Davis, Angela

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DAVIS, ANGELA

(b. January 26, 1944) Activist.

Black activist Angela Davis became disillusioned with the progress of civil rights in the 1960s. She joined the Communist Party in 1968, pursuing a militant course against racism and poverty. In a period of Cold War tensions and social unrest produced by opposition to the war in Vietnam, she became a symbol of the radical outlaw—revered by some, reviled by others. Her accusations of injustice leveled against American capitalism and democracy, in part fueled by the antiwar movement, further inflamed public debate and deepened social and racial divisions during the 1960s and 1970s.

Davis was the first of four children in a middle-class African-American family living in a section of Birmingham, Alabama, that had been bombed so often by the Ku Klux Klan that it was known as Dynamite Hill. While in elementary school, Davis stole money from her father to give to the hungry and rationalized the theft as a good deed. She also became aware of the injustices in her own segregated school system—not only outdated texbooks and poor recreation facilities, but a stereotyped predestination to fail.

A scholarship from the American Friends Service Committee allowed Davis to leave in her junior year for Elisabeth Irwine, an integrated private and progressive school in New York City. A number of teachers at Elisabeth Irwine had been blacklisted for their political ideology during the Communist purging by Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. Still recovering from World War II, the nation was embroiled in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the subject of Communism provoked intense emotions. Davis became interested in socialist philosophy at this time and joined Advance, a Marxist-Leninist group.

She entered Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 1961, majoring in French, and spent her junior year at the Sorbonne in Paris. During that time she became further immersed in the struggles of oppressed people as a result of her association with Algerian students. Back at Brandeis, she studied under the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. After graduation with honors in 1965, Davis went to West Germany at the urging of Marcuse to study at the Institute for Social Research. She returned in 1967 and entered the University of California at San Diego, where Marcuse was then teaching, to study for a master's in philosophy. Declaring that black people could

be liberated only by a radical overthrow of capitalism, she joined the Communist Party and became active in the all-black community cell in Los Angeles called Che Lumumba.

Davis obtained a master's degree in 1969 and joined the UCLA faculty. A popular teacher, she was fired that summer under pressure from then California governor Ronald Reagan because of a published letter that revealed her Communist Party membership. Under pressure from colleagues and students, she was reinstated on the grounds that the dismissal violated her constitutional rights.

Looking for another reason to fire her, the California Board of Regents found it in 1970. Two inmates at Soledad Prison in California, George Jackson and W. L. Nolen, had organized a Black Panther cell. After a fist-fight, Nolen and two other prisoners were killed by guards. Later a white guard was murdered, and Jackson along with two others were indicted for the crime. Davis made speeches in defense of the "Soledad Brothers." She picketed the prison and raised money for their defense. The university dismissed her.

In August 1970 a warrant was issued for her arrest. Guns found in a van driven by Jonathan Jackson, brother of Soledad prisoner George, were registered in her name. Jonathan Jackson had taken hostages in a courtroom, killing a judge and two others before himself being killed. Davis claimed she bought the guns because of threats on her life, but rather than surrender, she went into hiding. She was placed on the FBI's most wanted list.

Davis was arrested on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping in New York in October 1970, prompting a worldwide "Free Angela" protest. Money was raised for her defense. In a trial that drew international attention, Davis's lawyers argued there was insufficient evidence to involve her in the murders. She was acquitted by an all-white jury and released from a California prison in February 1972.

Davis lectured at a number of colleges in California through the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980 she ran for vice president of the United States on the Communist Party ticket. Since then Davis has been a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she teaches the history of consciousness. She also lectures worldwide on Marxist theory and advocates abolishing all prisons.