Willie Peevyhouse Davis seated in grass by water
Gilcrease Museum
Scope and Content Notes
Essay taken from Gilcrease in Your Neighborhood Project:
This photograph from the Eddie Faye Gates Tulsa Race Massacre Collection is part of Eddie Faye Gates’ family archive and portrays Willie Davis (née Peevyhouse), her second cousin. Taken by an unidentified photographer, the image captures a moment of rest for a young Black woman from a sharecropper family. Enjoying a summer day by the lake, she sits serenely on the grass in an elegant white dress, shielding her eyes from the sun as she gazes beyond the frame. The fingerprint visible near the center of the image may be from one of Willie’s family members who cherished the snapshot over generations and preserved it in an album.
Born in Texas in 1892, Willie migrated with her parents and siblings to Indian Territory shortly before Oklahoma’s admission to the United States in 1907 (1). Like many Black Americans, they sought a better life in a place where they hoped to live freely (2). Immediately after statehood, however, the Oklahoma legislature passed laws discriminating against the state’s Black population. A census record from January 1920 lists Willie as a domestic worker in the Tulsa household of Franco-American oil producer and Freemason Joseph Drouot (3). Later that year, and only months before the Tulsa Race Massacre, she relocated to Denver, Colorado where she married Walter Davis on Christmas Day (4). The couple continued to reside in Denver for the rest of their lives and built both community and wealth in the historic Five Points neighborhood, a longtime sanctuary for the city’s African American community (5). Additional photographs of Willie from the Eddie Faye Gates collection depict her gathering with loved ones outside, playing music, and traveling. Dressed in stylish clothes, she attended formal events and posed for sophisticated studio portraits. Though Willie passed away relatively young in 1942, her joyful spirit, broad smile and contemplative expression are memorialized through family photographs.
This photograph of Willie documents not just a moment in her youth, but also the rise of photography as a popular pastime in the United States. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Kodak released film-based box cameras, making photography both affordable for and accessible to non-professionals. At a time when African Americans were forging a new future in the aftermath of enslavement, they found agency through the power of the lens (6). Black Americans embraced photography as a tool to shape their own narratives and mark their enduring presence. While early images taken by white studio photographers often featured African Americans as laborers, Black photographers “highlight[ed] the full dimensionality of Black lives” by recording and sharing images of themselves and their communities at work, play, and – perhaps most importantly - rest (7).
Willie Peevyhouse Davis seated by the waterfront centers leisure as an integral part of the Black experience in the early nineteen hundreds. The photograph reveals one of the diverse ways that Black Americans engaged with nature despite the segregation of outdoor recreational spaces (8). Though this photograph's exact location is unknown, it appears to be a place where Willie could exist peacefully and wholly. She could relax, dream and take in the view, reveling in the warmth of the sun, the snap of dry grass beneath her, and the breeze from the water blowing across her face.
By Alison Rossi, Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation Director of Learning and Community Engagement & Grace Dishman, Learning and Community Engagement Coordinator, 2024.
Special thanks to Dr. Brandy Thomas Wells, Dr. William Smith, and Dr. Jan Doolittle Wilson for their guidance and insights.
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Works Cited
(1) Gates, Eddie Faye. They Came Searching: How Blacks Sought the Promised Land in Tulsa. Austin, Tex: Eakin Press, 1997, xi, ix; Moreno, Carlos. “Eddie Faye Gates.” The Victory of Greenwood. Accessed July 6, 2023.
(2) Gardullo, Paul. “The Roots of Greenwood.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, June 1, 2021. Accessed July 6, 2023
(3) 1920 United States Census, Tulsa County, Tulsa, Oklahoma, digital image s.v. “Willie Peevyhouse,”
(4) “Colorado, U.S., County Marriage Records and State Index, 1862-2006,” digital image s.v. “Willie Peevyhouse” Denver, Colorado, Marriage Certificate no. 78268 1920, Walter Davis and Willie Peviehouse.
(5) Gates, Eddie Faye. Miz Lucy’s Cookies: And Other Links in my Black Family Support System. Tulsa, OK: Coman & Associates, 1999, 97; “U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995,” digital image s.v. “Walter H. Davis” Denver, Colorado, 1926, p.894, Ancestry.com; “Five Points-Whittier Neighborhood History,” Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives. Accessed March 17, 2024.
(6) Combs, Rhea L., Deborah Willis, Lonnie G. Bunch, and National Museum of African American History and Culture (U.S.). Through the African American Lens, 10. Washington, D.C., London: National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution; in association with D Giles Limited, 2014.
(7) Cherlise, Renata. Black Archives: A Photographic Celebration of Black Life, 167. New York: Ten Speed Press, 2023.
(8) Kahrl, Andrew W., Cameron, Malcolm, and Katen, Brian. African American Outdoor Recreation: A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study, 5. National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. National Historic Landmarks Program, 2022.
Curatorial Remarks
Kavin Ross, Community Expert for the Eddie Faye Gates project, 2020-2022
Community Elder Tags: Creek, lady sees something, young black lady sitting on the grass. cloudy skies
Montecella Driver, Community Expert for the Eddie Faye Gates project, 2020-2022
Community Youth Tags: sepia tone photo, bishop sleeve dress, slick back hair, african american woman in a field, hair up, lakehouse, lake area, grassy knoll, summertime photo, 1960's style photo
LeQuincia Brown, Community Expert for the Eddie Faye Gates project, 2020-2022
