Davis, Angela (1944–)

Angela Yvonne Davis represents both the typical and the paradoxical in the most-celebrated black American experience. Typical is the convergence in her of the brilliant intellectual—she is a philosopher, a theoretician of black liberation, a feminist theorist, and a writer—and the indefatigable activist. Paradoxical is her having once been among FBI's 10 most wanted criminals, and having later been recognized by the establishment as a historical force with whom to be reckoned.

Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. She was inspired from an early age by the alert consciousness of members of her family. Her mother, Sallye Davis, as a college student, participated in the campaign for the freedom of the Scottsboro Boys and was an activist of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), despite the ban on that organization in Birmingham.

Davis went to Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School in her hometown, which had the distinction of offering classes in African American culture. She later attended Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York, where she was enrolled in a program for promising southern black students, sponsored by the American [Page 425]Friends Service Committee. It was there that she came across the Communist Manifesto, which, in her own words, had a most powerful impact on her. The origin of her commitment to concrete, practical contribution to the struggle for social change can also be traced to this time. Her earliest activities revolved around Advance, a youth organization associated with the Communist Party.

Immediately upon completion of her high school studies, Davis was offered a scholarship by Brandeis University. She was one of only three black first-year students. Two of her greatest experiences at Brandeis were hearing James Baldwin and Malcolm X on campus. A number of other events accounted for the growth of her international vision. She was a delegate to the Eighth World Festival for Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. She was also sent for her junior academic year to the Sorbonne, in France, which was in the grips of youthful revolutionary fervor.

In 1962 Davis met the renowned philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who became her tutor. After graduating from Brandeis, Davis proceeded for graduate work in philosophy to the University of Frankfurt, in Germany. Another famous philosopher, Theodor Adorno, agreed to supervise her Ph.D. dissertation, which was to be in the area of critical theory.

At Frankfurt, Davis was receiving news of the escalation of the black liberation movement. She was shocked by the Birmingham bombing of 1963. Then, in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated, and unprecedented riots broke out in Selma, Alabama, and in Watts, Los Angeles. Davis realized that she could not continue with her academic work unless she was also politically involved.

She returned to the United States to continue her postgraduate research under the supervision of Marcuse at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). There, she successfully campaigned for the introduction of programs in ethnic studies, and black studies in particular. Her argument was that the philosophical viewpoint contained in the literature of black experience was superior to that propounded by privileged white philosophers, and it had a transformative power.

...