An Industrial Edition of The Franklin Times published on June 28, 1935, features articles and photographs concerning notable business enterprises, merchants, and professionals in Franklin County. Among the doctors who were profiled was Judge Bustee Davis, one of two African-American physicians then practicing in Franklin County. The article about Dr. Davis details his significant accomplishments and includes a photograph of his son, Judge Jr., twelve, who “took the highest honors recently in ratings in the county schools, including both white and colored.”

The son of William and Clara Gary Davis, Judge was born on February 1, 1885, in Montgomery, Alabama. He studied at the Pensacola Normal School before entering the Shaw University Preparatory Department in Raleigh. Continuing at Shaw, Davis earned an A.B. degree in 1911. He enrolled in Shaw’s Leonard Medical School, whose trustees in 1914 shortened the course of study from four to two years. Davis completed his medical education at the Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and then served an internship at St. Agnes Hospital in Raleigh, which was associated with what is now St. Augustine’s University.

According to a biographical sketch published in History of the American Negro and His Institutions, North Carolina Edition (1921), Davis established his medical practice in Louisburg in October 1916, providing services to patients of “both races.” Longtime Louisburg resident Teo Anderson recalls that Dr. Davis lived in a house that is still standing on South Main Street. His office, which adjoined the home, has been removed. He became a large stockholder in a local pharmacy, acquired real estate, and operated “automobiles for hire.” He also worked as a medical examiner for such firms as the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company of Durham.

Dr. Davis was active in the medical profession and in the Baptist Church. For more than a decade, he was assistant surgeon at the Jubilee Hospital in Henderson. He served as a board member and recording secretary of the Old North State Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association. In the National Association of Life Insurance Medical Examiners, he held the position of general secretary and was a board member. A deacon in the South Main Street Baptist Church in Louisburg, Dr. Davis served also as president of the North Carolina Baptist Young People’s Union for many years.

The Davis residence on South Main Street was home to a large family. In 1920, Dr. Davis’s mother, brother, sister-in-law, and three children were living there. Ten years later, the household included Davis’s new wife Gertrude, four children, his sister-in-law, his mother, and a nurse named Mamie Finch.

Sometime after 1940, Dr. Davis moved to Fuquay Springs, in Wake County, where he continued to practice medicine. He died there in 1953 after suffering a heart attack.

Published in The Franklin Times on March 29, 2017.

Maury York is director of the Tar River Center for History and Culture at Louisburg College.