Jackson Davis, an educational reformer and amateur photographer, was born in Cumberland County, Virginia, to William Anderson and Sally Wyatt (Guy) Davis on September 25, 1882. He attended the public schools of Richmond, Virginia, and received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1902 and his M.A. from Columbia University in 1908. Throughout his career Davis specialized in Southern education, interracial problems, and education in Belgian Congo and Liberia. From 1915 to 1946 his work at the General Education Board in New York, New York, focused on improving education in the Southern states. During this time he took nearly 6,000 photographs of African-American schools, teachers and students throughout the Southeastern United States. Most were intended to demonstrate the wretched conditions of African-American schools and to show how they could be improved, and they provide a unique view of Southern education during the first half of the twentieth century. Davis died in Cartersville, Virginia, on April 15, 1947. At the time of his death he was president of the board of trustees of Booker T. Washington Institute in Liberia, president of the New York Colonization Society, and a member of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and of the Advisory Committee on Education in Liberia. His influence on behalf of better relations and understanding between whites and African Americans and his pioneer work in promoting regional centers of education in the South were of immense significance. His photographs and papers were donated after his death to the University of Virginia Library.