Friday Feature
Angela Davis
Activist, scholar and writer who advocates for the
oppressed
Angela Davis, born
on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, became a master scholar who
studied at the Sorbonne. She joined the U.S. Communist Party and was jailed for
charges related to a prison outbreak, though ultimately cleared. Known for
books like Women, Race & Class, she has worked as a professor
and activist who advocates gender equity, prison reform and alliances across
color lines
Writer, activist
and educator Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama.
Davis is best known as a radical African-American educator and activist for
civil rights and other social issues. She knew about racial prejudice from her
experiences with discrimination growing up in Alabama. As a teenager, Davis
organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police. She
also knew several of the young African-American girls killed in the Birmingham
church bombing of 1963.
Davis later moved
north and went to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she studied
philosophy with Herbert Marcuse. As a graduate student at the University of
California, San Diego, in the late 1960s, she was associated with several groups
including the Black Panthers. But she spent most of her time working with the
Che-Lumumba Club, which was all-black branch of the Communist Party.
Hired to teach at
the University of California, Los Angeles, Davis ran into trouble with the
school's administration because of her association with communism. They fired
her, but she fought them in court and got her job back. Davis still ended up
leaving when her contract expired in 1970.
Outside of
academia, Davis had become a strong supporter of three prison inmates of
Soledad Prison known as the Soledad brothers (they were not related). These
three men -- John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo and George Lester Jackson -- were
accused of killing a prison guard after several African-American inmates had
been killed in a fight by another guard. Some thought these prisoners were
being used as scapegoats because of the political work within the prison.
During Jackson's
trial in August 1970, an escape attempt was made and several people in the
courtroom were killed. Davis was brought up on several charges, including
murder, for her alleged part in the event. There were two main pieces of
evidence used at trial: the guns used were registered to her, and she was
reportedly in love with Jackson. After spending roughly 18 months in jail,
Davis was acquitted in June 1972.
After spending
time travelling and lecturing, Davis returned to teaching. Today, she is a
professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches
courses on the history of consciousness. Davis is the author of several books,
including Women, Race, and Class (1980) and Are
Prisons Obsolete? (2003).
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