Tracing the Davis Family

Roscoe Davis and his wife, Estella, moved to their house on E. 103rd Street in 1919. According to the census records, they were one of the first Black families in the neighborhood now known as Union-Miles.

In 1920, E. 103rd Street near Harvard Avenue was working class. The family’s neighbors were laborers, carpenters, and store clerks. They worked at the steel mill and at City Hall. They were from Ohio, New York, Wales, and Romania.

Mr. Davis was a machinist and Mrs. Davis worked at the Phillis Wheatley Association, which housed single Black women who were largely newcomers to Cleveland from the south. Overtime, this organization, founded by Ms. Jane Edna Hunter, expanded into providing job support and vocational training for men and for women.

According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, The Phillis Wheatley Association was controversial at its founding. At the time, the YWCA in Cleveland was for white women only, and since the organization was funded largely by white philanthropists, many Black leaders said that its existence maintained the racial segregation of the city. These white funders required that prominent white women sit on the board.

The Davis family had one son, Rollin, who in a 1998 article in the Plain Dealer, recalled that he was the only Black student in grade school.

Rollin served in the Army during World War II, where he came face-to-face with the Jim Crow South and restrictions placed upon Black soldiers in the military. Upon returning to Cleveland, he swept floors at American Greetings, a job he found through a placement program at the Phillis Wheatley Association. Overtime, he became one of American Greetings’ first Black supervisors.

Tracing the history of families that lived in southeast Cleveland can help us better understand what it was like to live in these neighborhoods in 1919. How do family histories overlap? What can they tell us about Cleveland’s institutions and neighborhoods?

Works Cited

Call & Post. 1945. Review of Reunion in France. Cleveland Call & Post, April 5, 1945. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1135943056/?match=1.

McNally Bensing, Karen. 1998. Review of Man’s Memories Bring History to Life. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 4, 1998. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1073095168/?match=1&terms=rollin%20davis.

Morrow, Juanita. 1944. Review of Came Here 25 Years Ago on “Visit” Still on Phillis Wheatley Assn. Staff. Cleveland Call & Post, July 1, 1944. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1136776003/?match=1.

“PHILLIS WHEATLEY ASSOCIATION | Encyclopedia of Cleveland History | Case Western Reserve University.” 2020. Encyclopedia of Cleveland History | Case Western Reserve University. February 14, 2020. https://case.edu/ech/articles/p/phillis-wheatley-association.

U.S Census Records: 1920 & 1930

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