It seems especially fitting that in 1939 Harwell Goodwin "Major" Davis took on leadership of a college named for Christian prison reformer John Howard. As Alabama Attorney General earlier in the century, Davis helped expose and end the state's convict lease system, which amounted to a government-sponsored slave trade. In that service to the state, and in his service in combat during WWI, Davis had proven himself a gifted leader. After the cultural debacle of the Neal presidency, Davis must have seemed a safe and steadying figure. But who could have foreseen just how well he would lead Howard College through the dramatic changes to come?
Ironically, World War II, the greatest challenge Davis faced, made possible his two great accomplishments on behalf of Howard--helping the college thrive in wartime and relocate to a campus large enough to accommodate the tenacious, decades-old vision of a greater Howard.
