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48            CURRENT BIOGRAPHY

DAVIS, BENJAMIN O., JR.--Continued
later he was named director of operations and training of the Far East Air Forces.

In February 1954, United States News & World Report stated: "Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., now is being looked over by a Pentagon Selection board for promotion that will make him the first Negro general in the U.S. Air Force. Colonel Davis has already headed the fighter operations branch of the Air Force, moved from that job last [year] into the kind of post often held by a brigadier general--command of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing in Korea." On October 27, 1954 the contemplated promotion became a reality when President Eisenhower elevated Davis to the rank of brigadier general.

Reorganization of the Air Force in the Pacific area, which brought General Davis to Taipei, Formosa in June 1955, resulted in five airports being prepared there for American operations. This makes it possible for U.S. Air Force commanders to bring in planes from the Philippines, Japan or Okinawa. Under this reorganization the Thirteenth Air Force has switched jurisdiction of the U.S. Far East Air Forces to that of the Pacific Air Command, under the over-all supervision of Admiral Felix B. Stump (see C.B., 1953), chief of the Pacific Fleet.

In addition to the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Silver Star, Davis has been awarded the Air Medal, with four Oak Leak Clusters, the Legion of Merit Award, and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm. He accepted the Presidential Unit Citation granted the 332nd Fighter Group for a hazardous mission over Berlin during World War II. He is rated a senior pilot. The Army officer married Agatha Scott, of New Haven, in 1936. He is six feet two inches tall.

References
U.S. News 36:8 F 26 '54 por
Washington (D.C.) Post p12 O 28 '54 por
Bontemps, A. We have Tomorrow (1945)
Martin, F. ed, Our Great Americans (1953)
Richardson, B. Great American Negroes (1945)
Who's Who in Colored America (1950)


DAVIS, EDWARD W(ILSON)  May 8, 1888-  Metallurgical engineer

Address: b. c/o Reserve Mining Co., Silver Bay, Minn.

Through the ingenuity and persistence of Professor Edward W. Davis, "the father of taconite," a new billion-dollar industry has emerged in Minnesota, which has far-reaching implications for national defense. Aroused over the possibility of the depletion of the rich iron ore deposits on the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, he spent more than thirty-five years developing a commercially feasibly process for extracting iron ore from a rock called taconite. (It is believed that the word "taconite" is derived from the Indian tachkanick, which means forest wilderness.)

The Reserve Mining Company beings in the fall of 1955 its new taconite plant, the E. W. Davis Works, which makes use of Davis' method, at Silver Bay, Minnesota. Early in 1957 the Erie Mining Company will begin producing iron ore from taconite, and the Oliver Mining division of the United States Steel Corporation is expanding its two experimental taconite plants. Within twenty years the taconite industry is expected to represent an investment of 1.5 billion, and to ship annually from Minnesota 30,000,000 tongs of taconite, approximately one-third of the nation's ore requirements at present production.

On June 15, 1955, after thirty-nine years of service on its faculty, Davis retired from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He joined the university's mines experiment station in 1913, became its superintendent in 1925 and its director in 1939. In 1952 he resigned the director's post to devote his efforts to the commercial development of taconite, but retained his professorship. Dr. James L. Morrill, president of the university, praised Davis for having "had the energy to carry forward, sometimes in the face of crushing discouragement, the patient and persistent endeavor that all fundamental research involves. He has had the perseverance of a crusader" (Two Harbors [Minnesota] Chronicle & Times, July 16, 1953).

The son of Walter Clarance and Della Mendenhall (Wilson) Davis, Edward Wilson Davis was born in Cambridge City, Indiana on May 8, 1888. After receiving the B.S. degree from Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana in 1911, he spent a year as a testing engineer with the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and later worked for the General Electric Company. He became an instructor at the University of Minnesota's School of Mines in 1913, and taught there for two years.

From 1915 until 1918 he was employed as a testing engineer by the Mesabi Iron Company of Duluth, Minnesota. He returned to the University of Minnesota in 1918 (he received an E.E. degree from Purdue that year) and remained there until his retirement from academic life thirty-seven years later. Appointed superintendent of the university's mines experiment station in 1925, he became its director in 1939 and served in that capacity until 1952.

While still a young man Davis became concerned over the possibility of depleting iron ore deposits on the Mesabi Range, and warned that it would eventually be necessary to extract iron from the iron-bearing rock surrounding the rich ore deposits. To this end he urged the development of a process to beneficiate the lean rock and the adoption of a state tax structure that would promote such a development by taxing the finished product rather than the ore in the ground, thus inviting private investment. "For years," as a writer for Steel (January 24, 1955) noted, "his cause was a lost one."

Hartzell Spence later confirmed Davis' fears of exhausting Mesabi ore reserves. He wrote in Nation's Business (August 1954): "The