BY KONNER METZ
Managing Sports Editor
This article will be published in The Review’s special magazine issue, set to be available on campus starting the week of April 24.
Hilda Davis sat in the basement of Memorial Hall, patiently awaiting her next student’s arrival. Once a pupil sat in front of her, she was stern and critical. Her eyes would scour a paper, finding grammatical mistakes galore, and hiding no signs of displeasure if the student hadn’t been readily prepared.
To some, Davis may have just been another faculty member at the Writing Center, no one quite important. But to others, she is much, much more.
“Her personality was one of those things, that her reputation around campus was if you go to Dr. Davis, she’ll help you,” current university English professor Ronald Whittington says. “But you don’t come there and not be prepared.”
Whittington considers Davis a mentor during his time at the university from 1967 to 1970. A middle linebacker on the football team and a player for Blue Hens baseball, the longtime professor can tell stories upon stories about Davis’ assistance, her life troubles and the impact she made on numerous university students. That’s how he carries on her memory, even at a time when it seems like that may be fading.
Davis was the first Black faculty member at the university, ever. Her background was wildly impressive, with an undergraduate degree from Howard University, a master’s from Radcliffe College and a doctorate in human development from the University of Chicago.
She was integral in helping students, particularly athletes, improve their writing, and find where they fit in academically. An athlete’s career in college couldn’t last forever, so she seeked out those athletes to help them find themselves outside of sport.
“You know how to write, but I want you to meet Hilda Davis,” Whittington recalls being told one day by one of his professors. “I want you to meet this woman. Because she’ll be a mentor for you for your life.”
Whittington would spend tons of time with Davis at the Writing Center, where she was an associate director. Later in life after college, he often went to her residence at the then Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). He was her “chauffeur,” driving her to fancy events, hotels and dinners with esteemed persons across the state, including former school president Art Trabant.
“She was a special person,” Whittington says. “When you go to her house, her house was completely full, from floor to the ceiling, with newspapers. She read all day, she read all the time. She was the most informed person I’ve ever been around.
“I said, Dr. Davis, ‘If you ever have a fire you’re not gonna be able to get out of here.’
She said ‘If the Lord is going to take me, he’s going to take me.’”
Whittington calls Davis’ sense of humor “remarkable,” even in the later stages of her life. All of his memories about Davis stick with him, from her sternness in writing and grammar, her willingness to aid anyone and her self-aware humility and comedy.
Whittington is lobbying for a dormitory or university building to be named after Davis for the great impacts she made on students, not to mention breaking the race barrier as the first Black faculty member. But upon online search, the most anyone can find concerning the 20th century pioneer is a quick, six-paragraph summary of her memorial service after her death in 2001. To Whittington, that’s unacceptable for one of the university’s most courageous faculty members ever, to be forgotten and ignored by the institution she assisted.
If the university continues to fail to preserve or honor her name, Whittington explains that would be “a sin,” given that she was a “trailblazer.”
Whittington has seen prominent Black figures in the university’s history ignored before, which is what he’s trying to prevent with Hilda Davis.
One example is Louis L. Redding, Delaware’s first Black lawyer. Redding was a well-known Civil Rights lawyer, part of the team in Brown v. Board of Education that challenged segregation in schools.
“It was way too long when they finally got around to Lou Redding,” he says. “When they named the Honors dorm after Lou Redding, he was already dead.”
Redding and Davis often interacted, as Whittington witnessed in his time spent with his longtime mentor.
“They were looking for good trouble,” Whittington says. “They were doing stuff behind the scenes.”
The YWCA honored Davis later in her life, naming a single women’s residence after her in 1988, according to Ruth Sokolowski, former executive director at the YWCA of Delaware (formerly known as YWCA of New Castle).
Sokolowski wrote in an email statement that Davis was an honorary board member during Sokolowski’s time as director (1992 to 2003) and that she remembers Davis speaking of the challenges of being the first Black person and the first woman in many fields.
Whittington and others saw Davis’ impact on women’s rights as well. She was inducted into the Delaware Commission for Women’s Hall of Fame of Delaware Women in 1986.
“She was a feminist,” Whittington says. “She was a real feminist. People knew it. And I don’t know whether the University of Delaware has ever actually ever understood why a woman with these means would live at the Y, or accept the position as the director of the Writing Center even though she had her Ph.D..
“She changed my life. I was really kind of in the wilderness when I came to campus. She was one of the people that said, ‘Follow me and you’ll be okay.’”
This is so inspirational!!!