Davis worked for KNEW, an AM radio station located in Oakland, as an announcer in 1966. She became the first female African American television journalist on the West Coast when she was hired by KPIX-TV, the CBS affiliate based in San Francisco, in 1966. She spent the next three decades working for KPIX, becoming an anchorwoman in 1970, and a few years later moved to the local NBC affiliate, KRON-TV. Stories she covered include the Berkeley riots of the Free Speech Movement, the Black Panthers, the mass suicide-murder at Jonestown, the Moscone–Milk assassinations, the AIDS and crack epidemics, and the 1998 United States embassy bombing in Tanzania.
