Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Summer/105/Section 15/Ned Davis

Overview
Ned Davis was a black businessman from North Carolina who went from working on a farm to owning many beauty salons and being an educator. He was interviewed by Cora Lee Bennett and Mary R. Northrop for the Federal Writers’ Project on May 3, 1939.

Family
Ned Davis was born on August 13, 1897 in Hartsville, South Carolina. Davis’s father was a sharecropper and his mother died when he was three. When his father remarried, they moved to Rock Hill where he attended school until third grade.

Early farm and labor work
Followed his father’s footsteps, Davis also worked on a farm and learned to reap oats quickly. Realizing his aptitude for the job, Davis traveled around with a man for three years thrashing grains. After this, he moved around a few more manual labor jobs such as road construction before settling as a cook for Mrs. J. A. Barber and going to cooking school.

Marriages
While working as a cook, Davis met his first wife, Ora Lee Springs, who worked for a neighboring household. Davis became locally famous as a chauffeur and saved up enough to marry Ora. Their first child was born a year later and the family moved to West Virginia. Ora took a course in Beauty Culture to work but she became very sick after giving birth to a second child. Inspired by Ora, Davis diligently experimented with an herb that his stepmother had used to create a hair product formula. But she passed, leaving him heartbroken with two young children. He remarried to Mildred Kennedy and they moved to Charlotte, North Carolina where Davis got a job at a hotel.

Early business career during Prohibition
Davis applied for a patent to sell his hair grower but starting a business was very financially demanding so Davis illegally sold alcohol during Prohibition. He and his friends supplied all the local hotels and he saved up the extra money to start his business. Setting up the beauty parlor was slow work at first because he was still learning to style and the shop lacked the proper equipment to wash hair.

Beauty business success
As business grew, Davis left Mildred in charge of the establishments to go promote his hair products which became so popular that they were sold in 26 states. Ultimately he expanded his business to 6 Gypsy Beauty Shops in North Carolina as well as 3 out of state. In 1933, he also started the first black-owned beauty school to be certified by the state.

Academic pursuits
Although he only had a third grade education, after establishing his business Davis took correspondence courses where he received certificates in public speaking and law. Eventually Davis felt his establishments only appealed to people’s vain side and opened “The Servants Clinic” to help African Americans learn domestic skills instead. He believed that the current education system did not prepare African Americans for successful job placement but with his lifetime of experience, he knew he could help uplift his community.

Prohibition
The 18th Amendment prohibited the sale of alcohol in America from January 17, 1920 until 1933. The ban was implemented for the purposes of reducing crime and improving public health but it was too difficult to practically enforce. Bootlegging, the illegal production of liquor, became popular along with speakeasies which were illegal drinking spots. The price of beer increased by more than 700 percent, brandies by 433 percent and spirits by 270 percent which provided massive incentive for the underground alcohol economy. A study published in 1932 revealed that Prohibition failed to reduce alcohol consumption which had declined since 1910 to an all-time low in 1921 but then nearly quadrupled in 1922 and only increased after. Prohibition also failed to decrease crime; according to historian Mark Thornton, as “crime increased and became “organized”; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant.” Support for Prohibition waned every year, especially as it coincided with the Great Depression. Eventually the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st and both jobs and revenue were restored by legalizing the liquor industry again.

Beauty industry and black culture
In the aftermath of slavery and the midst of Jim Crow laws, African Americans were confined to primarily agricultural or domestic work. This limited employment took an even greater hit during the Great Depression; after the stock market crashed in 1929 those low-paying jobs were lost to whites in need of work. Beauty culture appealed to African Americans across class lines because it was “a unique occupation in which black women served other black women, and it was a job that offered African American women the hope that they might earn an independent living.” It offered a balance between being a respectable profession because it was considered adjacent to science but still being accessible because it did not require higher education. Beauty companies promoted that black women could easily achieve financial independence as hairdressers and sales representatives. The Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, one of the most financially successful black-owned businesses of the early 20th century, claimed a woman could “easily make from three to five dollars a day,” approximately $50 today. In comparison, black domestic workers typically earned one or two dollars a week, approximately $18 today. Many leaped at the opportunity and by 1920, black beauticians outnumbered white beauticians in every Southern state.

Education
After slavery ended, the Reconstruction era was a brief period of hope from 1867 to 1877 when the black community was able to organize funds for their causes. By 1870, black freedmen supported over 210 schools and owned over 110 school buildings in Virginia. Numerous institutions were established under black leadership such as Shaw University in 1865, Central Tennessee College in 1866, Meharry Medical College in 1876, Selma University in 1878, and Morris Brown College in 1881. Unfortunately Jim Crow laws were instituted to curb this immense progress; many school systems that were built during Reconstruction lost the sufficient financial resources to sustain themselves. Historical analysis shows that “community engagement was central to Black educational leadership. They would often use strategies of leverage and coalition in the absence of power. Black leaders formed fraternal orders and literacy groups and organized church congregations to support collective interests.” With the government creating legal detriments to black education, the African American community was forced to develop internally and independently.