Angela Davis

Angela Y. Davis is an anti-racist, feminist, and socialist activist. In recent years she has been active in the struggle against the prison-industrial complex, cofounding "Critical Resistance" as part of that struggle.

Davis is famous for her activism as much as for her scholarship, and for the persecution she suffered as a result. In 1970 she was fired from her University of California professor position at the behest of Ronald Reagan, because of her membership in the Communist Party. (She was later rehired.) She was also persecuted for her activism on behalf of George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers, and was pursued by the FBI and eventually arrested and tried on charges stemming from Jackson's failed escape attempt. She lived in Cuba for some years after her acquittal. She eventually came back to the US, ran on the Communist ticket for US President in the 1980s, and became very involved in struggles against the vast imprisoning in the US of African-Americans, other people of color, and poor people. She co-organized the African American Agenda 2000, a feminist response to the Million Man March.

Works

• Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974)
• Women, Race and Class (1981)
• Women, Culture and Politics
• Blues Legacies and Black Feminism

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