Overcoming: The Autobiography of W. Harry Davis

W. Harry Davis has been a leading voice for civil rights in his native Minneapolis for more than four decades. Rising from the impoverished North Side ghetto of his childhood, he became the founding chief executive of the Minneapolis Urban Coalition, a twenty-year member of the city’s school board, and one of the first black executives at a major Twin Cities corporation. Along the way he overcame polio, became the region’s most successful amateur boxing coach, led a historic church merger, founded a bank, served on the U.S. Olympic boxing committee, and campaigned as the city’s first black mayoral candidate.

Davis’s story serves as a reminder that the civil-rights movement was not confined to places like Selma and Birmingham, but also transformed lives for the better in Minneapolis and around the country. Told with Davis’s characteristic generosity of spirit, it will also inspire hope in anyone who has ever wondered whether life’s obstacles can be overcome.