Early life: 1946–1964 Background and childhood Michael Ryan Davis was born in
Fontana, California, on March 10, 1946, to Dwight and Mary (Ryan) Davis. Dwight was from
Venedocia, Ohio, and was of
Welsh and
Protestant background. He was a trade-union
Democrat and an "
anti-racist," which Davis attributed to his ancestors, Welsh
abolitionists and
Union soldiers who had settled in the
Black Swamp of Ohio. Mary was an
Irish Catholic from
Columbus, Ohio, and the daughter of Jack Ryan, a veteran of the
Spanish–American War. Both parents hitchhiked to California during the
Great Depression and came to the
El Cajon Valley, but moved to Fontana for a brief period during the
Second World War and after. Returning in 1953, Davis was raised in a
tract home in the community of
Bostonia in
San Diego County. His father Dwight worked in the wholesale
meat industry for the Superior Meat Company in downtown
San Diego and was a member of the
meat cutter's union, and his uncle ran a wholesale meat company. The nearly all-white neighborhood of Davis's childhood was populated by refugees of the
Great Depression, mostly
Southern Baptist families from
Oklahoma and
Texas, and had a
country-western ballroom and
rodeo. Davis identified with his community as a "
redneck" and a "Westerner" in opposition to the "
surfer" beach culture held by the wealthier,
Methodist neighborhoods south of El Cajon's Main Street. Racism and
anti-communism were endemic in the town, but Democrats held the dominant political role in the community due to the influence of the
Machinists Union. Dwight Davis was an
amateur geologist, and would bring the young Davis with him on frequent excursions in the
Colorado Desert to search for
uranium deposits,
abandoned mines,
geodes, and
petrified wood. The favorite stop in the desert for the two was the
Ocotillo Wells gas station and café, owned by an eccentric elderly proprietor who would debate baseball with Dwight. In 1955, the young Davis was curious about several photos of cadavers taken by the proprietor and posted on the bulletin board in the café. The proprietor explained to Davis that the bodies were of young Mexican men, all executed in arroyos along the
border by being shot in the back. Davis remained haunted by the photos of the corpses, and the experience would influence his ideas on the border for the rest of his life. , 1952 Davis described the family home as absent of books save for the
Vulgate Bible, but his parents were avid readers of newspapers and ''
Reader's Digest. The family were among the few Catholics in the neighborhood, and the young Davis often found himself in fistfights with his fundamentalist neighbors, which contributed to him renouncing religion at the age of 10 and gravitating towards science with the advent of Sputnik''. Davis was a patriotic and conservative pre-adolescent, enlisting in the
Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton's "Devil Pups" program, and until he was 15, had a picture of
Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb" on his wall. Davis's patriotic phase was eroded by the dysfunction in his suburban
Bostonia. At 12, Davis witnessed the aftermath of the Pendergast murders near his home, where five members of a family, including four children, were murdered by Carl Eder. Davis recalled the scene as if "...somebody had taken a bucket of red paint and thrown it on the walls." Davis also faced difficulties with a childhood bully in his neighborhood, Gordon Neumann, who was hostile to children, and would later go on to shoot six, killing one of them, and then killing a woman before burning himself to death in 1993. Neumann, who was much older, had previously attacked Davis in second grade, but he was rescued by his father who "almost killed" Neumann.
Domestic violence was present in the community but never discussed, and he recalled hearing women and children being frequently beaten while in his backyard in the evenings.
Teenage years In high school, Davis became interested in history from the stories of his teachers, who were World War II veterans. He was eventually exposed to
John Hersey's
Hiroshima, a reading which challenged all of his ideas on
patriotism and the United States. At 16, his father suffered a catastrophic
heart attack which undermined the family's financial security. Davis had to leave school to provide for the family by working as a delivery truck driver for his uncle's wholesale meat company, delivering to restaurants throughout San Diego County. After his father's heart attack, Davis entered a brooding and troubled period, and was mostly interested in
drag racing,
Kerouac, and taking
bullfighting classes. Davis drank, raced, and stole cars with his friends, which culminated in a near-fatal car accident when he drove his Ford into a brick wall during a drag race, leaving him with a permanent scar on his left thigh. Concurrently, while delivering to restaurants across San Diego's
East County, he met Lee Gregovich, an older
communist and
Wobbly whose family emigrated from the
Dalmatian coast to work in the copper mines of the American southwest. Gregovich was
blacklisted from many employers by the
HUAC, but had found a job as a cook at the Chicken Shack, an old-style roadhouse in
Julian. The Chicken Shack was the most distant customer Davis delivered to, leading to a weekly
ritual: after Davis put the order in the walk-in, Gregovich would provide Davis with red wine and the two would talk. At the end of every discussion, Gregovich urged the young Davis to "read
Marx!" The "alcoholic, delinquent, and suicidal" Davis was then invited to a
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) demonstration at the
Bank of America in downtown
San Diego at the behest of his cousin, who had married the Black
civil rights activist Jim Stone. The group was doused in lighter fluid and threatened with ignition by a group of sailors, before members of the
Nation of Islam rescued them from the fray. Davis described the 1962 demonstration as his "
burning bush moment." Under the guidance of Stone, Davis returned to high school and began working at the San Diego chapter of CORE, to commendation from Gregovich. Davis graduated as one of three
valedictorians of
El Cajon Valley High, and earned a full scholarship to
Reed College.
Young activist: 1964–1968 New York and Oakland At Reed College, Davis was overwhelmed, alienated by the
hippy culture and struggling academically. He joined the
Portland, Oregon chapter of CORE, which included the labor historian
Jeremy Brecher, who at the time was one of few members of the nascent
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the Pacific Northwest. Living "drunk" in the dorm of a girlfriend for five weeks, Davis was
expelled from Reed for
intervisitation. Davis was eligible for the
draft after his expulsion and passed the physical, but he was rejected after he insisted to the personnel at the induction center he belonged to several
subversive organizations. After reading the
Port Huron Statement, and at the recommendation of Brecher, Davis boarded a Greyhound bus to
New York City to join the national office of SDS, arriving in November of 1964. In 1964 and 1965, Davis worked in the national office of SDS, which was becoming overwhelmed by the growing number of chapters. The national council meetings gave the office the responsibility to organize two major demonstrations, an
Anti-Apartheid sit-in and the first march on
Washington in protest of the
Vietnam War. Davis was one of the chief coordinators behind the anti-
Apartheid sit-in at
Chase Manhattan Bank. In the aftermath of the
Sharpeville massacre, Chase Manhattan had led a consortium of international banks that bailed out the Apartheid government of
South Africa. The chief ally and tactical organizer to the sit-in was the New York chapter of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), headed by
Betita Martinez (then Elisabeth Sutherland), who Davis became acquainted with. Other supporters included exiled members of the
African National Congress and young members of the
Tanzanian mission to the
United Nations. On the Friday afternoon of March 19, 1965, some 600 demonstrators marched on Chase Manhattan's offices, with 43 arrested, in what was SDS's first act of civil disobedience. Davis returned to California in early 1965, arriving in the Bay Area during the transformation of the
Free Speech Movement into the
Vietnam Day Committee. His only subsistence for the next six months was money earned by selling literature sent to him by the SDS national office. The demand for radical literature by students in the Bay Area was enough that Davis could afford to rent a derelict house with no electricity. While
couch surfing in the homes of
academics, he became aware of
Herbert Marcuse, who was lauded by the organizers of the
Free Speech Movement. Davis had struggled to understand any of Marcuse's
One-Dimensional Man, but opted to write a letter to the respected academic about the accomplishments and motives of SDS. Marcuse responded, but was critical, suggesting that SDS was only serving to advance
Lyndon B. Johnson's
War on Poverty, and that the organization should seek a more oppositional approach. While in Oakland, Davis burned his
draft card in protest of Johnson's
intervention in the
Dominican Republic.
Los Angeles and Texas In June of 1965, after burning his draft card, Davis was sent by the SDS national committee to Los Angeles, where he was ordered to assist in organizing protestors against the construction of the
210 freeway through a historically Black neighborhood in
Pasadena. Davis and other SDS members also organized weekly meetings to spread awareness about the draft on local campuses. Working in South Los Angeles, he befriended
Levi Kingston, a former
jazz bassist and radicalized sailor from the
Merchant Marine. Kingston previously ran a coffeehouse, Pogo's Swamp, which served as a local hub for
beatniks and radical students at
Los Angeles City College, including the future founder of
US Organization,
Ron Everett. Kingston connected Davis with local activists in South Central, and the two worked together organizing draft resistance and doing draft counseling. On August 16, 1965, during the
Watts uprising, Kingston was shot at by a
vigilante from the roof of a fraternity house of
USC. Davis was at Kingston's side during the shooting, and noted that Kingston, who was Black, was the only one targeted. Kingston later organized a Black draft resistance organization, the
Freedom Draft Movement, and remained close friends with Davis for the rest of his life. Davis viewed Kingston as his "big brother" and one of the major figures in his life, and would dedicate his last book,
Set the Night on Fire, to Kingston, who died shortly before it was published. In 1966, 19-year-old Davis, characterized as a "draft card-burning SDS leader," debated actor
Kirk Douglas on
Melvin Belli's talk show. The section of an article in the
Los Angeles Times on the debate, titled "Outtalked by 19-Year-Old," described Davis "...to have much less trouble stating his case then either Belli or Douglas," while Douglas "...was having some difficulty being articulate on his own behalf." In his recollection on the appearance, Davis, the first to be on, was confronted by Douglas as he was leaving the studio. Douglas allegedly called him a "commie dupe." Davis responded by telling Douglas that he admired his appearance in
Paths of Glory, but questioned why the actor would star in an
anti-war film while serving as a goodwill ambassador for the Johnson administration in
Southeast Asia. According to Davis, Douglas was "speechless." As the Southern California regional organizer in 1966, Davis organized protests in support of the anti-war and civil rights movement. The first, in February, was a rally in solidarity with
Julian Bond and the peace demonstrations in the South, meant to bring closer ties between the peace and civil rights movements. In May, Davis helped organize a protest against the manufacture of
napalm used in the Vietnam War by
Dow Chemical, with SDS
picketing the Dow Chemical plant in
Torrance in coordination with other national protests originating from the Stanford Committee for Peace in Viet Nam. The Torrance picket was countered by demonstrators from the
Victory in Vietnam Association, headed by local chapter leader
Dana Rohrabacher. Davis also frequently spoke on behalf of SDS in public debates and conferences on world affairs and social revolutions. In 1967, Davis briefly left Los Angeles to organize for SDS in Texas, and lived in
Austin. While in Texas, Davis sought out the
populist news editor Archer Fullingham. At the time, Davis was still wary of
Marxism and the number of his friends who were becoming Marxists, and instead was interested in the idea of reviving the
Populist Party. He approached Fullingham at his residence in
Kountze, and proposed the idea to the editor, suggesting that Fullingham could be the leader of the party. According to Davis, Fullingham rebuked him, calling him "...one of the dumbest
piss-ants I've ever met," and suggested Davis "figure out this stuff for yourself." In late 1967 and 1968, Davis returned to Los Angeles and joined the Southern California District of the
Communist Party, headed by
Dorothy Healey, in solidarity with their stand against the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He left SDS after the 1969 "
Days of Rage," and looked back on the achievements of the movement with ambivalence. His education was punctuated by stints as a meat cutter, truck driver, and a
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activist. At 28, Davis returned to college, studying economics and history at the
University of California, Los Angeles on a union scholarship. Davis earned his BA and MA degrees, but did not complete the PhD program in history. ==Career==