Belva Davis is one of the first female African American television and radio journalists. She has received eight Emmy Awards and multiple lifetime achievement awards for her work reporting and anchoring for stations airing around Oakland and the Bay Area (as well as nationally through PBS) from the 1960s until her retirement in 2012. Her husband William Moore is a photojournalist who became the first African American news cameraman to work full-time for commercial television in California when he was hired for KTVU Oakland in 1968. Moore’s work includes coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in San Francisco, and antiwar and civil rights demonstrations during the 1960s and 1970s.

From 1975 to 1993, Belva Davis volunteered at the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Inc. (BFHFI), an Oakland-based organization dedicated to supporting and celebrating Black filmmaking work. Davis served many vital roles as an advisor, consultant, Board of Directors member, and participant in various awards and reception planning committees. The Belva Davis and William Moore Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Archives Collection gathers audiovisual and text-based materials generated during Davis’s time with the BFHFI, in particular the 2nd and 18th annual Black History Month celebrations organized by the group in 1975 and 1991.

The audiovisual recordings include rare footage of BFHFI’s annual film symposium, film and lecture series, Oscar Micheaux Awards Ceremony, and afterhours dinner and dance gala, including backstage interviews with notable artists like Gordon Parks, Richard Pryor, Julie Dash, Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Sidney Poitier, Sinbad, and others. In addition, the collection features a mix of internal administrative documents, promotional materials, and event scripts used in the planning of BFHFI events, including correspondences with event participants such as Ruby Dee, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Clifton Davis, Ron O’Neal, Richard Roundtree, Judy Pace, James Earl Jones, and other luminaries. (More material relating to the BFHFI is available within the Mary Perry Smith Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Archives Collection.)

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