Davis, En Route To Prison, Feels He's Serving Time In Nation's Defense

Davis, En Route To Prison, Feels He’s Serving Time In Nation’s Defense
By William B. Treml
A 33-year-old mathematician, fired six years ago by the University, stopped briefly in Ann Arbor yesterday on his way to a federal prison.
H. Chandler Davis, former instructor at the University, was en route from his home Providence, R. I., to Grand Rapids where this morning he surrendered to a United States marshal. The officer then escorted Davis to the Federal Correctional Institution at Milan where he began a six-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Davis’ entry into the federal penitentiary today marked the end of a long fight in which the mathematician challenged unsuccessfully the right of a Congressional committee to force him to tell them about his political beliefs.
Refused To Answer
Davis refused in 1954 to answer questions put to him in Lansing by a House Un-American Activities subcommittee.
At that time other witnesses before the federal committee Invoked the Fifth Amendment but Davis relied on the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in refusing to reply to questions. The Fifth Amendment guarantees a person's rights against self-incrimination and few who have used it in refusing to answer Congressional questions have been prosecuted. The First Amendment, upon which Davis relied, guarantees freedom of speech, press and association.
After a number of trial delays, Davis was found guilty of contempt of Congress and on Aug. 5, 1957, Judge W. Wallace Kent of the federal district court in Grand Rapids sentenced him to six months in prison and ordered him to pay $250 in fine.
Davis took the sentence to a federal court of appeals in Cincinnati and eventually to the U. S. Supreme Court which last December declined to hear his case.
Was Calm, Composed
Seated yesterday afternoon in the office of his Ann Arbor attorney, Eugene V. Douvan, Davis looked like anyone but a man headed for prison. He was calm and composed, answering questions rapidly and clearly.
“I have no apologies to make for my intense interest in politics,” he said. “I tried in a small way to awaken my fellow citizens to a real danger and I don’t think I’ve failed entirely. I believe a six-month term in prison is a small price to pay in defense of my country."
Davis, who took three degrees at Harvard University before he was 23, said he had “never thought” of invoking the Fifth Amendment in his defense and thus escaping prosecution.
“To do that would just have been running away from this fight,” he said. “Of course it would have been easier to take
the Fifth but it would not have been right.”
Davis said he feels the American citizen today is too willing to forfeit his constitutional rights, his duties and his responsibilities to the various governments and the men in them. He said the average American is “even unaware” of such forfeitures and apathetic toward the consequences.
Davis leaves his wife, Natalie, and three young children
H. Chandler Davis
at his Rhode Island home while he serves time in prison. He said Mrs. Davis “believed in my fight all the way” throughout the past six years.
Davis expressed passing bitterness about his firing by University President Harlan Hatcher.
“When they fired me without severance pay, without a hearing and without an appeal possibility, they knew they were professionally blackballing me for life,” he said.
Since his discharge here Davis has worked on several mathematical projects outside university areas. Recently he has been employed as an editor of a technical mathematical journal in Providence.
Davis said he was “not pessimistic” about the prospect for “intellectual freedom” America.
“I think when the people become fully aware of what is being taken from them—that when they choose —they’ll choose freedom,” he said. think the time is near when we will all agree that others should be allowed to believe in unusual things.”