Angela Davis - Biography
Angela Davis is one of the most prominent and visible figures to emerge from the wild and often chaotic array of activist groups that proliferated in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. Her affiliation with the Black Panther Party made her an iconic inspiration for disenfranchised people of all colors, and for decades she has been one of the most strident voices of feminism, working tirelessly as a professor, lecturer, theorist, musicologist, and political lightning rod. She was only the third woman to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List; she was twice acquitted on charges of being an accomplice to conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide. Both the Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono have dedicated songs to her. Davis was twice nominated, in 1980 and 1984, on a ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate — by the Communist Party of the United States of America. Throughout the turbulence of the last 50 years, Angela Davis has maintained a fierce political stance, an indominable will, and an unquenchable thirst for social justice.
Davis was born in Birmingham, Ala, where her father ran a filing station. She excelled in school, and got out of the Deep South with a scholarship to Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where she studied Sartre, Camus, Marcuse, and the social theories of the Frankfurt School; her interest in philosophy would eventually lead her to the Sorbonne and then to the University of Frankfurt. Davis naturally gravitated towards the socialism and politics of East German, and received her doctorate from Humbolt University in East Berlin.
In 1969, Davis was a professor of philosophy at UCLA, when then-Governor Ronald Reagan, nonplussed with her overt ties to the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, had her fired, leading to an increased radicalization of her politics. In 1970, she implicated as a conspirator in the kidnapping and murder of a US judge; while she wasn’t a direct participant in the brazen and grisly event, the sawed-off shotgun used in the crime belonged to her, and had been purchased only two days earlier. Rather than surrender to the authorities, Davis went into hiding. During the months before she was captured, the both the white counterculture and African American community lionized her as a folk heroine and made her a cause célèbre.
The courts eventually exonerated Angela Davis, and ordered her reinstated to her position in the University of California system. She taught for decades at UC Santa Cruz, with the History of Consciousness department; she also chaired the Feminist Studies department. A classic document of her oratory was quickly assembled for release as an album while she was incarcerated during her legal ordeal. The LP Angela Davis Speaks (1972 Folkways) is a collection of interviews, panel discussions, and man-on-the-street opinions. Much of the rhetoric may make contemporary listeners wince, but it’s a fascinating and vital aural snapshot of one of the most convulsive periods in this nation’s history. More recently, Davis appears on The Prison-Industrial Complex (1999 Alternative Tentacles), a gripping series of lectures in which she details the growth of privately funded prisons, then eviscerates the idea that young men in this country are being punished for the sake of profit, not reform; she concludes with some cogent suggestions as to how we can collectively dismantle this system, while channeling our energies to the communities where assistance and hope are most needed. It’s a just cause, and embodies Angela Davis’ lifelong devotion to all forms of liberation.
