Branches of the Vine

It's all quiet now in cities like Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Newark, where blacks once protested and rioted against their segregated conditions in the 1960s and women burned their bras during the Women's Liberation era in the 1970s. But for five years, O.M. Davis, a pioneer in equal employment opportunity, analyzed employment practices and wrote affirmative-action plans for public- and private-sector clients throughout the United States. This was concurrent with her CEO refusing to pay her comparable wages as whites and males, citing that although qualified, she had "two strikes against her of being black and a woman." One CEO stated that she had delusions of grandeur, while the other stated that she was ahead of her time.

From 1968 to 1999, O.M. Davis used the court of law to redress her fight with CEOs across race and gender lines for pay equity and inclusion. Along the way, she weaves in her enslaved Native American Cherokee ancestry, a world conference of women, and anecdotes of spiritual inspiration.

Davis cites the family as the key to her success. In "Branches of the Vine: The Price of Admission," she gives you an inside look at her story of inspiration, embedded in her stable, nuclear Christian family background, which she accessed to function in today's society.

By looking deep within herself, she interweaves her enslaved bloodline where her re-imagination of past conditions empowers her with knowledge of unity and diversity. As a contemporary woman whose world pivots on individualized, systemic gender and race discrimination, it also becomes the stuff on which she renders decisions in the business world. There are certain basic truths that are so solid in the foundation of our being that it can become monumental for any era or new/nu world order.