Giving Forward Podcast: Beyond the Gavel with Brian J. Davis

In this conversation, Nina talks with Judge Brian J. Davis, a federal judge who Nina has worked with for more than 30 years. They discuss their early years in Jacksonville, conversations about race, public education reform, and more. Below is an edited version of that conversation, which you can also listen to on your favorite podcast app, or right here on our website.

Nina Waters 

Judge Davis, thanks so much for joining us for this time together. We have known each other for more than 30 years, which is hard to believe. I think we were both children back then.

Judge Brian Davis 

I’ll acknowledge that.

Nina Waters 

And you are a native of Jacksonville, you grew up here. I want you to talk a little bit about what Jacksonville was like then, when you were growing up.

Judge Brian Davis 

Fiercely different, at least physically. It seemed much more concentrated than it is now. It’s so spread out now. But it was – because it was the law at the time – a segregated Jacksonville for me. Although despite that fact, it was a wonderful place to grow up. My elementary school was a walk away from my home, in College Gardens in Jacksonville, and that first six years is filled with sweet memories. I don’t know why this popped into my head right now, but we used to have operettas as children in third and fourth grade, the big production. And the entire school and community and all the parents and teachers got involved, and costumes were made. I got exposed to the violin in elementary school here in the public schools – despite the fact that they were segregated and we usually got secondhand books. And there was some discrepancies in our teachers’ pay and those kinds of things that were systemically still the matter with the system. But for a child who was protected by their parents from it and from the racism that permeated the [African American] community to at the time, I had a nurturing family and a nurturing community that that made it an interesting and, and to overuse the word, nurturing place to grow up. So it was a positive childhood, and I wouldn’t change anything about it.

Nina Waters 

And you’re one of the people that grew up here and stayed here, which is actually a wonderful thing. You went away to college and came back.

Judge Brian Davis 

Always part of my plan. I’ve always had a real sense of community. Probably because of the neighborhood that I grew up in, which was populated by World War II veterans – all strong men looking to gain their rights as American citizens having fought for all American citizens. It was just an interesting, vibrant, dynamic, neighborhood and community, and it informed who I became as a person and how I felt about where I lived. So it was an important enough experience, impactful enough experience, that I wanted to come back.

[Judge Brian Davis was first appointed as a judge for the Fourth Circuit Court in Nassau County in 1994. In 2012, Judge Davis was nominated by President Obama and, in 2013, was confirmed as a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.]

Nina Waters 

Were those World War II veterans eligible for the GI Bill when they came back?

Judge Brian Davis 

Not all of them were. You know, one of the things I discovered, partially through some of the work we’ve done with The Community Foundation and Project Breakthrough, is that there was a systemic refusal to extend veterans benefits to African Americans. I won’t say complete refusal, but the ability was significantly limited systemically.

Nina Waters 

That’s something we’ve learned about, and I think a lot of people didn’t realize that was the case. There were several other examples of structural racism that you experienced growing up, a part of it probably was in your neighborhood.

Judge Brian Davis 

Remember, not only did I have this nurturing neighborhood, I had community members who were actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement. I distinctly remember participating in protest marches in which the slogan was, among other things, “Segregation must go by ‘64.” So part of my community mindedness, if you will, is really rooted in the Civil Rights Movement. For example, the first thing I can remember doing is participating in a boycott of the Duval County schools because of their disaccreditation, back in the early 60s, and that was a protest that had some impact. And when the ‘64 Civil Rights Bill finally was passed, it began our communities’ very slow process of desegregating schools. But all of that’s built into the community and why I continue to want to improve it, if you will.

Nina Waters 

And you have. Thank you.

Judge Brian Davis 

With your help. What brought you to Jacksonville?

Nina Waters 

So I came to Jacksonville in 1976. I wanted to be a marine biologist. So I came to go to JU – they had one of the few four-year programs in marine biology. I quickly, after I dissected a fetal pig my sophomore year, decided to change my major with the help of Quinton White, who was my advisor, and went into sociology and criminal justice. I had never seen the ocean, you know. I came here, having very little exposure to other places outside of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, as you know, is a landlocked city, so it was very different. What was really interesting, though – and I’ve thought about this a lot lately – is I grew up on a river on the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, and then I moved to a river city in Jacksonville. The rivers are very different. The places along the rivers are very different. Pittsburgh is now just starting to maximize the river. It was very industrial. And Jacksonville has done such a great job of making the river something that everyone can enjoy.

Judge Brian Davis 

A related question…that kind of explains why you came, but why have you stayed? I’m sure you’ve had the opportunity to leave.

Nina Waters 

I have, I have had the opportunity to leave. And I have stayed mainly because I really feel like this is home. I came here when I was 17. And I will say that I was born in Pittsburgh, but I really grew up in Jacksonville. My experience at Jacksonville University was so rich, and they worked really hard to connect us to the community. And I think if they hadn’t done that, I would have absolutely gone back to Pittsburgh. But I was so incredibly connected during that four years. So we met at a board meeting at Pace Center for Girls, and you came onto the board of Pace while I was the executive director there.

Judge Brian Davis 

Tell our listeners about the work that you were doing at Pace.

Nina Waters 

Pace Center for Girls is a program for girls that are labeled at risk – so delinquent, dependent, ungovernable, truant girls. It serves girls between the ages of 13 and 18, so middle school and high school, some of the most difficult years. It started here in Jacksonville, which a lot of people don’t know, in the early 80s. We did a lot of work in academics and life skills with girls, and then followed them for three years to talk about their success. And the success rate is has been amazing. Talk a little bit about ideas or thoughts you have from that time.

Judge Brian Davis 

Well, our community Jacksonville is inviting of young people to participate in the community somehow. And one of my predecessors on the bench, Judge Dorothy Pate, in whose courtroom I practiced as a young lawyer, asked me if I would be interested in serving as a board member on the Pace Center for Girls board. I so admired and respected Judge Pate and knew that she had been involved in the creation of Pace Center for Girls. I couldn’t say no to her. So that was what led me to the board table, if you will. I had become aware of problems that had been facing girls in the juvenile justice system because that’s where I was prosecuting at the time. So I was very appreciative and aware of the importance of the work that Pace was doing. And then once I met you as its young, dynamic leader, I decided this is a good place to stay and spend some time and to join arms with this young executive and group of board members who are doing good work in the communities.

[Judge Dorothy Pate was the first elected female judge in the Fourth Judicial Court in 1977 and served for 18 years on the bench.]

Nina Waters 

So we’re going to talk a minute about what brought you to The Community Foundation. So we were partners at Pace, but I wasn’t the actual reason you came to The Community Foundation, even though I was there. Talk a little bit about how you ended up coming there. And why you said yes when we asked you.

Judge Brian Davis 

Well, let me qualify your comment, because I will say you weren’t the only reason I came, you were among the reasons that I came to The Community Foundation. But it had to do with, as I mentioned earlier, this sense of community that I have, that is part of my constitution, you know. This where I live, this is where I grew up, this is where my family is. So I was drawn to the idea of trying to join arms, if you will, with others to help improve the community. And I knew that was the mission of The Community Foundation.

Nina Waters 

Now that you’ve been on the board for, gosh, almost 10 years, and you are the chairman of the board and have been for over a year, why do you think a community foundation, or having a community foundation in a community, is important?

Judge Brian Davis 

I think one of the most important contributions The Community Foundation makes to our citizens is this ability to give not only with your heart, but with your head. That’s among its most important functions for donors – to give them the confidence, more confidence than they might have otherwise, that the direction that their philanthropy is given is indeed the direction that they intended. And that this organization has among its purposes a success in the organizations that they’re supporting. My experience has just been enriched by the scope of the vision of The Community Foundation. It’s not just to be charitable, but to be a catalyst for improving. I’ve seen it go from being more philanthropically oriented to community-concerned.

Nina Waters 

Right, more like the “Communities” Foundation. We talk to the staff when they when they come and we say that what we talk to donors about is that people give through The Community Foundation, they don’t give to The Community foundation. So you might give to Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or another organization. But when you give to us, you’re actually giving through us because those dollars then, hopefully in a very thoughtful way, are granted out into the community with our help – as much help as donors want. But we hope that we make giving more fun and informed and certainly more impactful.

Judge Brian Davis 

And more impactful is important to emphasize. Because the other thing that I’ve learned is that as stewards of these donors’ funds, we are as vigilant as we must be to see that they are protected and grown.

Nina Waters 

So definitely protecting their assets and then protecting their intent. I think that’s so important because once donors pass away, having the assurance that their purpose – the purpose that they gave that money for – will be followed in perpetuity is critically important.

Judge Brian Davis 

In our meetings, we are never without a reminder and an insistence that we be sensitive to and aware of and unvarying from donors’ intentions.

Nina Waters 

I’m going to switch the conversation a little bit and talk about the current situation that we have in our community where equity has been a really important topic. And the Community Foundation is not new to having conversations around equity. One of the things that we did together in 2007 was the Project Breakthrough initiative, which was that partnership between the Aspen Institute, their roundtable for community change, the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, One Jax, and The Community Foundation – we funded the entire five-year initiative. And you were involved in Project Breakthrough and the work that we did. So talk a little bit about that experience, where we brought community leaders together to really talk about and uncover issues of structural racism in our community. Do you see any lasting change or benefits from that five-year initiative?

Judge Brian Davis 

Even before then, The Community Foundation had been involved in addressing this question of racial injustice in the community because I recall through JCCI, which the Community Foundation helped support, there being several studies around questions related to race. And then in 2001, we, through the Community Foundation’s support, convened citizens, primarily, over the course of nine months, like once a month, to really delve deeply into questions surrounding race relations in Jacksonville. So I’m contrasting that with Project Breakthrough, which followed by a few years. One of the things we learned in looking at the question was the importance of there being a leadership buy-in to try to change the conditions that had plagued us and had been addressed by the community in some kind of systematic way. I’m aware of a study from 1940 in which some of the same issues were raised. Then, they were still a problem, and unfortunately, I would say, are still a problem in the difference of the quality of life experienced by White and Black citizens. But Project Breakthrough had the difference of bringing leaders together with the mayor there, the sheriff there, corporate executives…

[JCCI (Jacksonville Community Council, Inc.) was a diverse group of more than 100 community leaders brought together by the Chamber of Commerce in 1974 to address issues affecting quality of life for Jacksonville’s citizens. Over the next 40 years, JCCI produced more than 80 reports, including an annual Quality of Life indicator that was used as a benchmark to measure progress, both positive and negative, in Jacksonville.]

Nina Waters 

…school board members, the superintendent…

Judge Brian Davis 

…and amazingly, and to our credit as a community, we were able to get the leadership together. And it was a powerful several weeks. One of the things that I recall is one of our participants having what he called an “aha” moment, in which he finally realized how it was that our systems of government and social systems had qualities and policies and practices, you know, that had all contributed to the schism – not only socially but economically and politically. And through that moment, I think, he probably decided to change how he was doing business. I think one of the lasting effects is a commitment from the community to stay focused on the question. After Project Breakthrough, there have continued to be a number of efforts to try to address the issue. My concern is that none of them have seemed to take traction away that the proponents of changing these conditions would wish.

Nina Waters 

When we started  Project Breakthrough, as we do with most things, we started with research. Charlene Taylor Hill with the Human Rights Commission, who was the executive director at the time, looked at, I think it was, eight studies that had been done on race in Jacksonville from the 1940s, which you mentioned, up until the time that we were doing Project Breakthrough in 2007. And then I’ll never forget this, there were 256 recommendations about what the city should do around changing the story of race in Jacksonville. Charlene compiled all of that. And we looked at all of those things at the beginning of Project Breakthrough. Then when 904WARD became a staffed organization three years ago, The Community Foundation issued another paper looking back on those 256 recommendations, and then trying to follow out what actually has changed, what recommendations have we lived into. And as you can imagine, there were very few. We gave that information to 904WARD three years ago, we gave that report to them that we commissioned, and they are doing several stories called Race in Retrospect, They’re on individual issues of structural racism. So there’s an economic piece, there’s an education piece, there’s a health care piece. And they’re slowly issuing those using the information that we gathered through Project Breakthrough through all of those studies. So that work continues to live on.

[904WARD was founded in 2015 to build a more inclusive Jacksonville. Current projects and initiatives include the Jacksonville Community Remembrance Project, community forums, equity advocacy and research, and the Center for Corporate and Community Equity.]

Judge Brian Davis 

You underscore one of the aspects of The Community Foundation that is among its pillars, which is this idea of research and data and evidence-based practices that is so important to a nonprofit community’s success. I mean, it makes sense to analyze and to collect information, to martial it as robustly as you can, to test it as robustly as you can. And then to chart a course. And that’s been, at least in my experience as a trustee, what The Community Foundation has been doing internally, but what it’s also been encouraging the organizations that it is supporting to do – to rely on robust research and assessments and analysis of that data to help chart courses that can make a difference.

Nina Waters 

It’s a critically important tool, there’s no doubt, And then the other thing that we do that you’ve been so involved in, which is part of Project Breakthrough, is convening. How do you bring people together with different ideas and different opinions and life experiences to really address issues? So you couple the data and the research with all of the rich conversation and learning that you get when you bring people together. And you have to start there before you’re able to then say, “How are we going to address a particular issue?” So when you’re working on difficult issues like public education reform or race and equity issues, you have to have multiple strategies. It has to include research and learning. It has to include convening people and learning together. And it also has to include public policy and advocacy. So when we did the Quality Education for All initiative together, which we launched in 2005, and did that work together for 12 years, we started that way. You were part of the forum on quality education, where we brought 28 community leaders together. Again, it was everything from the heads of the teachers’ union and the school board, to donors in the community that had never had a child in the public education system that needed to learn more about that system, to the head of the Chamber of Commerce – all of those people came together for 18 months to learn about public education in Duval County. And that was a strategy. We also looked at making some grants. The Community Foundation had really never made grants to public schools, and we were 40 years old. So we had to learn from those grants, and we had to learn about public education and where investments made a difference. And then finally, everything around education happens in Tallahassee; it doesn’t happen here. So we had to develop a policy and advocacy agenda to make sure that we were able to help to create change in the areas that needed change created. So you were in the forum.

Judge Brian Davis 

This was the other thing that the Community Foundation did that actually caused me to get involved with it. I wasn’t a trustee man. I was just a community member who was interested in in the educational practices and policies of the city because I had been affected by them, for one. My children were going to be, as were all of our children. It was the commitment for a 10-year focus. These problems have not happened overnight. I mean, it took years for us to get to the point where our graduation rate, the achievement gap, and, you know, difficult and problematic issues surrounding the school system were needing to be addressed over time. The Community Foundation’s commitment to say we’re going to stay focused on this for at least 10 years…

Nina Waters 

That was our first time ever doing that.

Judge Brian Davis 

Yeah, I know! And that was what attracted me. I said, yeah, I agree with that, and I’m willing to roll up my sleeves and work for 10 years because I know it requires that kind of focus. In this instance, unlike some others that I’ve been involved with, it actually distilled itself into the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, which continues to be one of The Community Foundation’s legacy organizations. That organization is still focusing, using the same kinds of tools that have been successful of research and data and in forming the community, convening the community, the one-on-one project that was one of its earliest initiatives to actually collect people, ordinary citizens…

Nina Waters 

…living room conversations, dining room conversations and homes, you know, hundreds of people.

Judge Brian Davis 

The other thing that I think I’ve learned from being involved with the Community Foundation is the importance of not just convening, but listening to the communities that are struggling with issues. Generally, if you’re going to try to help somebody, listen to them before you try to help them. It’s a fundamental key.

Nina Waters 

It’s so funny, Judge, because I remember when I came to the foundation 20 years ago, I found a lot of arrogance in philanthropy – this idea that we know better than you, doing to people instead of doing with people or letting people lead their own change they hope to see. I see that a lot in philanthropy. And it’s something that we’ve tried really hard as a community foundation not to do, to have people come up with their own solutions. Because they have them, and they’re better solutions than the solutions that we come up with. And I think that’s something that over the years I hope we’ve done a good job of but that we can always do better. I think it’s something we’ve worked toward, and certainly the convening is something that makes that happen. So talk a little bit about JPEF. So you brought up Jacksonville Public Education Fund – you were its board chair, and you were a founding board member.

[The Jacksonville Public Education Fund was founded in 2009, inspired by The Community Foundation’s Quality Education for All Initiative, as an independent organization that works to increase buy-in among education leaders, partners and the broader community to address disparities and improve student outcome and to close the opportunity gap for low-income students and students of color in Duval County.]

Judge Brian Davis 

The idea was that JPEF should be an independent, but community-based, think tank. If you will, it’s a think-and-do tank. That was what we struggled with to begin with is how to best do that. Some of the early efforts involved reaching out in the community in some, you know, new and different ways – ways that I always had hoped we would as a community began to embrace – that included just putting out the call: come talk about education.  For our everyday citizens to come talk about education in our community, and let’s try to problem solve together. That was the first effort that I recall JPEF making, and it grew and there were solutions identified in that process. And we started out, as I recall, with…

Nina Waters 

Learning to Finish started at the Community Foundation.

Judge Brian Davis 

It was a middle school effort, as I recall, which made so much sense to me because that population struggles so. And we knew that the increase in failure rate and dropout rates started at that level, so we were trying to prevent that from occurring. One of the things that I appreciated about the JPEF organization was that it truly valued diversity in its board’s creation. We had from the very beginning a very diverse board, not only racially and by sex, but also by profession and interest. The diversity of the input that you get is always going to create a more diverse and dynamic outcome, as well. And I know that at least since I’ve been involved, this has always been the case. The Community Foundation has had that emphasis, to make sure that the board is truly diverse in all of the possible measures that you can have around diversity. And JPEF was also, in my experience, an organization that embraced that concept early on.

Nina Waters 

They did. There was a focus on the efficiency of public education. So how do we make the bus system run better? How do we do procurement differently so that we can save money. It was really important work. But they didn’t want to get into the effectiveness of education because they knew this efficiency part was something they could do but they didn’t know about the effectiveness. So they stayed out of that lane. But what we learned in doing the QEA [Quality Education for All] work was that we really needed to focus on the effectiveness of public education. And so that’s why JPEF has been so successful is because they’re not worried about staying out of the classroom and staying out of curriculum and staying out of those kinds of things. They’re willing to jump in and say, How do we make public education more effective?” Judge Davis, education has been such an important part of your life. And I think that’s one of the reasons you’ve been so richly involved in public education in our community. Talk about education in your earlier years and how that affected your trajectory.

Judge Brian Davis 

In my youth, J.J. Daniel, who was a local founder of The Community Foundation, was also a Princeton University graduate. And he and my dad were, how should I put it, acquaintances. My dad was actually an employee of J.J.’s. in that he worked as a bartender at private parties here in Jacksonville, and he bragged to J.J. about how bright his son was. J.J. said, “I’d like to meet him.” I went to his office to talk with him for a half an hour or so, and before I left, he said, “You know, you should apply to Princeton.” And I did, and the rest is history. I majored in psychology there. It’s so full circle, if you will, that he was the one who founded The Community Foundation. And here I am, with his help, educationally along the way of providing some guidance to me, I’ve come to serve as the chair of The Community Foundation. It’s an irony of a very pleasant window in my life.

[J.J. Daniel was a Jacksonville attorney, businessman, and civic leader who served as publisher of the Florida Times Union and Jacksonville Journal from 1976-1982. He was instrumental in the founding of University of North Florida and had many contributions to higher education in Florida and dedicated service to many Jacksonville community and charitable causes.]

Nina Waters 

So he gave us that gift, you know, when you think about it, that was a gift to you – and it was a gift to our community. The last thing that I want to talk about is now. So we’ve talked a lot about the past and our time together, and I want to talk a little bit about the future. You’re chairing the board at the most incredible time for The Community Foundation, where we’re going to have a leadership transition. And I want to thank you first, for stepping up, knowing that that was going to happen and taking on this role. I think you’re the right leader at this time for The Community Foundation to help us through this transition. And we’re going to do it very well,I know. But talk a little bit about the work that we’ve been doing over the past few years under your leadership as chair. And then where do you see us going from here?

Judge Brian Davis 

Well, the connection with your gratitude, I will say, is that this marvelous board of trustees that you have collected have been aware of this transition for a while and have planned to manage it in a way that will help ensure its success. Our strategic plans from a couple of years ago had the foresight to say this is on the horizon, let’s not wait. So we’ve been actively working to make the transition as smooth and as effective as possible. My leadership also followed a watershed moment, not only in in Jacksonville’s history but in the nation’s history, of the murder of George Floyd that raised everybody’s consciousness about the persistence of not only the issues that we have in the law enforcement community, but those around race and equity. Not just race, either. I think it had the effect of everybody saying listen, we need to stop and look at how we are treating people based on their immutable characteristics – sex and race and everything in between.

Nina Waters   

Socioeconomic status.

Judge Brian Davis 

Exactly. And as a result of that, the corporate community, the population generally I think, decided to roll up its sleeves and try something new and different. Given our history over the years, new and different is needed.

Nina Waters   

Yes, it’s time.

Judge Brian Davis

I have to give credit to you, Nina, for steering the organization and the trustees in this direction. We said: Let’s look first, internally, at ourselves as an organization and determine whether we’re being true to our stated values. Because we’ve never suggested that anything other than diversity was appropriate, but…

Nina Waters   

are we living it?

Judge Brian Davis

Are we just talking the talk or walking the walk? And as it turns out, we made changes internally, you made changes internally, that the board embraced and improved. We reached into the African American community to begin to lift up the vibrancy of philanthropy as it existed in that community that really not been acknowledged previously, and to try to marshal it in some new and different ways. The A.L Lewis Black Opportunity & Impact Fund was a result of that. In addition to that, I have seen the organization grow in its advocacy posture in the community with the idea of becoming a change agent, if you will, around issues. So I’m hoping that direction and emphasis will continue to grow. I think the future is full of opportunity. Jacksonville is growing in ways that it has not in in the past, and in positive ways, you know. The opportunities are real in that we have in place the board leadership, and will soon have in place the executive leadership, to take advantage of those opportunities.

Nina Waters 

Thank you for being here. Thank you for spending the time with me. It has been a pleasure to spend these 30 years with you, and I know we’ll keep in touch. But having you here and now is so important. And when I turned in my letter of resignation to you, I said I think it’s so fitting that it is me turning that letter in to you. And so thank you.

Judge Brian Davis 

I’m glad we’ve had this full circle, if you will, from some time ago to now. You have no idea how proud I am of the work that you’ve done and how important it has been in my life personally, and in the community’s life. You are being surrounded with accolades that are all so deserved, Nina, I hope to add my personal right here, and let you know just how much you have meant to The Community Foundation and to Jacksonville. And we’re gonna miss you, there’s no doubt about that.

Nina Waters 

I have been surrounded by so many amazing people throughout my career, but thank you for being there for all of it. I appreciate you.

Judge Brian Davis 

Glad to have been.