Richard L. Davis championed racial equality throughout the eastern coalfields, calling for an end to the color line and for all miners to unite against wage slavery. Born in Roanoke County, Virginia, in 1862, he arrived in racially integrated Rendville in 1882 and became an organizer for the Knights of Labor. In 1886, a year after the Great Hocking Valley Strike, he wrote his first letters to the editor of the National Labor Tribune, establishing himself as a voice for miners in the labor movement. From 1890 to 1899, he wrote 168 letters to the editors of the National Labor Tribune and the United Mine Workers Journal urging organization for fair wages, working conditions, and racial equality in the mines. He was one of two African Americans from Ohio who attended the founding convention of the United Mine Workers of America in Columbus, Ohio, in January 1890. He then served for five years on the executive board of District 6 of the United Mine Workers of America and was twice elected to its National Executive Committee in 1896-97. Blacklisted by mine operators, he fell on hard times and died in 1900, and he is buried in Rendville Cemetery.