Angela Davis (January 26, 1944)

Angela Yvonne Davis is a prominent political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as the leader of Communist Party USA in the 1960s and had close ties to the Black Panther Party. She has advocated for the abolishment of prisons and the prison-industrial complex. She is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught in the History of Consciousness Department and is the former director of the Feminist Studies Department.

Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, where she attended elementary and middle school. Her mother Sallye Bell Davis worked for the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which had ties to the Communist Party. She attended the Elisabeth Irwin High School, a progressive high school in New York City. Later she received a scholarship to Brandeis University, where she studied one year in France and graduated with honors and a degree in French in 1965. She continued her education at the University of Frankfurt in Germany, where she studied philosophy, and the University of California-San Diego, where she earned a Master’s degree. She went on to earn a Ph.D. at Humboldt University in Germany. In 1969 she was hired to teach philosophy at the University of California-Los Angeles. The University of California Board of Regents, at the direction of Governor Ronald Reagan, dismissed Davis because she belonged to the Communist Party. Although a court ruling blocked the firing, the Board fired her again in 1970, this time for using “inflammatory language.” Governor Reagan declared that Davis would never teach in the University of California system again. Davis’s vocal support for the Black Panther Party was another reason for her persecution by Governor Reagan and the FBI.

Angela Davis is well known for a notable arrest and trial in 1970. In January 1970 George Jackson, an inmate at Soledad Prison in California, and two other prisoners were charged with killing a prison guard. During the trial, Jackson’s 17-year old brother Jonathan Jackson took over a Marin County courtroom where he armed the black defendants and took the judge, prosecutor, and three female jurors hostage. By the end of the whole ordeal, the judge, Jonathan Jackson, and the armed defendants were killed while the prosecutor and one of the jurors were injured. Davis was accused of purchasing the guns used in commission of the crimes so she was charged with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder." Learn more about Angela Davis

Angela Davis, ca. 1965 (Library of Congress)

Stanford University: Papers of the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, ca. 1970-1972

Angela Davis Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

Angela Davis Case series, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library

Angela Davis Case Collection, Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute Archives, Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley