Angela Davis

Born on January 26, 1944, Angela Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in an area known as “Dynamite Hill” because the area she lived was terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan. To put her life in Birmingham in perspective, she knew majority of the young girls who perished in the Birmingham church bombing in 1963. At a young age, Davis saw a need for social reform, and started running interracial study groups as a teenager, even though they would be broken up by police. 

Later in her life, Angela went to study at Brandeis University in Massachusetts for philosophy, and later went to graduate school in and became a professor at the University of California. While there, she joined the civil rights party the Black Panthers and the Che-Lumumba Club, which was an all black Communist organization. 

Her ties to communism and high profile case of the Soledad brothers*, in which Davis was accused, then acquitted, of playing a part in an escape attempt turned murder, has caused her some controversy and hardships. However, Davis continued to fight for her belief and civil rights. 

Davis’ career embodies that of a modern activist for civil rights, and she has written several books including: Women, Race, and Class (1980), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1999), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (2005), The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (2012) and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016).

*The Soledad Brothers were three black inmates accused of killing a guard. Some believed the men were used as scapegoats.