William Harry Davis, Sr. (April 12, 1923 – August 11, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, amateur boxing coach, civic leader, and businessman in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Davis is remembered for his warm and positive personality, for coaching Golden Gloves champions in the upper Midwest, and for managing the Olympics boxing team that won nine gold medals.

A leader in desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement, Davis helped Americans find a way forward to racial equality.

They met Chick Webb and danced to Duke Ellington and Count Basie who stayed there on tours to the Orpheum Theatre.

Davis attended the University of Minnesota and later in life received an honorary doctorate in law from Macalester College.

[4][5][6][7][8] Phyllis Wheatley taught amateur boxxing as exercise and a fun sport, as well as to discourage street fighting, and as a form of self-defense.

Among his students were Clyde Bellecourt who cofounded the American Indian Movement and Jimmy Jackson who won a national Golden Gloves championship in 1957.

[9][10][11] He established a strong relationship to the other winners from Minneapolis, including Duane Bobick, Jack Graves, Virgil Hill, Roland Miller, Pat O'Connor, Don Sargeant, and Dave Sherbrooke.

[13] In 1966 Davis and group of eight others founded the Twin Cities Opportunity Industrialization Center (TCOIC), a program both criticized for excessive spending and lauded for providing job training to local African Americans.

In 1967, after large-scale disturbances in several major U.S. cities, the largely African-American neighborhood around Plymouth Avenue in north Minneapolis witnessed urban unrest.

After several buildings were set on fire, Davis worked with mayor Arthur Naftalin to resolve tensions between community members and the police.

[15] Davis continued to be active in school issues as late as 2006, when he supported Thandiwe Peebles, who resigned as superintendent.

When integration or desegregation began in the 1960s, black families sometimes experienced frightening persecution in Minneapolis by individuals and groups behaving like the latter-day Ku Klux Klan in southern cities.

Davis was a production foreman and later employee services manager for Onan Corporation and the founding chief executive of the Urban Coalition.

[20] Except when the United States competed alone in St. Louis in 1904 and won every medal, the 1984 team's nine gold and one silver is the best record in Olympic boxing.

In 2003, he published Changemaker, a history of the civil rights movement in Minnesota for young readers aged 10 and up, based on his memoirs.