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Angela Davis, an American political activist, philosopher, academic scholar and author.

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                      Angela Davis Childhood

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                      Angela Davis Childhood

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Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama.

African American Heritage. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved January 24, 2020

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File:Angela Davis 10-year-old Girl Scouts.tif - Wikipedia

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13th | Dr. Angela Davis Puts the System on Trial | Netflix

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Angela Davis at the first news conference since being released on bail Feb. 24, 1972. (Source: History.com)

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Awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, Davis earned a BA in Philosophy. She later earned her Master’s degree from the University of California, and her doctorate in Philosophy from Humboldt University (BHA, 2022).

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Angela Davis speaking at a street rally, 1974. (Source: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive)

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Starting as a young teenager, Davis began organizing through school where she organized interracial study groups, which were later broken up by police. (biography.com, 2022)

During her time as a Graduate student, Davis joined several groups such as the Black Panthers but spent most of her time working with Che-Lumumba Club, an all-Black branch of the Communist Party (History.com, 2021).

Davis helped organize and lead protests, calling for racial equality, women's rights, the end of police brutality, and high levels of unemployment in the Black community (Lewis, 2020).

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In 1970 Davis became active in the campaign to improve prison conditions. She was drawn to the case of three Black inmates, named the Soledad brothers, who had been charged with killing a guard. Davis worked with other activists to form the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. She eventually became the leader of the group (Lewis, 2020).

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1969 Civil Rights, Black Panthers, Angela Davis | Kinolibrary

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In 1970, Angela Davis was represented by the FBI as Ten Most Wanted Fugitives with accusation of “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder" and arrested for being a presumed accomplice in a gun shootout in Marin Courtroom which led to the death of a judge and 3 defendants. Davis at that time was a friend of Jonathan Jackson who was the leader of the uprising under the name of Soledad Brothers, and romantically linked to his brother. It was reported that some of the guns used in the incidents were purchased by her.

Davis strongly stood up and questioned the fairness of the jury covered with all White jury seated.

“There are no Black people sitting on the jury. Although I cannot say that this is a jury of my peers, I can say that, after much discussion, we have reached the conclusion that the women and men sitting on the jury will put forth their best efforts to give me a fair trial.” – Angela Davis, 1972

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After her arrest, Angela Davis became an international icon of resistance. Scholars in West and East Germany, who voiced to support the Black Panthers, anti-Vietnam War movement in the 60' and many people around the world started advocating for her innocent and calling to release her from bail.

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The government set up an apparatus against her, but in return, she challenged the whole law-making system of the U.S at the time.
Even though there is no particular relationship between jurors and defendants, Davis mentioned "jury of my peers" has put a question on the meaning of jury in the American legal system. Eventually, they had to change the court from Marin to Santa Clara in order to prove their justice.
After 18 months in jail, 3 months of trial and 3 days of jury deliberation, they had to return Not Guilty verdict on each of the counts for her.

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Angelia Davis during a speech in Northern California, 1981. (Photo by: Ilka Hartmann, Source: Zinn education Project).

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After being acquitted of all charges, Angela travelled and lectured throughout America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. She devoted her time to being a member on the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center as well as a member on the executive board for the Women of Color Resource Center, a San Francisco Bay Area organization (BHA, 2022).

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Angela Davis included in a mural in Brooklyn, N.Y., along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Nicholas Calcott.

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There’s a tendency to define racial progress in America by the upward mobility of various “minority groups” — to count and celebrate how many members have entered the middle class, have graduated from college or have multimillion-dollar deals with streaming services. Davis, however, finds those signifiers meaningless. Racism, she believes, will continue to exist as long as capitalism remains our secular religion. “Even when we fail to have an explicit conversation about capitalism, it is the driving force of so much when we talk about racism. Capitalism has always been racial capitalism" (NYtimes.com, 2020).

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Davis at a Juneteenth rally and dockworker shutdown at the Port of Oakland, in Oakland, Calif., June 19, 2020. Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle/AP.

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Angela Davis is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex (PIC). Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia that works in solidarity with incarcerated women (NYtimes.com, 2020).

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One of five covers for T’s 2020 Greats issue. Photograph by John Edmonds

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“I’ve come to the conclusion that our work as activists is always to prepare the next generation,” she says. “To create new terrains so that those who come after us will have a better opportunity to get up and engage in even more radical struggles. And I think we’re seeing this now.” She plans to be around to see it through (NYtimes.com).

Her work helped lay the theoretical groundwork for the #DefundThePolice movement (Lannan.org, 2022).

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How do you think Angela's experiences and own activism/organizing has shaped how we look at community organizing today versus 50 years ago?

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George, N. (2020, October 19). Angela Davis still believes America can change. The New York Times. Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/19/t-magazine/angela-davis.html

Angela Davis (January 26, 1944)

from https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/angela-davis

Sonali Chakravarti (2020). Wanted: Angela Davis and a Jury of Her Peers
from https://journals-sagepub-com.gbcprx01.georgebrown.ca/doi/pdf/10.1177/0090591720944877

A&E Networks Television. (2021, April 23). Angela Davis. Biography.com. Retrieved May 8, 2022, from https://www.biography.com/activist/angela-davis

BHA. (n.d.). Angela Davis. Angela Davis-Civil Rights activist. Retrieved May 7, 2022, from http://www.myblackhistory.net/Angela_Davis.htm

Guardian News and Media. (2020, June 15). Angela Davis: 'we knew the role of the police was to protect white supremacy'. The Guardian. Retrieved May 15, 2022, 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

Guardian News and Media. (2022, March 5). Angela Davis on the power of protest: 'we can't do anything without optimism'. The Guardian. Retrieved May 8, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/05/angela-davis-on-the-power-of-protest-we-cant-do-anything-without-optimism

History.com Editors. (2009, November 9). Angela Davis. History.com. Retrieved May 7, 2022, from https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/angela-davis

Lewis, J. J. (2020, November 9). Biography of Angela Davis, political activist and academic. ThoughtCo. Retrieved May 15, 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/angela-davis-biography-3528285

Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Bhavnani; Davis, Angela (Spring 1989). "Complexity, Activism, Optimism: An Interview with Angela Y. Davis". Feminist Review (31): 66–81. doi:10.2307/1395091. JSTOR 139509

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Search the Catalog for Records Relating to Angela Davis

Resources

More about Angela Davis

Davis fled prosecution. Four days after the initial warrant was issued, J. Edgar Hoover listed Angela Davis on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. She was on the run for two months before being apprehended in New York City. Thousands of activists around the world organized in her defense and demanded her release. After being incarcerated for sixteen months, Davis was tried and on June 4, 1972 she was found not guilty by an all-white jury.

After her trial, Davis visited various Communist nations, including Cuba, the USSR, and East Germany. Upon returning to the United States, she resumed her teaching career, holding positions at several universities and colleges in California, including the Claremont Colleges, San Francisco State University, and the University of California-Santa Cruz, where she taught from 1991 to 2008. In addition to her teaching career, she has written a dozen books and has continued to lead the fight against racism, patriarchal oppression, war, incarceration, and the death penalty. Davis left the Communist Party in 1991 and established the Committees for Correspondence of Democracy and Socialism. In the early 1980s she was married to photographer Hilton Braithwaite. In 1998 she talked about her lesbian identity in an article in OUT magazine.

Most of the records at the National Archives relating to Angela Davis are textual, but there are also sound recordings (three at the National Archives facility in College Park, MD and one in the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA). Many of the textual records are from Record Group 65: Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1896-2008, Series: Classification 157 (Civil Unrest) Case Files, 1957-1978.

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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.