ANGELA DAVIS

Submitted by Barbara Chandler

Author’s Note: It is a shame that an African American woman, who in later life would make a significant difference in the lives of other women, had to resort to the support of the Black Panthers. In the 1960s, this seemed to be one of the few ways such individuals were able to demand their Civil Rights.

Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944 during the reign of Jim Crow Laws. Both parents were college educated and lived in a mixed neighborhood which contributed to a childhood marked by the effects of racial segregation.

Showing an interest in reading at a very young age, she entered school early. In her junior year, she applied to the American Friends Service Committee program, a program whose aim was to place black southern students into integrated schools in the North. As a result, she entered the Elizabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village, a small private school favored by radicals. It was here that she began a life influenced by socialism and communism.

After finishing high school, she was admitted to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she was one of three black students. Feeling alienated, she eventually befriended the foreign student and worked part-time jobs to earn money for the purpose of spending the summer in Europe. While there, she attended the World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki. After her return, she experienced her first encounter with the FBI. as they interviewed her regarding her attendance at a communist sponsored festival.

In her second year at Brandeis, she elected to major in French which led to her being accepted in her junior year by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. While there, the 1963 KKK Birmingham church bombing occurred which affected her deeply since she personally knew the four young victims. In her senior year back at Brandeis, she developed an interest in Philosophy which led her to planning attendance at the University of Frankfurt.

Upon graduating magna cum laude, she moved to Germany. After a visit to East Berlin, she concluded that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than the West Germans. At the same time, she roomed and participated with several radical students but decided to return to the U. S. given the formation of the Black Panther Party.

Once she returned to the U. S. she earned a master’s degree from UCSD. At the same time she became disappointed in the Black nationalist sentiments because of their rejection of Communism as a “white man’s thing”. Consequently, she returned to Germany where she earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy. In 1969, she became assistant professor at UCLA but because of her activism with the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party and at the urging of Ronald Reagan, she was fired in the same year. After a community uproar, she was rehired.

Her nationwide notoriety was the result of a gun registered in her name being linked to the murder of Judge Harold Haley during an effort to free a black convict who was being tried for the attempted retaliatory murder of a white prison guard who killed three unarmed black inmates. She became the third woman to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. After being captured, she was tried and acquitted when it was found that her ownership of the gun was not sufficient to establish her responsibility for the plot.

In the 1980s she ran twice for Vice President on the Communist ticket. Currently, she is a graduate studies Professor of History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Her current activism is focused on racial and gender equality, and for gay rights and prison abolition. She considers herself an abolitionist, not a “prison reformed and refers to the United States prison system as the “prison-industrial complex”.

Article sourced by Wikipedia.