Belva Davis wasa born in Monroe, LA. Her family moved to West Oakland when she was eight. Belva would graduate from Berkeley High School, the first in her family to receive a high school diploma. Unable to afford college, she took a job as a typist at the Oakland Naval Supply Depot.
Davis began her journalism career writing freelance pieces for Jet magazine. In 1961, she joined KSAN-AM, reading news and conducting interviews. She was the first Black woman to work at the station.
She worked as a disc jockey at KDIA and was hired by KNEW in 1964 to host a weekend radio show called The Belva Davis Show. Davis’s voice was used for KNEW’s public service announcements; through these announcements, she soon became known as “Miss KNEW.”
In 1966, Davis left radio to become the first Black woman television reporter on the West Coast, joining KPIX. At KPIX, Davis was instrumental in creating and hosting All Together Now, one of the first prime-time public affairs programs in the country to focus on ethnic communities.
Among her many honors, Davis has received numerous local Emmy Awards, lifetime achievement awards from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and from the American Women in Radio and Television, and in 1996 the Northern California Chapter of National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ highest lifetime achievement award, the Governor’s Award.