Anna Mae Davis was born Anna Mabel Campbell on May 27, 1896 in Sedalia, Missouri, the daughter of Thomas and Mary Campbell. In 1916 she graduated from Kansas City Junior College and subsequently enrolled in the Kansas City School of Law, graduating in 1919. While a law student, she also worked in the office of Frank P. Walsh, a noted labor lawyer. In 1920 she completed an A.B. at the University of Illinois. Thereafter she worked as a social worker, district supervisor, and legal advisor for the Kansas City Provident Association, a local relief agency. In 1922 she enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, where she completed an M.A. thesis entitled Use of the Injunction in Labor Disputes in 1923 and a Ph.D. dissertation entitled The Correlation of Law and Economics in the Commodity Transaction in 1927.
In 1924 Anna Mae married Robert Hardin Davis, a fellow graduate student in economics. Robert Davis was born on December 18, 1889 in Maryville, Texas, the son of Joseph Benjamin Davis and Lucy Hardin Davis. He graduated from Thalia High School and worked for four years as a rural mail carrier in Texas. During World War I he served with an Army Intelligence unit. He received an undergraduate degree from Texas Teachers College, Denton, Texas, in 1922 and then taught at Freeport High School for one year. After enrolling at the University of Wisconsin, he completed an M.A. in History and Economics in 1924 and continued his studies at the University for two more years. As part of his thesis research Davis studied the industrial relations of companies in Beloit and Janesville, and worked in the plants in order to observe management practices.
In 1926 the Davises moved to Baltimore where Anna Mae taught at Goucher College and Robert taught at Forest Park High School. In 1928 they returned to Wisconsin so that Anna Mae Davis could accept a position as a research assistant to John R. Commons. She contributed to Commons' book, Institutional Economics and prepared data to support proposed Wisconsin labor legislation. With fellow student Reuben Sparkman, she researched a text book on economic and legal working rules. During this period Robert Davis found employment as a field agent with the Wisconsin Bureau of Probation and Parole. The couple's son, Robert Campbell Davis, was born in 1930, at which time Anna Mae's mother, a widow, moved to Madison to provide child care.
As part of her research association with Commons, Davis studied the common law origins of labor law in England and the United States, and in 1932 she received funding from the Social Science Research Council that allowed her to travel to England to study original sources while leaving her son in the care of her mother and husband. After only a few months, however, ill health forced her to cut short her research and return to Wisconsin.
Although Anna Mae Davis wished to become a college professor she was unable to find a position. Instead, during the 1930s she devoted herself to political issues and women's rights. She worked as assistant to Irma Hochstein, the head of the Women's Division of the Civil Works Administration in Wisconsin, and served as secretary of the Wisconsin Committee on Women's Employment. In conjunction with the latter position she conducted detailed research on the status of married women in state employment, and she was a leader in the opposition to legislation that banned the employment of women whose husbands also worked for the state of Wisconsin. Anna Mae Davis was also very active in the cooperative movement in Madison. In 1931 she was one of the founders of the Faculty Credit Union and during the disruption in the Wisconsin dairy industry in 1933 she helped to form the Madison Consumers League which evolved into the Madison Consumers Cooperative, a dairy cooperative. She also edited the cooperative's newsletter.
During the 1930s Anna Mae and Robert Davis were both active in the Socialist Party. Robert Davis had become a Socialist in Texas in 1916, but Anna Mae did not become a member until much later. She served as secretary of the Dane County party, chairman of the state party, and a frequent contributor to the party's Wisconsin newspaper, the Wisconsin Leader. She was also a perennial candidate for attorney general on the Socialist ticket.
During the late 1930s Anna Mae Davis began to devote more time to the practice of law. She formed a brief partnership with fellow Socialist Glenn Turner and in 1939 opened her own office. Her practice encompassed the full range of civil law, but she was perhaps best known for her defense of conscientious objectors during World War II.
Robert H. Davis died on December 6, 1953. Anna Mae Davis continued her active law practice until the mid-1960s when she gave up trial work and concentrated on real estate, probate, and income tax work on a part time basis. Anna Mae Davis died on September 4, 1991.
