Mattie Belle Edwards Davis, a founding and active member of the NAWJ, was born in Georgia but spent most of her life in Florida. Having begun the study of law while working as a secretary in a Miami law office, she qualified for the Florida bar in 1936. She married Troy Davis in 1937 and practiced law with her husband until his death in 1948. She continued in private law practice until 1959, when she was appointed a judge in the metropolitan court of Dade County, the only woman on a court of thirteen judges.
One of the few senior women judges in 1979, Judge Davis presided over one session of the business meeting at the 1979 NAWJ founding conference in Los Angeles. After her retirement in 1981, she served as chair of the Retired Judges Committee of the NAWJ, and became a NAWJ life member.
MBD was an active member of a number of women lawyers associations. She served as president of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers (1957-1958), and was a regular contributor to the Women Lawyers Journal, the publication of the National Association of Women Lawyers. She was president of the NAWL (1965-1966), and after 1979 she wrote regular summaries of NAWJ conferences for the Women Lawyers Journal . In 1987, Davis was recognized by the Fellows of the American Bar Association as the first woman to reach fifty years of membership in the American Bar Association.
From the guide to the Additional records, (inclusive), (bulk), 1966-1997, 1979-1997, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
