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Allison and Elizabeth Davis were a married Black couple who traveled to Natchez, Mississippi in the 1930s to conduct an immersive, groundbreaking anthropological study of caste in the Jim Crow South. Because the couple was Black, they were forced to hide their academic accolades—and the true purpose of their visit. They had to publicly defer to a white couple, Burleigh and Mary Gardner, who were also participating in the study (though in a lesser capacity). The Davises published their findings in a 1941 text—but because of racial and caste barriers, the publication was heavily delayed. Several other white scholars of caste in the U.S. published their own works first, leading the Davises’ text to languish in obscurity for some time.
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Allison and Elizabeth Davis Character Timeline in Caste
The timeline below shows where the character Allison and Elizabeth Davis appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Seventeen: On the Early Front Lines of Caste
In 1933, a Black couple traveled to Natchez, Mississippi. Their names were Allison and Elizabeth Davis, and they were married academics. Having fled their studies at the University of Berlin when...
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Because the laws in the South were so restrictive, the Davises had to claim that they were there to study the church. They also had to...
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By 1941, Davis and Gardner emerged with a 538-page manuscript entitled Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of...
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Even though Davis and Gardner’s research struggled to find an audience, as the middle of the century approached,...
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