Newsroom

One of Fort Worth’s most notable citizens died February 15: Clifford Davis. He was 100.

Born Oct. 12, 1924, Davis grew up the son of a sharecropper in Wilton, Arkansas. Wilton was deeply segregated, and the local Black school system stopped at the eighth grade. Clifford’s parents rented a house in Little Rock, the state capital, where he and five of his six siblings lived while attending high school and college.

He graduated from Philander Smith College, a historically Black institution, in 1945. Davis wanted to go to law school, but there were none in Arkansas that would accept Black applicants, so he moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University, where he received his law degree in 1949.

He worked with Justice Thurgood Marshall on the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education, that eventually led to school desegregation.

After moving to Fort Worth, Davis represented five Black students who were barred from attending Mansfield High School in 1955. Davis sued Mansfield ISD and won in 1956. When his clients attempted to enter the school, however, they were met by a mob. In 1959, he brought a class-action suit against Fort Worth ISD, which remained segregated. He won, and this time the system agreed to a plan to integrate its schools. Eventually Mansfield ISD and Fort Worth ISD integrated, largely because of lawsuits and pressure from Davis.

Davis opened one of the first Black law firms in Tarrant County and was one of the county’s first Black judges.

An elementary school in FWISD bears his name.

And here is where the story takes a turn.

Last year at Clifford Davis Elementary, 6% of students met grade level standards in reading on state assessments. 7% met grade level in math. That means, in a typical classroom, only 1 or 2 students are meeting grade level.

These results hold true across all the different groups of kids at the school, Black students, who make up 45% of the student population, show similar outcomes to the overall numbers.

And this is not about one school; across all subjects and all schools in Fort Worth, 77% of Black students are not meeting grade level.

As we honor the memory of Clifford Davis in Fort Worth, we are also forced to acknowledge that we as a community have defaulted on the promise of desegregation—that all children deserve equal access to a quality education. The school that bears Mr. Davis’s name stands as a stark reminder and symbol of that broken promise.

That’s why I believe literacy (and numeracy) is a civil rights issue. Clifford Davis was not just fighting for all children to have access to a school building. He was fighting for the idea that all our children have a fundamental right to a minimum standard of education—one that provides access to literacy.

Clifford Davis was right.

The most meaningful way we can honor Mr. Davis’s legacy today is to continue his fight, because what he was fighting for has not yet been realized.

Most of us who were born after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s want to believe that if we had been alive then, we would have been on the right side, the side of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Clifford Davis. The heroes we have read about. We want to believe that we would not have stood by and been OK with segregated schools, water fountains, and lunch counters.

What side would we have been on? What would we have done?

Here’s our chance to answer that question. In this very moment, 2025, in our city, all children still do not have access to the education they deserve. Whose side are we on now? What will we do now? What we tell our grandchildren about where we stood?

This isn’t about blame and certainly not about blaming one particular school. When Rosa Parks had to sit at the back of the bus, we didn’t just blame the bus or the bus driver. There are all kinds of big, complicated reasons for the situation we are in. Nevertheless, it is true: the promise of equal access to education has not been fulfilled in our time.

What if we as a city rallied to the cause? What if we collectively said, “Not on our watch?”

Let us, as a whole community, take up again Clifford Davis’s fight to give all the children of Fort Worth the opportunity to receive a good education. And let’s start with Clifford Davis Elementary School.

In her poem, Turning to One Another, Margaret Wheatley writes:

 

There is no greater power than a community discovering
what it cares about.
Ask “What is possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.
Notice what you care about.
Assume that many others share your dreams.
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

 

Ask. Discover. Notice. Dream. Be brave. Start conversations.

There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.

 

After the devastation of World War I, Quakers brought relief to the impoverished people of Poland. They distributed food and clothing, along with other relief measures. One of the Quaker relief workers contracted Typhus and died.  There were only Catholic cemeteries in this little Polish village, and church law at the time forbade anyone not of that faith to be buried in that ground.

So the Quakers buried their friend in a grave just outside the Catholic cemetery.

Fences keep people out and keep people in. They draw a boundary around who belongs and who doesn’t.

Fort Worth Education Partnership is releasing our annual report this week that details how students in Fort Worth schools are doing academically. As I have reflected on this year’s report, I have thought about the fences that keep people in and out—the fences that keep too many of our Fort Worth kids from access to opportunity.

Our report shows that there is a “fence” that separates 65% of our kids in Fort Worth from full opportunity. That “fence” is not being able to perform at grade level in school. This year’s FWEP report shows that 65% of Fort Worth kids are not at grade level.

Why does this matter? A recent study by the State of Texas followed 3^rd graders who scored below grade level on the state assessment. As they followed those 3^rd graders over the next 15 years, they found that less than 2% went on to earn a 2- or 4-year degree after high school. In other words, over 98% of 3^rd graders who were below grade level did not earn a college degree of any kind.

How our kids are doing in school now matters immensely for what they will be able to do in their future. Our children who can’t read or do math at grade level are stuck behind a forbidding fence that runs between them and future opportunity.

Our FWEP report shows there are 170,000 children in public schools that are located in the City of Fort Worth. Of those students, 39% are in FWISD schools, 48% are in the 11 other ISDs that have schools in Fort Worth, and 13% are in public charter schools. Across all of those school systems, only 35% of kids are meeting grade level standards.

We have issued this report for several years, and, unfortunately, it’s not getting better for Fort Worth kids. The percentage went down one point this year from 36% last year. And when it comes to reading, the percentage of kids reading at grade level in Fort Worth has gone down 3 points in the last two years.

Think about what this means for Fort Worth kids and their ability to access opportunities in their future. Most—not some; most— of our children in Fort Worth cannot read well.

There is fence that stands between most Fort Worth kids and full opportunity. Those who are denied a quality education are denied access to a path to prosperity. If things don’t change, too many Fort Worth kids are going to be left on the outside looking in.

That Quaker relief worker in Poland after WWI was buried outside the fence surrounding the Catholic cemetery. The next morning, however, there was a surprise. During the night the villagers had moved the fence so that the cemetery now included the grave of the Quaker relief worker.

Fences are real, but they don’t have to be permanent. Fences can be moved. The boundaries of who belongs—who has access and who does not, who is in and who is out—can be redrawn.

This is the work that my organization, Fort Worth Education Partnership, is called to, and it is a work and responsibility we share with many other individuals and organizations in our city.

The future is not fixed. We can be fence movers in Fort Worth. If we have the will, we can make sure all Fort Worth kids are included in the abundant opportunities that are possibilities for them.

Let’s be about the work of moving those fences together. Will you join us?