remembered for his warm and positive personality, for coaching Golden Gloves champions in the upper Midwest, and for managing the Olympics boxing team that won nine gold medals. His contributions to public education in his community are enduring. A leader in desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement, Davis helped Americans find a way forward to racial equality.

Davis was the son of Elizabeth Jackson, who was known as Libby, and Lee Davis, a Winnebago Dakota Sioux and a catcher for the Kansas City Monarchs of Negro league baseball. They lived in north Minneapolis in a poor neighborhood near 6th and Lyndale Avenues North called the Hellhole, known for prostitution, drinking and gambling. Later the area was covered by the junction of Olson Memorial Highway and Interstate 94.

Davis was paralyzed from the waist down by polio at the age of two or three until about the age of five. His mother had learned a polio treatment from an ancestor who was a doctor on a plantation in Virginia. She helped to free Davis from his illness through massage and warm water wraps, applying an iron to keep the wraps warm. Davis was the first African-American student at Michael Dowling School for Crippled Children. He was not allowed treatment at Shriners Hospital, but he received a great deal of help at the school from a visiting doctor from City Hospital. Later Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse who joined the City Hospital staff in 1940, would found the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute in Minneapolis and provide treatment and physical therapy similar to that used by Davis's mother.