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Enoch Douglas Davis (1908—1985) was an American reverend, author and civil rights activist who spent the majority of his life in the town of St. Petersburg, Florida. A native from Burke County, Georgia, his family moved to St. Petersburg in 1925, and he began his religious career when he gave his first sermon in 1930 at Bethel Community Baptist Church, which was then known as Second Bethel; he was made the church’s official pastor two years later.〔 At the time of his retirement in 1984, he had served as reverend for Bethel Community for over 50 years, making him at the time the longest-serving pastor in the history of St. Petersburg.〔 As an author, his works include ''Toward the Promised Land'' and his autobiography, ''On The Bethel Trail''.〔 As a civil rights activist, his played an integral role in ending citywide segregation and empowering the black American community; it is largely due to his contributions that St. Petersburg was spared much of the race-related brutality that occurred in many cities in America’s southern states in the 1950s and 1960s.〔〔 He was also the first black president in the St. Petersburg Council of Churches and was presented with 11 awards and honors in his lifetime, including the National Conference of Christians and Jews’ Silver Medallion Brotherhood Award in 1980.〔〔 The Enoch Davis Center, which is located on 18th Ave. South in St. Petersburg and houses the James Weldon Johnson Library, is named after him.〔〔 == Early life == Enoch Davis was born in 1908 in Burke County, Georgia, to cotton farmers Abram and Mozell Davis.〔〔〔〔 His family was large, with sixteen children including himself as the youngest, but he claimed to remember to only nine of his brothers and sisters, some of whom “died early;” one of them killed by lightning.〔〔 The Davises raised their own livestock and grew their own vegetables, and as Christians valued hard work and regular prayer.〔〔 Davis would often have other farmers in his neighborhood ask him to drop corn for them as he was quite skilled at it, and would be paid 10 cents for every boll weevil he caught and brought back alive.〔〔 Many of the family’s neighbors and acquaintances, including sharecroppers and Davis’s first teacher—who was also a preacher—carried weapons on them in case of attack, often by the white owners of their land.〔〔 Davis’s oldest brother, unwilling to take abuse from these white landowners, left home as a young man and traveled up north, never to return except to see their father Abram before his death; soon afterwards Davis’s brother himself died and was buried in Brooklyn, New York.〔 After Abram’s death, Mozell moved the family to Waynesboro, within the Burke County lines, where they lived for three years before moving to St. Petersburg.〔 Their house was owned by a black physician, Dr. Wm. H. Bryan, for whom Davis worked in his office for over two years.〔 His jobs included maintaining the office and delivering medicine before and after school, and sometimes accompanying him to make house calls in the rural areas late at night.〔 Through Dr. Bryan he met Rev. Bob Phelps, a pastor for a handful of Presbyterian churches and the principal of Boggs Academy High School in Keysville, Georgia, which was considered the best black high school within a hundred-mile radius.〔 Davis often attended services at the church with Dr. Bryan and Rev. Phelps and from them developed a fondness for high collars and long coats, although his mother would not let him wear long pants because he was not considered old enough to wear them.〔 He went to high school at Waynesboro High and Industrial, which offered courses up to the eleventh grade.〔 In Augusta at the time, there were no public schools for black students; students in that area attended Walker Baptist Institute, named after preacher Dr. Charles T. Walker and sponsored by the Walker Baptist Association.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Enoch Douglas Davis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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