A.L. Davis Papers

A.L. Davis, minister, community leader, and political activist was a founding member and second vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the first African American New Orleans City Councilman since the Reconstruction era.

A.L. (Abraham Lincoln) Davis, Jr. was born in 1914 in Bayou Goula, Louisiana, and was educated in the public schools of Iberville Parish and New Orleans. He attended Leland College in Baker, Louisiana, and studied theology, receiving a doctor of divinity degree from the Union Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans. He became the pastor of the one of New Orleans' oldest and largest African American churches, New Zion Baptist Church in 1935 and served in that capacity until his death in 1978.

Davis was actively involved in politics and civil rights in New Orleans, establishing the Orleans Parish Progressive Voters League (OPPVL) in 1949, became a founding member and second vice president of SCLC, and was heavily involved in the New Orleans merchant boycotts and sit-ins of the early 1960s. He was a close political ally of former New Orleans Mayors de Lesseps "Chep" Morrison and Victor H. Schiro, as well as Louisiana Governor John J. McKeithen. Davis ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana House of Representatives for Districts 10 and 11 in 1967 and was appointed to the New Orleans City Council in 1975.

Davis was involved with a number of affiliated religious organizations including the Interdenominational Ministries Alliance, the Ideal Missionary Baptist and Educational Association, and the National Baptist Convention. He was also appointed to a number of City of New Orleans committees and boards, such as the Union Passenger Terminal Board, the Registration Advisory Information Committee of New Orleans, and the Louisiana Committee on Human Relations, Rights, and Responsibilities.