Past, Present and Future: Angela Davis

Angela Davis is one of the names that can be found on our newest addition to the PPG merch collection, the “because of her, i can” vintage band tee. She is an icon who captured the past as much as she does the present and the future and because of her we can.

Davis outside the courthouse in San Jose (1972)

Angela Davis is famously known as one of the most prominent and relevant intellectuals in the United States. She is known for her efforts directed toward prison reform and in 1970, founded Critical Resistance with a goal of dismantling the prison-industrial complex. Her work centers around advocating for a wide range of social issues and highlighting important factors such as gender, race and class, all of which inspire her writing.

She was born in Birmingham, Alabama where she grew up in a middle-class neighborhood that was given the name, “Dynamite Hill” because of its infamous reputation of having African American homes that were targeted and bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Growing up, Davis was in close contact with the racial injustices of America. In her teenage years she dedicated efforts to organizing interracial study groups and volunteered for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

She completed high school in New York after receiving a scholarship and following her graduation, studied in Germany and at the University of Paris. When she returned to the United States she studied at Brandeis University and graduated magna cum laude. She returned to Germany to spend more time studying there before completing her M. A. degree at University of California, San Diego and received her Ph. D. at Humboldt University in East Berlin.

Davis was fired from the University of California, Los Angels, where she taught after graduating from UCSD because of her association with the Communist Party. She fostered a relationship with the Soledad Brothers, John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo, and George Lester Jackson, who were accused of killing a prison guard after several African American inmates had been killed in a fight by another guard.

“Former Ten Most Wanted Fugitive #309: Due to an FBI investigation, Davis was arrested in a motel room in New York, New York on January 13, 1970. She was the third woman named to the list.”

During George Jackson’s trial, another inmate that Davis befriended, an escape attempt was made when Jonathan, one of the Soledad Prison Brothers and Jackson’s brother, entered the courtroom and claimed hostages to exchange for his brother. There was a shoot-out at the court that resulted in four deaths. After this, Davis was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list and suspected of involvement in the case despite her absence from the crime scene.

“Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’”
― Angela Davis

She was acquitted after 18 months in jail where she wrote her first book, If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, completely by hand. After this, she spent her time traveling, lecturing and teaching, which she still does today. Davis is currently the Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.