Professor Penny Ann Ralston

Professor Chester Davis’ love was in helping those students who needed him the most: the stem lectures, the unflagging support, the constant encouragement, the pushing and pulling that got them through UMass and changed their lives for the better. This memorial scholarship fund seeks to replicate the dedication Professor Davis showed his youngest students.

Professor Davis was an early member of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. Born in 1927 in Gary, IN, he was one of the first African-Americans to graduate from the University of Chicago with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Following doctoral work at Syracuse University, he taught at The Dalton School in New York City and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Shortly after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Davis was recruited to join the Institute of the Black World, a component of the MLK, Jr. Center in Atlanta, GA, which was the first Black think tank to assemble a cadre of scholars and activists to advance the Civil Rights Movement. He left Atlanta to become one of the first Afro-American studies professors at UMass Amherst in the fall of 1971. He helped recruit prominent activists and scholars for the department, where he spent the remainder of his academic career, retiring in 1992. He was department chairman from 1985-88.

His research and teaching covered the history of Black education in the U.S., the evolution of Black studies, the Black media, and Blacks in television and the movies. With his colleagues, he advocated for the university to provide access and opportunity to African-Americans and other students of color.

Professor Davis passed away on February 5, 2016. His loving wife, Penny A. Ralston, family, and friends established this scholarship award in his honor.