Davis, Angela Yvonne (1944-…), is an African American political activist, author, and educator. In her scholarship and activism, Davis has been an outspoken supporter of civil rights, women’s rights, and prisoners’ rights.
Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on Jan. 26, 1944. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University in 1965. In 1968, she received a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and began her doctoral studies. While at UCSD, she was greatly influenced by her teacher Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist philosopher. Davis joined the Communist Party in 1968. That same year, she began working with the Black Panther Party (see Black Panther Party ).
In 1969, Davis became an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles. Later that year, the Board of Regents of the University of California fired her because of her membership in the Communist Party.
In 1970, Davis became cochair of the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee, which protested abuses against politically active inmates at the state prison in Soledad, California. One of the inmates was author and activist George Jackson. On Aug. 7, 1970, 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson’s younger brother, tried to free a prison inmate on trial and two other inmates serving as witnesses at the Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael, California. During the attempted escape, prison guards shot at the van into which Jonathan Jackson and the escaping prisoners, with hostages, had fled. One of the hostages also grabbed a gun from a prisoner and began firing inside the van. Jackson, two prisoners, and the trial judge were killed. In his attempt to free the prisoners, Jackson had used several guns registered in Davis’s name.
Fearing that she would not be treated fairly by the police or by the courts, Davis went underground. On Oct. 13, 1970, she was arrested in New York City. She was charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder in the death of the trial judge. Later, a charge of conspiracy was added. Ruchell Magee, the only one of the escaping prisoners to survive, was charged as well.
Imprisoned in California, Davis maintained her innocence. Many people believed that authorities had falsely accused her because of her political beliefs. Supporters around the world held rallies calling for a fair trial. On June 4, 1972, she was found not guilty of all charges against her.
After her acquittal, Davis remained an outspoken critic of the United States criminal justice system, particularly its treatment of poor people and minorities. In 1973, she helped found the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression to secure the legal freedom of political prisoners in the United States and to challenge police brutality and other forms of repression.
Davis served as the Communist Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1980 and 1984. She resigned from the party in 1991 and cofounded the Committees of Correspondence, an organization committed to democracy and socialism. In 1998, Davis became a founder of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to challenging the prison system.
Davis is a tenured, full professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She has taught philosophy, women’s studies, and ethnic studies at San Francisco State University and Stanford University. She has written several books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974); Women, Race, and Class (1981); Women, Culture & Politics (1989); Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998); Are Prisons Obsolete (2003); and Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (2005). Her essays and interviews were collected in The Angela Y. Davis Reader (1998).
