Groundbreaking Journalist Belva Davis Dies at 92

Belva Davis, an Emmy Award-winning journalist who broke the color barrier in Bay Area radio and television in the 1960s, died Wednesday. She was 92.

Davis was the first Black woman to be hired as a television journalist on the West Coast when she took a position with KPIX-TV, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, in 1966. She remained on the air for nearly five decades at KPIX, KRON and KQED. Davis rose to prominence during an era of pervasive sexism, racism and discrimination.

“Her legitimacy as an excellent reporter, her integrity, her professional accomplishments and her personal attributes made her the sort of person that everyone aspired to become,” said Mary Bitterman, who served as KQED’s CEO from 1993 to 2002.

“Her reputation as a journalist, reporter and anchor was always highly respected, noted for its fairness and for putting stories into context,” Bitterman noted.

Davis was hired by KQED TV in 1977 and continued working there until her retirement in 2012. Among the programs she hosted were KQED Newsroom and This Week in Northern California. She was known as much for her personal kindness and warmth as she was for her deep knowledge of journalism, Bay Area communities and politics.

“She is a legend and she was a mentor, a friend, a mom – you know, all of those things. And I just loved her,” said former KRON TV anchor Pam Moore, who met Davis early in her own career. “Certainly you don’t work in California and journalism as a person of color and not know about Belva Davis.”

Without any formal training, Davis broke into an industry with steep obstacles for Black women. Being hired for media jobs outside community-focused radio stations and newspapers, which aimed their programming and news coverage at predominantly Black audiences, was almost unheard of.

Working for radio station KDIA in 1964, Davis covered the Republican National Convention at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, where conservative Barry Goldwater was nominated for president. As one of the few journalists of color at the convention, Davis endured extraordinary abuse and discrimination.

During an interview at Google in 2011, Davis recalled the treatment she and others, including her radio news director, Louis Freeman, received that week, such as being denied press passes.

“We were in the rafters, sitting quietly, trying to make sure nobody found us,” she recalled. When Davis and Freeman were discovered, convention attendees yelled, “‘What are you [N-word] doing in here anyway?’,” Davis recalled. “We were driven out of that hall as people threw debris at my news director and I.”

The incident, which Davis also wrote about in her 2011 memoir, Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism, shook but did not deter her. In fact, it deepened her resolve to stick with journalism to tell the stories of Black communities and others overlooked by mainstream media.

“Journalists were beginning to bring the stories of Black Americans out of the shadows … and into the light of day,” Davis wrote of her thoughts following the RNC incident. “They were reporting on the cross burnings and water hosings, the beatings and lynchings, in vivid details that the public could no longer ignore. I wanted to be one of them.”

“She confronted prejudice, confronted every possible barrier, and yet became the journalist who was most trusted and most believed,” former San Francisco Chronicle and Politico journalist Carla Marinucci said.

“She had to put up with being thrown out of press conferences, being called names, being called ethnic slurs. She never let any of that deter her,” Marinucci said.

Even as she was the focus of abuse at the RNC, Davis realized that television journalism was where she wanted to be.

“It was a bad, terrible incident, but it inspired me to do something that I might not have ever done had that been a pleasant, ordinary, normal convention,” Davis said years later.

Two years after that GOP convention, Davis was hired by KPIX TV, becoming the first Black woman to be hired as a full-time journalist on Bay Area television. It was just another step on a journey that began many miles from the Bay Area.

Born Belvagene Melton in 1932 in Monroe, Louisiana, she was the oldest of four children. In the early 1940s, she and her family moved west to Oakland, where she attended public schools. She graduated from Berkeley High School in 1951, becoming the first in her family to get a high school diploma. Although she was accepted to San Francisco State University, she did not attend because her family could not afford the tuition.

Her first foray into the world of journalism came in 1957 when she wrote articles as a freelancer for Jet magazine. For the next few years, she wrote for other publications, such as the Sun-Reporter, which covered issues of particular interest to Black communities in the Bay Area.

“You know, neither one of us had gone to journalism school,” recalled retired news anchor Barbara Rodgers, who worked with Davis at KPIX. “And in fact, in her case, she always sort of felt she didn’t have everything she needed because she didn’t get to go to college … And I would tell her, you got your J-school education by doing it – the same way I got mine.”

Rodgers met Davis in 1979 when she moved to San Francisco from Rochester, New York, where she’d worked in local television. Friends told her to look Davis up when she came to town. Davis was known for hosting parties for the holidays, often inviting people new to the Bay Area who didn’t have a circle of friends.

“I went to her house for my first Thanksgiving dinner and almost every Thanksgiving after that, because Belva would put together every year this really eclectic group of people who were just so interesting,” Rodgers recalled.

“She was so gracious… She just took me under her wing anytime I had a question or needed some advice. So she became my San Francisco mom.”

In fact, Rodgers said, Davis helped pave the way for her and many women who followed her in Bay Area journalism.

“I say that Belva kicked open the door, but left her shoe in it,” Rodgers said. “She wanted to prop it open for all the rest of us and really encouraged us.”

But first she had to get in the door herself. Davis recalled being turned away by one Bay Area television news director who told her, “We’re not hiring any Negresses.”

“That may not sound like a harmful word, but even as a young woman starting out in the business world, that was something that was very hurtful,” she said years later on KQED’s Forum.

“It helped me in my resolve to demonstrate that I could do whatever they were doing in that station as well as anybody.”

Early in her career at KRON TV, Davis was assigned the title “urban affairs specialist,” but she soon burnished her credentials covering political stories more broadly.

At KQED, Davis hosted several TV news-oriented programs that often focused on public affairs and politics. Over the years, she covered some of the most important stories and issues, including the deaths of hundreds of people at the Jonestown cult compound in Guyana, the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the AIDS crisis, as well as many local, state and national elections. She interviewed some of the most iconic newsmakers, including Muhammad Ali, Coretta Scott King and Fidel Castro, among many others. She also reported early on about deadly use of force by local police.

Marinucci, a frequent guest on This Week in Northern California, called Davis “the gold standard for a generation of journalists.”

“Belva Davis was a trailblazer like no other. She was a pioneer as an African American woman, but also a mentor to so many of us all throughout the Bay Area and throughout the nation,” Marinucci said.

Davis was also very active with her union, including a stint as vice president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. In addition to the eight Emmy Awards she won from the San Francisco/Northern California chapter, Davis received lifetime achievement awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and American Women in Radio and Television.

She was often called upon to serve on boards and commissions in the Bay Area. Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown tapped Davis to help head fundraising efforts for the city’s Museum of the African Diaspora, which opened in 2005.

Davis’ oft-repeated motto was, “Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you dream it, you can make it so.”

Reflecting on Davis’ professional and personal life, KQED’s Bitterman said, “Belva was always a gentle woman and a strong woman with high standards. And I think her influence will be felt for many years to come … we shall not soon see her like again.”

Davis is survived by her second husband, Bill Moore; two children from her first marriage, Darolyn Davis and Steven Davis; and a granddaughter, Sterling Davis.