He began his career writing for African American papers in Chicago. He moved to Atlanta where he became the editor of the paper he turned into the Atlanta Daily before moving back to Chicago. During this time, he was outspoken about political and social issues. His poetry work was sponsored by the WPA.
In the late 1940s, he moved to Honolulu where he ran a small business. He also became involved in local labor issues where his actions were tracked by the FBI.
Davis died in 1987 in Hawaii.
In his memoir Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama wrote about "Frank", a friend of his grandfather's. "Frank" told Obama that he and Stanley (Obama's maternal grandfather) both had grown up only 50 miles apart, near Wichita, although they did not meet until Hawaii. He described the way race relations were back then, including Jim Crow, and his view that there had been little progress since then. As Obama remembered, "It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawaii had created." Obama also remembered Frank later in life when he took a job in South Chicago as a community organizer and took some time one day to visit the areas where Frank had lived and wrote in his book, "I imagined Frank in a baggy suit and wide lapels, standing in front of the old Regal Theatre, waiting to see Duke or Ella emerge from a gig." .... http://en.wikipedia.org
