Neil O. Davis

A prestigious Neiman Fellowship to Harvard University had never been awarded to a weekly newspaperman until Neil Davis received one in 1941.
Davis had shown his spirit and backbone even as student editor of The Plainsman at Auburn University. He spoke out clearly and forcefully when the administration attempted to stifle the strong support he had shown for the New Deal in his newspaper. It was not the last time he would be threatened for his independent thinking.

Born in Hartford, Alabama, in 1914, he graduated from Geneva County High School. Nearly half of the 27 graduates went to college. At Auburn he met Henrietta Worsley, a Plainsman associate editor. She became his wife, served as chief reporter and associate editor, and published their paper, The Lee County Bulletin, for the three years he served in World War II.

Davis championed unskilled rural workers, advocated strong public education, and fought against the poll tax, discrimination, and segregation. His well-reasoned and cogent editorials helped convince many in his community that integration was not only inevitable, it was right. In 1964, he purchased The Tuskegee News, and despite criticism and attacks from George Wallace, he continued to irritate and provoke those who clung to the old order.

He served as president of the Alabama Press Association, was an adjunct professor of journalism at Auburn, and was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the Presidential Commission on Rural Poverty. His editorials were twice nominated for Pulitzer Prizes.

“He never did like the new computers and things we brought into the operation,” says Paul Davis, publisher of The Tuskegee News, “but he was on the cutting edge when it came to writing editorials and oftentimes his work would appear in The New York Times and Boston Globe because he was so well respected.”

Lee County, The Tuskegee Institute, and Auburn University in particular are better for Neil Davis having “put down his bucket” where he was. The well he drew from nourished a world of opportunity for generations of Alabamians.