48 OCTOBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Hughes enlisted him as his photographer until the end of his tenure. Their 20-year friendship continued through Davis’ graduation from Morehouse and landing his first job, as the first roving editor of Ebony magazine. Hughes had recommended Davis to John H. Johnson, founder and publisher of Ebony. After 18 months at the magazine, Davis went to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, again at the recommendation of Hughes. He was the only Black American student in the class of 1949. While attending Columbia, Davis rented a room in Hughes’ Harlem home and sometimes accompanied Hughes on assignment as his photographer. Shot during one of these assignments, Davis’ photograph of legendary actor Canada Lee is now permanently installed in the Museum of Broadway in Times Square. Davis simultaneously took a photojournalism course taught by Kurt Safranski at the New School. Safranski was one of three Jewish émigrés who escaped Germany during World War II and brought the photojournalism industry to the United States through their creation of Black Star Publishing Company, the first privately owned picture agency in the U.S. Most famously, Safranski was responsible for helping Henry Luce create Life magazine. After graduation, Davis was hired as the first and only Black American international freelance photojournalist at Safranski’s company. Said the late Benjamin J. Chapnick, onetime president of Black Star, the co-founders “considered [Davis] one of the best photojournalists of his generation.” Cutting His Teeth Abroad Davis’ first trip overseas was to Liberia, where he covered the missionary movement and iron ore industry in 1949. He wrote: “Africans across the continent had begun to scream Griff Davis standing in front of a portrait of himself taken by J. Edward Bailey III (at right) as part of the “Living Legends in Black” exhibition at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan, in March 1976. ©GRIFF DAVIS/GRIFFITH J. DAVIS PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARCHIVES for their independence. The spirit of the African people and their strong desire for freedom captured my photo-journalistic instincts to witness the rebirth of a continent and the birth of new African nations.” Working for Black Star from 1949 to 1952, Davis made three separate trips to Liberia and other parts of Africa and Europe. In addition to being a stringer correspondent for The New York Times, he had stories and photographs appear in a host of publications in the U.S. and Europe, including the Saturday Evening Post, Time magazine, Fortune, Life magazine, Ebony, and Der Spiegel. While in Liberia, he was even asked by Ebony to interview Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia for the cover story, “The Private Life of Emperor Selassie,” in its November 1950 fifth-anniversary issue. Of the 521 photographs Davis took for Black Star, eight of Liberia were featured in the recent exhibition, “Stories from the Picture Press: Black Star Publishing Company and the Canadian Press,” at the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University. As an offshoot of the exhibition, the Image Center’s book, Facing Black Star, includes a full chapter, titled “Telling on Archival Erasure: The Stories Behind Griffith Davis’ Liberia Photographs.” At the time Davis started to freelance for Black Star, President Harry S. Truman outlined the Point Four program in his 1949 inaugural speech. It was the fourth point that established the U.S. policy of technical assistance and economic aid to underdeveloped (now referred to as “developing”) countries, the forerunner of the present-day U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The first appropriations under this program were made to Liberia in 1950, laying the groundwork for Davis’ Foreign Service career.
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