Frank Marshall Davis Collection
The Frank Marshall Davis Collection consists of the entire interview and includes news clippings and photographs from Davis’ personal papers.
Frank Marshall Davis was a noted American writer, journalist, and poet who was a part of the Harlem Renaissance Movement and worked at the American Negro Press in Chicago before moving to Hawai’i in 1949. He continued working as a journalist writing a weekly column (Frankly Speaking) for the Honolulu Record paper.
Barack Obama mentioned Frank Marshall Davis in his autobiography, Dreams From My Father. Davis was referred to as a friend of Obama’s grandfather and an African American who made an impression on him as a young man growing up in Hawai’i.
Washington University’s Film & Media Archive and the Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR) at the University of Hawai’i—West O’ahu partnered to preserve and digitize an interview conducted with Davis in 1987. The interview was meant to be part of a longer documentary, but Davis died before the program was completed. A shorter, 30-minute program aired on Hawai’i Public Television was created as a tribute to Davis for the Rice and Rose series produced by CLEAR.
The complete transcript of the Interview with Frank Marshall Davis conducted by Chris Conybeare and Joy Chong is now available. The University of Hawaii’s Center for Labor Education & Research gathered the interviews for the series Rice & Roses. A portion of the digitized interview is available on the Film and Media Archive’s YouTube channel.
Access these Materials
Contact the Curator of Film and Media to search the Film & Media Archive for the Frank Marshall Davis Collection.
Contact
- Department
- Library
- Name
- Andy Uhrich
- Job Title
- Curator of Film and Media
- Email Address
- jauhrich@wustl.edu
- Phone Number
- (314) 935-3301