Chester Davis, former chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts, died on February 5 in Tallahassee, Florida, where he lived. He was 88 years old.
A native of Gary, Indiana, Professor Davis earned bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of Chicago. After earning a doctoral degree at Syracuse University in New York, Dr. Davis taught at the Dalton School in New York and Concordia University in Montreal.
After a short stint at the Institute of the Black World at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Dr. Davis joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 1971. He chaired the Afro-American studies department there from 1985 to 1988.
