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Reflections Of A Life

Sallye Marguerite Bell Davis, beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, wife, teacher and activist, passed away in Cleveland, Ohio on November 8th, 2007. The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, an illness she battled for more than a decade. She was 93.

Born in Talladega County, Alabama to parents she never knew, Sallye was taken in and raised by her foster family, the Bells, of Sylacauga, Alabama. Determined as a teenager to pursue a secondary education, she moved to Birmingham on her own, where she initially resided at the YWCA. She enrolled at Industrial (Parker) High School, and was later invited by the principal A.H. Parker and his wife to live with them. She then attended Miles College, graduating in 1939 with a degree in education, and soon after began pursuing her passion by teaching in the Birmingham public schools.

Sallye was equally devoted to her faith and to her community. During high school, she joined the First Congregational Church, where she remained active into her 80’s, spending many of those years as a member and leader of the Angola Guild, the women’s fellowship committed to social and charitable causes. As a dynamic member and officer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, a progressive anti-racist organization founded in the late 1930’s, Sallye was unafraid to fight for racial equality in the city that would wait almost twenty-five years before being recognized as a crucible of the Civil Rights Movement. During this period, working around such issues as freedom for the Scottsboro 9, she developed lifelong friendships with well-known activists Dorothy and Louis Burnham and Esther and James Jackson.

With her best friend from childhood, whom she adopted as her sister, the late Elizabeth Hunt, Sallye traveled to New York before meeting her husband-to-be back in Birmingham. Her attempt to recruit the late Benjamin Frank Davis, Sr. to join the war against fascism was so successful (he served in the U.S. Army during World War II), that the two began a courtship leading to a marriage that endured until his death in 1984. Their union gave them four children: Angela Yvonne, Benjamin Frank Jr., Fania Elizabeth, and Reginald Wayne. Sallye continued teaching while raising their children. Her husband left his chosen teaching profession to become the first African-American to own and operate an automotive service station in downtown Birmingham in what is now the historic Civil Rights District.

The Davis family first made their home in a newly built black housing project initially designed without the toilets and central heating provided for the separate white units. With the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Sallye rallied against these conditions, winning the toilets but not the heating. After the birth of their first three children, the family moved out of the projects and into an all white section of the Smithfield District. Their house, a white Victorian with green trim, complete with gables, a tower, and a wraparound porch, sat on a hill overlooking the surrounding lowlands. When the Davises purchased and moved into this house, other black families followed suit, effectively integrating the neighborhood. This activity was a target for terrorist acts by the KKK, and homes were bombed so frequently that the neighborhood became known as Dynamite Hill.

Undeterred by this intimidation, Sallye’s dedication to education only increased, as she understood learning to be a tool for the uplift of her family, her students and their families, and for the eradication of injustice at large. She instilled a deep confidence in her children that they should never feel themselves inferior to whites. Setting an example, she continued her studies in the summers at New York University, children in tow, where she completed her master’s degree in the mid-1950s. She taught as a reading specialist in the Birmingham schools until her retirement in the early 1980’s. Sallye pursued her activism during later years, working on behalf of many causes, including that of her daughter Angela, who had been arrested on political charges in 1970 in a case that drew the attention of the world. She also served as a consultant to the Grenadian Ministry of Education before the U.S. invasion.

During the latter years of her life, she lived in Cleveland with her son Ben and his wife Sylvia who provided loving care until the time of her passing. She is further survived by her son Reggie of Los Angeles and daughters Angela and Fania of Oakland; her grandchildren Ben III, Eisa, Cecilie, Brittany, Reggie, Kafi, Leslie, and Clifford; four great grandchildren Ben IV, Taylor, Isiah, and Morgan; and a host of nephews, nieces and grand nephews and nieces.