Information from Davis' 601 page FBI file reveals that Davis (born 1905) became interested in the
Communist Party USA as far back as 1931.
In June of 1950, a person Frank Marshall Davis was trying to recruit into the Communist Party revealed to the FBI, that his interest in the Party went back to 1931 with the Scottsboro and
Angelo Herndon cases.
Certainly from the mid/late '30s to the early '40s Davis was involved in several Communist Party fronts including the the
National Negro Congress, the
League of American Writers, the
National Federation for Constitutional Libertiesand the
Civil Rights Congress.
The FBI first began tracking Davis in 1944 when they identified him as member of the Communist Party's
Dorie Miller Club in Chicago-card number 47544.
As he was elected to the Communist Party convention that year and had to be a member for at least one year prior to that to be elected, he had been a member at least since 1943. The May 1944 convention changed the name of the Communist Party to
Communist Political Association. Earl Browder, the Party leader, would later be accused of "dissolving" the Communist Party by changing its name. In June 1945, another convention was held, Browder was removed from leadership and the
Communist Party USA name was restored. In early 1945. Davis was reported by the FBI to be a member of the Carver Second Ward West of the Communist Political Association, and by 1946 a member of the Carver Club of the Communist Party.
Davis' wife,
Helen Canfield Davis, was a member of the Paul Robeson Club of the Communist Party of Chicago and her 1947 Communist Party card number was 62109.
Davis taught courses at the party controlled
Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago and attended meetings of the party's Cultural Club until he left for Hawaii in 1948.
One of Frank Marshall Davis's last public acts
[4]in Chicago, before leaving for Hawaii, was to MC a symposium "Problems of the progressive writer" October 27 1948 at the Ingleside Inferno, 6346 South Ingleside, for
Students for Wallace-the University of Chicago youth wing of the communist dominated
Progressive Party.