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Davis's career as a civil-rights activist began in 1933, when he formed the New Negro Alliance with Belford Lawson, Jr. and N. Franklin Thorne in response to the white-owned businesses in African-American neighborhoods that would fire and/or refuse to hire African-American workers.
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He and his two older siblings (African-American anthropologist Allison Davis and sister Dorothy Davis Lucas) were raised on a farm in Virginia and graduated from Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.), which their father had also attended.