Angela Davis exemplifies sincere strength
Angela Davis
*On this date in 1944, Angela Davis was born. She is an African-American educator and political activist.
From Birmingham, Ala., Angel Yvonne Davis lived in a section of town called “Dynamite Hill,” because of the violence used by white on black to maintain residential segregation. Both of her parents were educators, working with the local NAACP, and instilling in their children not to accept the social oppression that American society gave black people.
When she was 15, Davis left Birmingham to attend the Elizabeth Irwin School in New York City. Davis also attended Brandies University, where Marxist philosophy influenced her. After graduating in 1961, she was further impacted as a social activist by the bomb killing of four black Sunday school girls in Birmingham in 1963. Davis began her doctoral studies in philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, but returned to the United States in 1967, when she decided that she could no longer stay away from the growing American racial conflict.
Davis relocated to southern California to work on her master degree at the University of San Diego; it was during this time that she became involved with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panthers, and the Communist Party. Though hired in 1969 to teach philosophy at UCLA, Davis was fired soon afterwards by their board of regents and then-governor Ronald Reagan for her affiliation with the Communist Party.
Though her case was appealed and overturned by the Supreme Court, by that time she was in hiding because of an incident at Soledad Prison. In August 1970, George Jackson and his brother Jonathan, prisoners at Soledad attempted to escape and were killed; the weapons were traced to Davis. For two months while underground, she was on the FBI ten most wanted lists. After apprehension she was jailed for almost a year and a half before being tried for murder and conspiracy. In June 1972, Davis was acquitted of both charges in a highly publicized trial.
She remained politically active while resuming her academic career at San Francisco State University. Davis also ran for Vice President in 1980 and 1984 on the Communist Party ticket. As a professor and author, she has written several books. They include, If They Come in the Morning 1971, Women, Race, and Class 1983, and Women, Culture, and Politics 1989. Her autobiography, Angela Davis: An Autobiography was published in 1974 and reissued in 1988.
Reference:
Black Women in America An Historical Encyclopedia
Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine
Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York
ISBN 0-926019-61-9
Davis, Angela