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political activist, author
1944 -
African American political activist, b. Birmingham, Ala. She taught philosophy (196970) at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, until she was finally denied reappointment because of her membership in the Communist party and her advocacy of radical black causes. In Aug., 1970, she went into hiding after a gun legally registered to her was used in an attempted courtroom escape in which a judge and three others were killed. Apprehended two months later, she was tried on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping (1972). After months in prison, she was released on bail and later acquitted. She has since taught at San Francisco State Univ. (197991) and the Univ. of California at Santa Cruz (1992). Davis was the American Communist party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980 and 1984.
Activist and educator Angela Davis is born on January 26, 1944.
Angel Yvonne Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and lived in a section of town called Dynamite Hill, because of the violence used by whites against Blacks to maintain Jim Crow. Her parents were educators, working with the local branch of the NAACP, and taught their children not to accept Black's second class status.
Davis left Birmingham at age 15 to attend the Elizabeth Irwin School in New York City. She also attended Brandies University, where she was influenced by Marxist philosophy. Upon graduation in 1961 she was further influenced by the bombing of the Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that resulted in the death of four girls 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, deciding to become directly involved in the Black struggle. Davis relocated to southern California to work on her master degree at the University of San Diego. 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 the university's Board of Regents and then-governor Ronald Reagan for her affiliation with the Communist Party.
By the time her case was appealed and overturned by the Supreme Court, Davis 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 used in the incident were traced to Davis. For two months Davis was on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list while underground. She was eventually taken into custody and 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.
Davis 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 penned several books. They include, If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, and Women, Culture, and Politics. Her autobiography, Angela Davis: An Autobiography was published in 1974 and reissued in 1988.
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