Davis, Angela

Davis, Angela (Yvonne)

(born Jan. 26, 1944, Birmingham, Ala., U.S.) U.S. political activist. She was a doctoral candidate at the University of California at San Diego, studying under Herbert Marcuse. Because of her radical political views, her position as lecturer in philosophy at UCLA was not renewed. A champion of the cause of black prisoners, she grew particularly attached to George Jackson, a member of the so-called Soledad Brothers (after Soledad Prison). After an abortive courtroom escape and kidnapping attempt in August 1970 in which four people, including Jackson's brother and the trial judge, were killed, Davis was suspected of involvement, and she became one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted criminals. Arrested in New York City in October, she was acquitted of charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy by an all-white jury. In 1980 she ran unsuccessfully for vice president on the Communist Party ticket. In 1991 Davis became a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

---

Davis, Angela (1944–  ) author, activist; born in Birmingham, Ala. Influenced by the civil rights movement and her graduate training with Herbert Marcuse, she became a controversial activist and Communist Party member. In a trial that received worldwide attention, she was acquitted of all charges in connection with the Soledad Brothers murders (1971–72). A prominent lecturer and teacher, she wrote Women, Race and Class (1980).

---

Davis, Angela 

Born Jan. 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Ala. Participant in the antiwar and civil rights movements in the USA. Member of the Communist Party of the USA.

Davis received her higher education at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., but she also studied at the Sorbonne (France) and the University of Frankfurt am Main (Federal Republic of Germany). In 1968 she was granted a master’s degree. She began teaching philosophy in 1969 at the University of California at Los Angeles, but she was dismissed because she was a member of the Communist Party. Because of her progressive views, Davis was arrested in October 1970 on the fabricated charge that she was an accomplice in a murder. Her trial aroused a broad movement in her defense in the USA and in foreign countries, including the USSR.