successful black daily newspaper. Davis continued to write and publish poems, which came to the attention of Chicago socialite Frances Norton Manning. She introduced him to Norman Forgue, the publisher of Black Cat Press. In the summer of 1935, Forgue published Davis' first book, Black Man's Verse. In 1935, Davis returned to Chicago to take the position of managing editor of the Associated Negro Press (ANP), a news service founded in 1919 for black newspapers. Eventually, Davis became executive editor of the ANP. He held the position until 1947. While in Chicago, Davis also started a photography club, worked for numerous political parties, and participated in the League of American Writers. Davis was an avid photographer, and inspired writer Richard Wright's interest in the field. Davis wrote that his photography consisted in large part of nudes because "the female body fascinates me, both aesthetically and emotionally." He said that when photographing, he focused on "contours" and the "wide range of tones". Davis, Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, and others were part of the South Side Writers Group, which met regularly beginning in 1936 to critique each other's work. They were part of what became known as the Black Chicago Renaissance. Davis also worked as a sports reporter, in particular covering the rivalry between African-American boxer Joe Louis and the German Max Schmeling. He and other writers portrayed their confrontation as democracy and equality vs. fascism. Davis used his journalism to call for integration of the sports world. He believed that sports was a field in which men could break the color bar, and was a way to reach out to a working class. During the Great Depression, Davis participated in the federal Federal Writers' Project, under the Works Progress Administration and part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1937 he received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, funded by the president of Sears Roebuck, who became a major philanthropist. He began to work on community organizing, starting a Chicago labor newspaper, The Star, toward the end of World War II. The paper's goal was to "promote a policy of cooperation and unity between Russia and the United States" seeking to "[avoid] the red-baiting tendencies of the mainstream press." In 1947, the Spokane Daily Chronicle of Washington state described the paper as "a red weekly", saying that it "has most of the markings of a Communist front publication." After World War II,