Angela Davis Bio
More on the upbringing and history of revolutionary Black female activist, Angela Davis:
Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944. At the time, Alabama was controlled by the notorious white supremacist politician Bull Connor. Davis was friends with some of those who died in the 16th Street Baptist church bombing in 1963 – a Ku Klux Klan act of terrorism that killed four girls, and for which no prosecutions were brought until 1977. “We knew that the role of the police was to protect white supremacy,” says Davis.
She moved to New York at 15 to attend high school there, went to West Germany to study philosophy and Marxism under Herbert Marcuse at the Frankfurt school, and, back in the US by the end of the 60s, was active in the Black Panthers and a member of the Communist party. Her links to communism meant that the then California governor, Ronald Reagan, had her sacked from her position as acting assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA.
Then, in 1970, things shifted gears. A shotgun Davis legally bought was used in an attempted courthouse escape. A judge who was taken hostage was killed, as was Jonathan Jackson – the student who attempted the breakout – and the two defendants. Davis was charged with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder” because she had purchased the gun. She went underground and was arrested in New York. Aretha Franklin helped publicise her case by offering to pay her bail, the Rolling Stones and John Lennon wrote songs about her, she became a cause celebre around the world and was cleared of the charges after spending 18 months in prison. It turned Davis from a radical academic and community leader into an international figurehead for political activism of all stripes. “I’m really thankful that I’m still alive,” says Davis. “Because I feel like I’m witnessing this for all of those who didn’t make it this far.”
Davis knows how close she came to not surviving. When the 1972 interview took place, she was still being held on a charge of murder and could – in theory – have been executed. Many of Davis’s fellow Panthers did meet violent deaths at the hands of the state: Fred Hampton was killed in a police raid in Chicago, while Bobby Hutton was shot while surrendering in Oakland (Marlon Brando delivered his eulogy). Many more are still in prison (Mumia Abu-Jamal) or exile (Assata Shakur). “I know that I could have been one of those … several didn’t make it,” says Davis. “I could be in prison, I could have been sentenced to spend the rest of my life behind bars. And it was only because of the organising that unfolded all over the world that my life was saved. So, in a sense, my continued work is based on the awareness that I would not be here had enough people not done the same kind of work for me. And I’ll continue to do this until the day I die.”
(From https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/angela-davis-on-george-floyd-as-long-as-the-violence-of-racism-remains-no-one-is-safe)
