Key Largo Honors Harry Davis Jr., Community's First Black Fire Chief

Harry Davis Jr., born in 1944, was honored in Key Largo when Keys Weekly published a remembrance on Feb. 27, 2026 that recognized him as Key Largo’s first Black fire chief, and local social accounts ran Black History Month spotlights. The Original Report identifies the Key Largo Fire & EMS District alongside Key Largo community leaders and historians as the parties honoring him.

Keys Weekly’s supplied excerpt described Davis in local terms, saying, “Harry Davis Jr., Key Largo's first Black fire chief, was a true Conch who was born in 1944 on his father's pistol range, in the area that is” — a passage that is truncated in the material provided to this newsroom. That phrasing places Davis in deep local context and preserves a family detail reported in the Feb. 27, 2026 piece, though the remainder of that sentence and further biographical details were not included in the excerpts supplied.

The Original Report specifically names the honoring organizations and civic actors: “The Key Largo Fire & EMS District / Key Largo community leaders and historians, honoring Harry Davis Jr., recognized locally as Key Largo’s first Black fire chief.” That identification appears alongside the Keys Weekly publication date and frames the recognition as both institutional and civic during Black History Month.

Social-media tributes reinforced the Keys Weekly identification. A Facebook post ran the line, “This Black History Month spotlight honors Harry Davis Jr., the first Black fire chief of the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department.” An Instagram post used the same opening and continued with a truncated family note: “This Black History Month spotlight honors Harry Davis Jr., the first Black fire chief of the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department. His father” — the caption supplied here cuts off mid-sentence and lacks account and timestamp metadata.

The reporting package contains a notable naming discrepancy across sources: the Original Report and institutional reference use “Key Largo Fire & EMS District,” while the social posts refer to the “Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department.” Keys Weekly’s Feb. 27, 2026 article appears to be the most detailed source available in the supplied material, but full text, byline, social-post authorship, event specifics, and Davis’s service dates remain unavailable in the excerpts provided.

For now, Keys Weekly’s Feb. 27, 2026 remembrance and the contemporaneous Black History Month spotlights on Facebook and Instagram together record local recognition of Harry Davis Jr. as Key Largo’s first Black fire chief, describe him as “a true Conch,” and preserve the biographical note that he was “born in 1944 on his father's pistol range.” Those documented details establish the core facts of the honor while leaving open archival questions about Davis’s tenure, the relationship between the volunteer department and the modern Fire & EMS District, and the full family and service record cited in the truncated passages.