Americans became suspicious of the Soviet Union, a former ally, after it extended its control over Eastern Europe, and fears were raised about the influence of Communism in the US. In 1945, Davis taught one of the first jazz history courses in the United States, at the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago. In 1948, with the encouragement of authors such as Richard Wright and Margaret Walker, Davis published a collection of poems, entitled 47th Street: Poems. The collection chronicled the varied life of African Americans on Chicago's South Side. Davis had been a strong supporter of the work of Richard Wright, describing his Uncle Tom's Children as "the most absorbing fiction penned by a Negro since George Schuyler's Black No More" (1931). After Wright published articles explaining his break with communism, the two writers fell out. In his memoir Livin' the Blues (1992), Davis described Wright's essays on this theme as "an act of treason in the fight for our rights and aided only the racists who were constantly seeking any means to destroy cooperation between Reds and blacks." Davis promoted the ideal of a "raceless" society, based on his belief that race as a biological or social construct was illogical and a fallacy. Davis was a member of the Civil Rights Congress in 1947–1948, and was vice chair of the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee from 1944 to 1947. He was a supporter of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party. In Livin' the Blues, Davis wrote of the period 1935 to 1948, "I worked with all kinds of groups. I made no distinction between those labeled Communist, Socialist or merely liberal. My sole criterion was this: Are you with me in my determination to wipe out white supremacy?" Some libraries removed his books, and he was the subject of FBI investigations in the 1940s and 1950s. Tidwell, however, states that Davis became a closet member of the Communist Party. Career in Hawaii In 1948, Davis and his second wife, whom he had married in 1946, moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. In a 1974 interview with Black World/Negro Digest, Davis said they had been attracted to the place because of a magazine article his wife had read. In Hawaii, Davis wrote a weekly column, called "Frank-ly Speaking," for the Honolulu Record, a labor paper published by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Davis's early columns covered labor issues, but he broadened his scope