FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 18, 2020
Contacts for:
Griffith J. Davis Photographs & Archives: Dorothy M. Davis or Samuel W. Pressley
646-413-0058 / info@griffithjdavis.org \ www.griffdavis.com
609-634-6369 / sampress@sampress.com / sampress.com
Griffith J. Davis, Pioneer International Photographer, Journalist, U.S. Senior Foreign Service Officer, and Photo-Documentarian in the Civil Rights Movement and the Independence Movement of Africa, to Receive Lifetime Achievement Impact Award at the Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts (TBBCA) 31st Annual Impact Awards Virtual Program, October 1, 2020, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm (EST)
“A product of the Jim Crow era, Griff Davis stood at the vortex of history and the future as a Buffalo Soldier in Italy during World War II, the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and the Independence Movement in Africa. Through his camera, writing and diplomatic skills, he fought for freedom and independence by documenting changing times and being on the cutting edge of changing those times by shaping image, narrative and policies. He was both an observer and interpreter of the times.”
ꟷ Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., an American historian, filmmaker and Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University
WHO: Griffith J. Davis (1923-1993), a pioneer and distinguished photographer, journalist, and U. S. Senior Foreign Service Officer simultaneously during the Civil Rights Movement and the Independence Movement of Africa, will be honored posthumously with the TBBCA Lifetime Achievement Impact Award. Affectionately known as “Griff” by his family, friends, and colleagues across the globe, Mr. Davis was born on the campus of his later alma mater Morehouse College and raised on the campus of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Upon graduation in 1947, Mr. Davis became the first Roving Editor for Ebony Magazine at the recommendation of his professor, Langston Hughes to its Founder and Publisher, John H. Johnson. He was the only African-American in the Class of 1949 of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He also studied photojournalism under Kurt Safranski, one of the co-founders of the Black Star Publishing Company before becoming its only African American international freelance photojournalist from 1949-1952. (As refugees from Germany, the co-founders of Black Star brought the photojournalism industry to the United States and assisted Henry Luce in founding Life magazine.)
After passing the exam in 1952, he simultaneously became one of the pioneer African Americans in the U.S. Foreign Service posted at the first U.S. Embassy in Africa and Liberia under the leadership of the first African American Ambassador Edward R. Dudley. As the Embassy’s first Information Officer, he helped establish President Harry Truman’s Point Four Program for foreign aid (predecessor to the U.S. Agency for International Development) worldwide by creating the Embassy’s Audiovisual Center. During his 35 year career as a Foreign Service Officer, he was posted in newly independent Tunisia and Nigeria; served as an advisor to African governments and for the U.S. Bureau of Africa and the Bureau for Population and Humanitarian Assistance. In these capacities, he had the fortuitous opportunity to document in writing, still photographs and motion pictures the life and activities of the many African governments and influence their development policies in the communications, education, population and economic development arenas during this professional lifespan.
WHEN: Thursday, October 1, 2020 from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m.
WHAT: Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts (www.tbbca.org) of Florida is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989, one of the national Business Committees for the Arts, part of the private sector network and national pARTnership Movement of Americans for the Arts. For over three decades, TBBCA has united Tampa Bay businesses to champion arts and culture for a prosperous community, because the arts are good for business, and business is good for the arts. The annual Impact Awards benefit TBBCA programs, including The Charlie Hounchell Art Stars Scholarships.
WHERE: Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts – AN EXCLUSIVE VIRTUAL EVENT*.
( Virtual) Tickets available through September 30, 2020: https://www.tbbca.org/impactawards2020
WHY: Griffith J. Davis (1923 -1993) had an outstanding eye for photography, a deep awareness of history and historical events. He is credited with taking many iconic photographs, including that of the first meeting of then Vice President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and their two wives on Independence Day in Accra, Ghana on March 7, 1957. Liberia President William V. S. Tubman commissioned Mr. Davis to produce the first photography exhibit on Liberia at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1952 and, in that same year, the production of Liberia’s first promotional film entitled “ Pepperbird Land” narrated by the then young actor Sidney Poitier. Mr. Davis posthumously won Second Place in the USAID/Frontlines 50th Anniversary People’s Choice Global Photo Contest in 2011. Former U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Linda Thomas-Greenfield permanently installed an exhibition of five photographs taken by Griff Davis during his initial tour of Liberia in the Audiovisual Center of the newly christened U.S. Embassy/Monrovia in 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court requested that Griff Davis’ photograph of U.S. Supreme Court Judge Thurgood Marshall as Chief Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund be added to its archives and included in its Exhibition “ Reading the Law: Legal Education in America”, at U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, DC, April 2015 to April 2017.
Griff Davis’ other awards and honors include: As the only African American international freelance photojournalist for Black Star Publishing Co. and stringer correspondent for the New York Times, Davis covered events across Africa, Europe and parts of the United States from 1949 to 1952. His photographs and articles were featured in Fortune, Ebony, Time, Modern Photography, Steelways, New York Times, Der Spiegel and other notable publications. He began his professional career as photographer for Spelman College, Morehouse College, the Atlanta University System, the segregated Black Atlanta community and the Atlanta Daily World, the oldest continually published African American newspaper in the country. In WWII, he served in the U.S. Army as a Buffalo Soldier and photographer with the 92nd Infantry Division, a segregated infantry division, in Italy. After the war, the Italian Government asked Davis to take aerial shots of the Genoa Harbor to serve as the foundation for its reconstruction. He received the 1993 Morehouse College Candle in the Dark Bennie Trailblazer Award named after his mentor Dr. Benjamin Mays, President Emeritus of Morehouse College.
From January 17 to August 16, 2020, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts exhibited 62 of his photographs entitled “Griff Davis and Langston Hughes, Letters and Photographs 1947 – 1967: A Global Friendship”. Hughes, Davis’ former professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, was an award-winning American poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist. The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts is one of about 10 museums in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to photography and one of two such museums in the State of Florida. The exhibition was co-sponsored by the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA), Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts, My Favorite Art Place, Dorothy M. Davis Consulting services and Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives.
Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives is dedicated to preserving, exhibiting and sharing the stories of Griffith Davis’ pioneering, innovative and sophisticated body of work. It includes 55,000 photographs and a complementary explosion of written documentation in the forms of official and unofficial reports, communications materials and correspondence with historic leaders and friends as Hughes and fellow Atlantan and Morehouse alumnus Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
► * ATTENTION NEWS MEDIA: Due to the current COVID-19 Pandemic the awards event is a virtual presentation. The Lifetime Achievement Impact Award for Mr. Davis will be accepted by his daughter, Dorothy M. Davis, President of Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives, based in New York and St. Petersburg, Florida.
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