Angela Yvonne Davis (born 1944) is an American philosophy professor and human rights activist, member of the civil rights movement in the United States.
An international education
On January 26, 1944, Angela Davis was born into an African-American family in Birmingham, Alabama, in the midst of segregation racial. Her father, a former teacher, owns a gas station and her mother is a primary school teacher. In his neighborhood, racial tensions are intense.
At 14, Angela left for New York to continue her studies at Elisabeth-Irwin High School in Manhattan. It was there that she was introduced to socialism and communism, joining a group of young communists. She also made friends there with children of leaders of the American Communist Party. Angela then joined Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where she studied philosophy, focusing in particular on Sartre and Camus. She also works part-time so she can travel to Europe.
As part of her studies, Angela spent a year in France, in Biarritz. It was there, in 1963, that she learned of the attack on the Birmingham Baptist Church, an attack committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and in which four young girls were killed. Angela will be very affected. After that, she returned to study at Brandeis University, in Germany and then in San Diego. She then became a teacher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Black Panther Party
Active, Angela Davis is particularly committed to the American Communist Party and the Black Panther Party, and campaigns against racial and sexist discrimination. In its struggle, it positions itself against separationism as well as against integrationism. Her activism – mainly her membership in the Black Panther Party and the Communist Party – led to her being expelled from the University of California and monitored by the FBI. She supports the Brothers of Soledad, three black American prisoners accused of having murdered a guard in retaliation for the murder of one of their fellow prisoners.
On August 7, 1970, a hostage-taking in a court killed four people and Angelas Davis was accused of having organized it. After two weeks on the run, she is arrested and imprisoned. She will remain in detention for sixteen months before being tried. She protests her innocence and thousands of people, in the United States and around the world, support her. In 1972, the jury found her not guilty and she was released; this prison experience plays a key role in his activism against the American prison system.
Feminist and anti-racist activist
As soon as she was released from prison, Angela Davis published radical essays, notably on peace in Vietnam, anti-racism and feminism. In 1980 and 1984, she ran as a candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States. Today, she is a professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California and fights against the prison industry and the death penalty.