CAMP W.B. DAVIS

Camp Davis was a segregated Scout camp operated from 1932 to 1944.  It was named after W.B. Davis, D.D.S., a district chairman. The camp was located on South Chickamauga Creek off Highway 58.  In 1939 it was described as being "nine miles out on the New Silverdale highway."  The camp was described as being on "Hawkins Farm" and "on Silverdale Road."  One article refers to the camp as "Camp Hawkins," perhaps a reference to Hawkins Farm, and says the camp is "east of Missionary Ridge."

In James R. Mapp, "Chance or Circumstance?: A Memoir and Journey through the Struggle for Civil Rights" (2016) (ISBN 9781491780329), Mapp recalls riding the east Chattanooga streetcar to the end of the line to go to Hawkins Farm on Highway 58.  "We hoped that the white boys were not around, because they would make us run to protect ourselves."  He recalls, "When we arrived at the farm, we would swim in the nearby creek and camp out."

In 1935, a "national training course for leaders of Region 5" was conducted at Camp Davis under the direction of Stanley Harris, national chairman of interracial affairs.

Camp W.B. Davis should not be confused with the Camp Davis that the Nashville Council operated for black Scouts. In 1943, the Nashville Council purchased fifty-five acres off Couchville Pike at the confluence of Bryant’s Creek with Stone’s River as a summer camp for black scouts which opened in 1944 as Camp Davis, named after Dr. E.A. Davis. Charles M. Cooper, a native of Chattanooga and graduate of Tuskegee Institute, was field executive in Nashville. He directed the 1944 summer session at Camp Davis. Wilbur F. Creighton & Leland R. Johnson, Boys Will Be Men: Middle Tennessee Scouting Since 1910 at 109 (1983).