Chester C. Davenport Scholarship

The purpose of the Fund is to support educational diversity at the University of Georgia School of Law in honor of the Chester C. Davenport.  The scholarship is limited to students who will contribute significantly to the diversity of the student body, including because they have overcome significant disadvantage or hardship, because they have a close familiarity with prejudice and poverty, because they have demonstrably encountered these conditions, or members of groups historically underrepresented in law school and the practice of law.

An Athens native and Morehouse College graduate, Davenport was a monumental figure in the School of Law's history. He was the law school's first Black student and remained its only Black student during his law school career. He earned his law degree in 1966, finishing in the top 5% of his class. As a student, he also served as a founding member of the editorial board for the Georgia Law Review.

After law school, Davenport became an attorney in the tax division of the U.S. Department of Justice and subsequently served as a legislative assistant for California Sen. Alan Cranston. Following a position on President Jimmy Carter's transition team and an appointment as an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation, Davenport co-founded a law practice based in Washington, D.C. He later started Georgetown Partners, a private equity firm.

Davenport's service to UGA includes positions on the law school's Board of Visitors and the UGA Arch Foundation. He delivered the law school's 97th Sibley Lecture and participated in the school's 50th anniversary commemoration of the landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case. In 2006, he made a transformational gift to the law school to support student scholarships. The UGA chapter of the Black Law Students Association bears his name and, in 2016, he received the law school alumni association's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Scroll Award.