by Donald James, For the Michigan Chronicle
While one’s ethnicity should never be a determining factor related to selling or buying new automobiles (or anything else), this year’s North American International Detroit Auto Show is the perfect time to remember the late Ed Davis. Davis is the bold African American man who blazed segregated and racist trails in the Jim Crow Era to become a history-making automobile dealer in Detroit.
The Ed Davis story, as a pioneering figure in automobile sales, began in the mid-1930s and is interlaced with ups and downs in an era when Black people were finding footing in the booming manufacturing and assembly segments of the automobile industry, but not on the sales end of the spectrum. Yet, Davis found a way – his way – to persevere in search of his automotive dreams as a dealership owner – first in 1939 and again in 1963.
“I was the first Black dealer among the 25,000 dealerships of the Big Three,” Davis wrote in his riveting autobiography, One Man’s Way, published in 1979. “When I decided to get out of the business in 1971, I was among Chrysler Corporation’s most aggressive dealers, selling about 1,000 new cars and twice that figure in used cars a year at my Chrysler-Plymouth Dealership.”
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1911, Davis moved to Detroit in his early teens to live with relatives and pursue a quality education. In Detroit, young Davis shined shoes and washed cars. He became enamored with the big, flashy vehicles coming in for exterior and interior cleanings. The fancy cars caused Davis to dream of not only owning new vehicles but also one day selling them to Black and White people. He was often laughed at for daring to dream of selling to White people when no other Black person in Detroit – or perhaps the country – was selling new vehicles across racial lines in the mid-1920s.
Davis graduated from Cass Technical High School, which he described as an excellent vocational institution that taught him plenty about business. Undaunted about his post-graduate ambitions, the teen’s dream began to unfold slowly. Davis wrote in his autobiography about a White man, Merton L. Lampkins, who was Davis’ constant car wash customer. Lampkins, a supervisor at Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck, liked Davis’ work ethic and offered him a job at the auto assembly factory. Davis, in his late teens, was hired at 27 cents an hour – big money in the late 1920s.
In 1936, Lampkins opened Merton L. Lampkins Chrysler-Plymouth, a new car dealership in Highland Park, and Davis, 25, was hired as a part-time salesman with two conditions: sell cars only to Black people and refrain from working on the main sales floor.
“I could not work on the showroom floor with White salesmen,” Davis wrote. “I was told that if I worked on the floor, I would be seen by prospective White buyers, and that would be bad for business…I was given working space in the stockroom upstairs to work with only Black customers.”
After far outselling the White salespeople, Davis was permitted to work on the showroom floor, which didn’t sit well with the White sales crew or White customers. Nevertheless, Davis’ selling acumen was undeniable to management, perhaps realizing that Black didn’t matter – only green!
In 1938, Davis made plans to start his own car dealership in Detroit despite the odds. Yet, amid segregation and intimidation, Davis, according to his autobiography, opened Davis Motors Sales on December 4, 1939, a used-car lot located at 421 East Vernor Highway near downtown Detroit. He was later awarded a new Studebaker car dealership, making him the nation’s first African American to own a Studebaker franchise. At the time, Studebaker was a top automotive brand.
Davis subsequently brokered a deal that made him a sub-dealer and vice president at Floyd Rice Ford, one of Detroit’s largest Ford dealerships.
“I started selling Fords and did exceptionally well,” Davis wrote.
However, Davis wanted another shot at owning a new car dealership. On November 11, 1963, Davis got his shot when he was awarded a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, making him the first Black person in the world to own one. Davis opened the dealership on Dexter Avenue and Elmhurst Street on Detroit’s west side, near where he and his wife, Mary Agnes Davis, lived on Chicago Boulevard.
Davis consistently placed ads in local newspapers, including the Michigan Chronicle, to market his new dealership. His core message in the ads was Ed Davis’ Chrysler Dealership is Always Competitive and Good Citizenship is Our Business, too!
Davis made empowering the Black community a priority. Following the Detroit Riot in July 1967, he was instrumental in organizing job training classes in partnership with Dexter Boulevard Redevelopment.
“I had made up my mind that the way for me to help my people now was in preparing them to take advantage of the economic opportunities that were opening up,” Davis wrote. “Jobs meant economic strength.”
On February 26, 1971, Davis closed his Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, writing, “It was time to move onward to new challenges and responsibilities.”
From 1971 to 1974, Davis was a top executive with the Detroit Department of Streets Railways (DSR). He ultimately returned to strategizing how best to advocate on behalf of African Americans and other minorities to gain more automobile dealerships across the nation. Davis is one of the founders of the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers (NAMAD), an advocacy organization founded in 1980 to promote diversity and inclusion across the automobile industry. NAMAD is comprised of Black, Latino, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander car dealers.
Over the years, Davis received dozens of awards and honors connected to his excellence as an automobile dealership owner and community leader. In 1969, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Quality Dealer Award and Time’s Magazine Quality Dealer Award. The same year, the Detroit Auto Show presented him with its highest honor for his accomplishments as a dealer in Detroit. In 1996, Davis became the first African American inducted into the industry’s “Automotive Hall of Fame” in Dearborn, Michigan.
Ed Davis passed on May 3, 1999. Yet, 60 years after he opened the nation’s first Black new car “Big Three” dealership in 1963, there are now 313 – and counting – Black franchises selling all brands of new and used automobiles.
“Ed Davis is a true legend. We have his picture on our Wall of Founders here at NAMAD’s headquarters in Largo, Maryland,” Perry Watson IV, NAMAD’s president, told the Michigan Chronicle. “He was on the front line for creating pathways for the Black auto dealers you see today, and he broke through barriers not just for African Americans, but for other minorities and women.”
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