Topic: Jimmie Davis

James Houston Davis (September 11, 1899 - November 5, 2000), better known as Jimmie Davis, was a noted singer of both sacred and popular songs who served two nonconsecutive terms as a Democratic governor of Louisiana (1944-1948 and 1960-1964).

Davis was born to a sharecropping couple in the now ghost town of Beech Springs, near Quitman in Jackson Parish in 1899, to Sarah Elizabeth Works and Samuel Jones Davis. The family was so poor that young Jimmie did not have a bed in which to sleep until he was nine years old.

He graduated from Beech Springs High School and Soule Business College, New Orleans campus. The late Congressman Otto Ernest Passman, a Louisiana Democrat, also graduated from Soule, but from the Bogalusa campus. Davis received his bachelor's degree in history from the Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville. He received a master's degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.