When Christopher Davis was an elementary schooler in Proctor, Arkansas, his teacher asked him to come to the front of the class and say his times tables. Smiling, he said, “one times one is one, one times two is two, one times three is three.”
His classmates laughed. Obviously, this wasn’t what his teacher wanted.
“Chris,” she said. “We’re not doing the ‘ones.’ We’re doing the ‘sevens.’
“I don’t know the sevens,” he said.
“Why don’t you know them?”
“Because I can’t learn,” he said smugly.
Again, his classmates laughed, and Davis went about the rest of his day and took the school bus home. What he didn’t know, however, was that his teacher had called his grandmother, L.E. Chambers, who was unamused by his antics. The next day, Davis’ teacher again called him to the front of the room and asked him to say his times tables ― specifically the ‘sevens.’
“I told you yesterday I didn’t know them,” Davis told her. “What part of ‘I can’t learn’ don’t you understand?”
The class erupted in laughter. Then the door opened, and Davis saw his grandmother standing on the other side. She asked to see Davis in the hall. When he stepped out, Davis noticed a switch on the floor. Chambers picked it up, grabbed his wrists, and prepared to hit him, but was stopped by the principal.
“No, Mrs. Chambers, you can’t do that out here in the hall,” he said. “Take him to my office.”
After that, Davis learned his times tables.
It was emblematic of the value his grandmother placed on school. Chambers herself was not well-educated. She had an eighth-grade education and worked as a domestic worker, like her mother. Davis’ grandfather, meanwhile, had a third-grade education and worked as a laborer. But they loved Davis dearly, and they wanted his life to be different than theirs. A good education, they believed, could be his way out of poverty, and they pushed him to excel academically.
Their efforts paid off. Because decades after Davis proclaimed "I can’t learn" in front of his class, he has been named the permanent president of LeMoyne-Owen College ― where he has the chance to support hundreds of students with backgrounds like his.
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“I really view my coming to LeMoyne as a calling,” he said. “I know, as a first-generation college student, the difference a college education has made in my life… There are other students out there who look like me, whose stories are very similar to mine, who are still first-generation students. And I want to be the conduit, to provide for them, the opportunity, that the college education has provided for me.”
'What will be my legacy?'
Davis’ journey to the presidency at LeMoyne-Owen ― the fifth oldest historically Black college and university in the country ― is not an orthodox one.
A young Davis was accepted into West Point, with an assist from then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, who he was interning for. But he wanted to go to law school after graduation, and earning a degree at the military academy meant he’d have to first spend four years in the military. So, after two years, he left West Point and enrolled at the University of Arkansas, confident he was destined to become “the Black Perry Mason.”
But his senior year, something changed. As he put it, “God started messing with me.” Davis felt called to ministry, and rather than go to law school after graduation, he became pastor of a small church in Van Buren, Arkansas. Then, in 2000, he moved to Memphis, to become pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church in Whitehaven .
With Davis at the helm, St. Paul’s congregation grew immensely, and as he led the church, he earned a master’s degree from Memphis Theological Seminary, then a doctorate from United Theological Seminary in Ohio. After this, he accepted a professorship at Memphis Theological Seminary, while continuing to lead St. Paul’s.
As Davis further immersed himself in the Memphis community, he joined the board of LeMoyne-Owen College and had a stint as chair. When Vernell Bennett-Fairs resigned from the school’s presidency in June 2023 , Davis was asked to become the interim leader.
At first, he didn’t have any interest in the permanent job; he viewed himself as a placeholder until a new president was named. But Davis excelled in the role, and people started to ask, “Have you prayed about staying?”
It wasn’t a possibility that Davis took lightly. A college presidency is an immense responsibility. But he ultimately realized he wanted the job.
“I’m at that age now, where I’m starting to think about, ‘What will be my legacy?’” he said. “What will my stewardship report be for the life I’ve been given, the time I’ve been afforded? … LeMoyne, really, is an opportunity, for me to pay it forward, in a real way, to help young people who are first-generation students, for whom a college education can be a life changer.”
Enrollment and the endowment
To help those students, though, he also has to get them to the school ― and boosting enrollment is a major priority for LeMoyne-Owen.
As of now, Davis expects the college to have around 650 students in fall 2024. This is a significant boost from last year when it had just over 500 students. But it’s still a far cry from where he wants the number to be. In the long run, Davis explained, LeMoyne-Owen needs to have about 1,300 students each year.
Not that he sees this as an insurmountable goal. Davis thinks the school can reach the 1,000 mark next year and have 1,300 students enrolled in two years.
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But just how does he plan to do this?
“You’ve got to recruit a stellar team… which we’re in the process of doing now,” he said. “But the biggest thing becomes, you have to make LeMoyne the school of choice… Everyone associated with LeMoyne has to feel this way: that students don’t go to LeMoyne because they couldn’t go someplace better, they come to LeMoyne because there is no place better.”
He also wants to strengthen the college’s relationship with Memphis-Shelby County Schools ― which has a wealth of students it can recruit ― and develop pipelines of students from cities like St. Louis and Birmingham.
Boosting enrollment is just one of Davis’ goals. Once students arrive at LeMoyne-Owen, they need to succeed. And because many of the college’s students come from low-income families and face a slew of challenges outside the classroom, they aren’t necessarily prepared for college. So, LeMoyne-Owen offers a variety of support services for students and could add more. Currently, the college’s retention rate is about 40%. Eventually, Davis wants to raise this to 80%.
And as Davis seeks to help students, he wants to help LeMoyne-Owen grow its endowment.
In 2020, the college received a $40 million gift from the Commu nity Foundation of Greater Memphis, the largest financial donation in the school’s history. It provides LeMoyne-Owen with about $2 million a year in funds and raised the total size of LeMoyne-Owen’s endowment to $55 million.
But Davis wants the total size of the endowment to reach $100 million.
“When we talk about the gift from the Community Foundation, normally in articles, we talk about it as a transformational gift,” he said. “And that's a wonderful way to describe it. But here's the reality. The $40 million did not transform LeMoyne. What it allowed LeMoyne to do is survive. Now we have to move our attention from merely surviving to thriving, and that's going to take some serious fundraising.”
It’s a lot to tackle, but Davis is excited about the tasks ahead. And as he leads Lemoyne-Owen, he keeps his late grandparents close to his heart.
“The Bible says that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” he said. “And I just like to believe that my maternal great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother, and my grandfather, are all a part of that great cloud of witnesses. And they're saying, ‘Every sacrifice, every investment, every prayer, has paid off.’”
John Klyce covers education and children's issues for The Commercial Appeal. You can reach him at John.klyce@commercialappeal.com.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 'A calling.' New LeMoyne-Owen President Christopher Davis reflects on past, talks plans for HBCU
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