- Who is Angela Davis?
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Angela Davis is a prominent author and black activist who was very involved in the black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. She was a notable member of America’s Communist Party and was famously jailed and cleared of charges for an incident related to prison outbreak. Later in her life, she taught at the University of Santa Cruz on history and consciousness, but she has since retired. Now, Davis guest lectures at various universities. She was an honorary co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March.
Angela Davis has always known prejudice and racism in the United States. She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, a neighborhood called “Dynamite Hill” because of the frequent attacks by the KKK on their homes. In high school, she organized interracial study groups that were broken up by the police. Davis knew several of the victims of the Birmingham church bombing of 1963. In graduate school, she joined the Black Panthers, and she was involved with the Che-Lumumba Club, a black branch of the Communist Party.
“Radical simply means ‘grasping at the root.’” – Angela Davis
- The Trial of Angela Davis
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Angela Davis was a close supporter of the Soledad Brothers, a group of three black men who were accused of killing a prison guard. Davis believed the accusations to be political in nature, so she supported their innocence. One of the men, George Lester Jackson, made an escape attempt during his trial in 1971. He held two people hostage and tried to exchange them for his brother, but this resulted in the deaths of four people. The gun he used during the crime was registered to Angela Davis, and she was charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. Following these charges, Davis went into hiding for two months and was placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.
When Davis came out of hiding, she was sent to jail without a trial. Many people saw the charges against Davis to be a result of her radical politics, and these accusations were made credible by the prosecution’s shaky case. When she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury, some took it as an opportunity to claim that racism no longer existed in the U.S. court system. However, after the whole ordeal, Davis’ sister said, “A fair trial would have been no trial at all.”
Some believed the entire trial had been orchestrated to prove how the problem of racism had been ‘cured’ in the United States, as the only evidence was the gun registered in her name and her rumored love for Jackson.
- Her Work
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“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” – Angela Davis
Angela Davis has written several books on the history of consciousness, including Women, Race, and Class (1980) and Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016). If you are interested in reading her words, hereis an excerpt from Women, Race, and Class.
For decades, Davis has consistently worked to liberate women, people of color, and the lower class through her activism and writing. America has an obligation to remember who she is and what she stood for if it hopes to change for the better. She believed that only through economic liberation can everyone become truly free.
“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense, but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?” – Angela Davis
Sources used:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5863103.Angela_Y_Davis
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/davis.html