Dr. Gerald Davis was a leading scholar of African American folklife who contributed to the academic and public arenas, a documentary filmmaker, and a mentor. Born in New York City in 1941, Gerald Davis earned his BA in English/speech and drama from Fisk University, his MA in folklore from University of California-Berkeley in 1973, where he studied with Alan Dundes, and his PhD in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. Prior to entering folklore, Jerry Davis served African American and African communities working in community organizing and development for such organizations as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the Poor People’s Campaign and Chicago Fair Housing Campaign and for the Ministry of Community Development and National Culture in Tanzania in the 1960s. These experiences ignited his life’s passion for researching African-derived expressive culture.

In the early 1970s, he was hired as the Associate Director of Folklife Programs where he initiated the African Diaspora Research Program and developed and curated portions of the Festival of American Folklife. He next began his academic teaching career at Rutgers University in Africana Studies, receiving tenure in 1985 and becoming chair in 1990. His mentorship of students included being a co-founder of the Association of African and African American Folklorists, serving as an advisor to the Philadelphia Folklore Project, and being a panelist for numerous state and national grant panel reviews. He was also elected as a Fellow of AFS in 1994. Among the numerous awards he attained were National Endowment for the Humanities Media Grant, NRC/Ford Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship, and National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship. Through several of these opportunities, he discovered a love for New Mexico and the Southwest while at the Anthropological Film Center, and in 1995 he joined the American Studies Department of the University of New Mexico, where he remained until his death.

Dr. Davis wrote numerous articles addressing African American folklife and material culture, theory for African American folklore, and use of media in fieldwork. However, he was best known for his acclaimed performative analyses of African American sermons and preaching, in his award-winning film and his heralded book:

The Performed Word (1980 film)

I Got the Word in Me and I Can Sing It, Don’t You Know (1985)

Phyllis M. May-Machunda