L. Clifford Davis, Who Fought to Desegregate Texas Schools, Dies at 100

U.S.|L. Clifford Davis, Who Fought to Desegregate Texas Schools, Dies at 100

L. Clifford Davis, a civil rights lawyer who led efforts to desegregate high schools in Texas, sometimes in the face of mob violence, hostility from state politicians and threats on his life, died on Feb. 15 in Fort Worth. He was 100.

His daughter Karen Davis confirmed the death, in a nursing facility.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed public school segregation in 1954 in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka — a case on which Mr. Davis had worked alongside Thurgood Marshall in its early stages — many cities and states across the South initially defied the ruling.

It was left to lawyers like Mr. Davis to hold those local districts to account. He began with Mansfield, Texas. The town’s only high school was whites only, and Black students had to find their own way to a Black high school, traveling 20 miles to Fort Worth.

On behalf of five students, Mr. Davis sued the Mansfield school district in 1955, and a year later a federal appeals court ruled in their favor.

But when Black students arrived for the first day of school in September 1956, they were met by hundreds of angry white people, some holding nooses. Burning crosses were on display.

Mr. Davis appealed to the U.S. attorney general, Herbert Brownell Jr., for help, but he refused. Mr. Davis then wrote to Gov. Allan Shivers of Texas.