Robert Calvin Davis (26 February 1881–21 May 1958), businessman and banker, was born in or near Danville or possibly in Meherrin, in Lunenburg County on the border with Prince Edward County. The names of his parents are not known, nor is his original name at birth. When very young he was adopted into the family of Robert C. Davis and Marietta Davis, of Richmond. Davis attended the night school of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University) for four years and in 1902 received a certificate in machine practice. After leaving school, he worked for about a year in a Petersburg ironworks and in machine shops in Hickory and High Point, North Carolina. "Those kind of jobs were difficult for a colored man to secure," Davis later told a journalist, but he was light-skinned enough that he could get hired at places where people did not know him or his family. He was planning to return to Richmond when he was offered a job in the town of South Norfolk, where for the next nine years he built and repaired machines of various kinds. On 10 April 1905 Davis married the widowed Mattie Martin Page. Before her death on 17 January 1943, they had one son and one daughter.
In 1911 Davis borrowed $500 and opened a repair shop in Norfolk. He worked on lawnmowers and woodstoves, among many other items, and fabricated special cones for racing bicycles. His business grew rapidly, and within two years he had hired seven employees. Davis became one of the city's first and perhaps largest-scale African American sheet-metal contractors, installing roofing and interior metal decoration features. He also invested in other local businesses. For several years during the 1920s he was part-owner and treasurer of the Progressive Drug Company, a drugstore.
In 1910 Davis and about two dozen other African American businessmen formed a mutual savings and loan association in the Berkley section of Norfolk. Initially contributing twenty-five cents a week each, they hoped to encourage home ownership and to finance commercial development among African Americans who may have had difficulty obtaining loans from white-owned banks. In 1913 they incorporated their group as the Berkley Citizens Mutual Building and Loan Association, with initial maximum capital of $50,000 and Davis as treasurer. The company amended its charter in 1919 to increase its maximum capital to $250,000, and Davis became president of the association not long thereafter. It withstood the challenges of the Great Depression of the 1930s and thrived in the years after World War II. The association's board of directors included some of the city's foremost African American business leaders. In 1949, when Davis retired from metalwork, the association received authorization from the State Corporation Commission to increase its maximum capital stock to $1 million. The following year the association became a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank, with its shares insured by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. Six years later, when Davis prepared to retire from the presidency, the commission allowed the association to increase its maximum capital stock to $5 million, and its net worth approached $2 million.
Robert Calvin Davis retired from the presidency of the Berkley Citizens Mutual Building and Loan Association in February 1957, but he remained a member of the board and continued to make property appraisals and to tinker in the workshop behind his house. He died in a Norfolk hospital on 21 May 1958 and was buried in Calvary Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Feature article in Norfolk Journal and Guide (national ed.), 26 Apr. 1958 (quotation and portrait); birth on 26 Feb. 1881 at Meherrin in Davis academic records, Hampton University; U.S. Census Schedules, Elizabeth City Co., 1900 (birth date of Feb. 1881), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.; World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), with full autograph signature and birth date of 20 Mar. 1879, Record Group 163, and World War II Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1942), with full autograph signature and birth in 1884 "near Danville," Record Group 147, both NARA; Norfolk Co. Marriage Register (with birth in Danville and age twenty-five on 10 Apr. 1905); State Corporation Commission Charter Book, Record Group 112, 81:194–195, 103:527–528, 230:811–812, 265:190–192, Library of Virginia; Norfolk's Thirty-Six Percent, 64,000 Colored: Homes, Churches, Schools, Business Enterprises, Occupations and General Social and Economic Status of the Sixty-Four Thousand Colored Citizens of the City of Norfolk, Va. (1927), with portrait; data on savings and loan association in published annual reports of State Corporation Commission (1926–1958); death notice in Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch and the Portsmouth Star, 22 May 1958; obituary in Norfolk Journal and Guide (home ed.), 24 May 1958.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander.
How to cite this page:
Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander,"Robert Calvin Davis (1881–1958)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2019 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Davis_Robert_Calvin, accessed [today's date]).
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