On February 1st, the beginning of Black History Month, Oklahoma State University celebrated Nancy Randolph Davis Day. Nancy Randolph Davis was the first African American student to enroll at OSU (formerly Oklahoma A&M) college in 1949. Before graduating with a Master of Science from Oklahoma State University in 1952, she earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Langston University, Oklahoma’s only historically black university.
During her lifetime, Nancy Randolph Davis’ dedication to education and social justice work not only significantly impacted OSU and the trajectory of our institution’s history, but all of Oklahoma, and her legacy continues to resonate throughout our lives today.
Oklahoma State University composition students often engage in assignments that encourage them to examine the spaces around them, asking questions like—who are the people behind the names that are bestowed on our campus buildings? What stories are behind the artwork that are found all across our campus? Here in Stillwater, students will find Nancy Randolph Davis’ name all around them—in 2001, a residence hall was named Nancy Randolph Davis Hall, and in 2020, the Human Sciences building was also renamed after Davis. In the courtyard of the Nancy Randolph Davis building stands a statue depicting a young black woman in a graduation cap and gown— dedicated in honor of Davis in 2020. Three OSU scholarships are awarded in her name each year, and since her graduation in ’52, Davis has been presented with multiple Oklahoma State honors and achievements. Further research into Davis’ impact on our campus will bring students to Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, whose successful and significant U.S. Supreme Court case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents, granted her admissions into the University of Oklahoma’s School of Law after being denied entrance on the basis of race. Seeing Ada Louis Sipuel Fisher fight to become the first African American student to be admitted OU Law encouraged Davis to apply to OSU, and to pursue her education there. Davis’ admittance was met with resistance from the Dean of Home Economics, the graduate program to which Davis was applying. It was suggested to Davis that she apply to schools outside of Oklahoma, a practice used by white higher education officials in Oklahoma to support the segregation laws of the state. However, Davis’ determination to enter OSU led her to seek out individuals to speak on her behalf for admittance, two of those people being Roscoe Dunjee, well-known editor of the Black Dispatch, a weekly African American Oklahoma newspaper, and Amos T. Hall, a civil rights pioneer and NAACP lawyer from Tulsa. Davis was then admitted to OSU in 1949, but because of segregation laws, Davis was first prohibited from sitting inside the classroom with her white classmates. Instead, she was forced to sit in the hallway and participate in class from there. When her classmates complained to their instructors about this, Davis was finally allowed entrance into the classroom.
In our first-year composition courses, students engage in projects and classroom assignments that ask them to explore the extensive library services and archives of Oklahoma State University. This community-driven research focus allows our students to connect more deeply with the history of the institution, to learn more about the legacy of students who came before them, and how they, as young scholars, are actively informing and shaping campus culture, campus life, and the future of Oklahoma State University. However, our composition curricula are interested in taking students outside of the classroom, encouraging them to examine how institutions entangle with and are not separate from the landscapes they are built within, or with culturally significant moments that are happening “outside” of institutional doors. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge that Nancy Randolph Davis’ pioneering civil rights activism may have started with Oklahoma State University, but it certainly did not end after she graduated. During her years teaching at Dunjee Highschool, Davis met Clara Luper, an American Civil Rights pioneer, and a monumental figure in both Oklahoman and American history. In 1957, Davis helped organize student support to promote Luper’s play Brother President, the story of Martin Luther King Jr., as Luper prepared to take the performance all the way to New York City, where it was performed at the main chapter of the NAACP in 1958. These students were some of the first members of Oklahoma City’s NAACP Youth Council, an organization in which Davis was deeply involved, and the organization responsible for one of the first sit-ins during the civil rights movement—the 1958 Katz Drug Store sit-in, which led to the desegregation of Katz Drug Store lunch counters in three states. Davis was also fundamental in advocating for and ensuring desegregation within the high schools she taught at—the imminent closure of Dunjee School in 1972 led to Davis’ transfer to Star Spencer High School, where many of her former Black students had been transferred as well. There, at a predominantly white school, Davis advocated for and ensured that Black students were learning in classrooms that were safe, equitable, and full of opportunity. Nancy Randolph Davis continued to be an integral figure in desegregation efforts within Oklahoma, and her educational leadership and civil rights activism are both extensively-documented and deeply engrained into the history of our state.
Throughout Black History Month, organizations across OSU’s campus are holding events for students to come and learn, listen, and celebrate. On Friday, February 17th, the Muscogee Nation, Langston University, and OSU Extension are holding an event with Coming Together for Racial Understanding, where students will celebrate “…the food, artistic, and cultural traditions of the Muscogee Nation, African American/Black and Latino communities through a variety of performances and presentations.” The Tulsa Historical Society and Museum has installed a travelling exhibit on the history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the history of the Greenwood Area outside of the Hargis Leadership Institute office. Learn more about upcoming events here, and take the time to utilize OSU’s extensive archives to reflect back on past Black History Month celebrations, on Nancy Randolph Davis’ incredible achievements, and the ways in which students have changed the course of OSU’s missions, legacy, and history.