carolyn

=Angela Davis by Carolyn=

Free Angela Davis! Brought to you by the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners

Origin of the Committee: This committee was founded in 1970 when Angela Davis was unjustly put into prison for simply owning the weapons that were used in a revolt. The committee was originally called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, but was changed to its present name at her insistence.

Davis’s Childhood: Davis was born on January 26, 1944. She was raised in Burmingham, AL in a neighborhood called “Dynamite Hill,” because it was the location of several Ku Klux Klan attacks. Her mother was an active civil rights activist and member of the NAACP. Davis attended a segregated school in Alabama and moved with her mother to New York City, where she then attended a school in Greenwich.

Davis’s Studies: Davis studied French at Brandeis College and took a year abroad studying in Paris. She went to Germany for two years working at a University in Frankfurt. She came back to the United States and started work at the University of California with Herbert Marcuse as her mentor, and he played a pivotal role in her future life. Later Life: Davis knew all four of the girls who were killed in the Baptist Church Bombing in September 1963. She soon joined the Black Panther Party and the American Communist Party. After the latter, she was fired from the University of California in 1970. Angela’s Definition of Equality: As do any civil and women’s rights activist, Davis believes that blacks should be treated no differently from the whites, women no differently from men, black women no differently from white women. In an age of equal rights, equal means equal.

Angela’s Beliefs: She believes that women are not automatically connected through their seemingly similar oppression of domestic life, because the suffering of black women is much different than that of white women, and the fact that each suffers is not by itself enough to unite two divers groups of people. The ties a woman has to her background are too strong to break for this.

Background of Davis Case: In 1970 she fought to improve the conditions in prisons. Two leaders of Black Panther Party chapters, George Jackson and W. L. Nolen, were put into prison and later Nolen and two others were killed by a guard. The court ruled that this was a “justifiable act” on the part of the guard (1). A few days later a guard had been murdered and Jackson was convicted of a crime people believed was committed out of revenge. A few months later, Jackson was shot in the jail yard because he was carrying a gun. The gun was licensed to Angela Davis and she was therefore believed to have helped him obtain it. Davis was labeled only the third woman to ever be on the FBI’s most wanted list. She managed to hide for two months, but she was eventually brought in. A white jury, however, acquitted her of all charges. Unfortunately, California Governor Ronald Reagan dissuaded any other schools in the state from hiring her because of her record as a criminal and a communist.

Works Cited: Davis, Angela. "Interview Angela Davis." __PBS__. 2007. 9 Dec. 2007 <[|http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/davis.html>.] Hooks, Bell. "Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory." __A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America__. Ed. William H. Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. 243-258. Neel, Rebecca. "Prisoner/Activist Profile: Angela Y. Davis." __Partnership for Safety and Defense__. 31 Dec. 2002. 11 Dec. 2007 <[|http://safetyandjustice.org/info/nation/story/643>.] Simkin, John. "Angela Davis." __Spartacus Educational__. 9 Dec. 2007 <[|http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdavisAN.htm>.] http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/08/home/davis-campaign.html