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Davis, Angela Y.(1944–)

Angela Yvonne Davis is an African American activist and scholar who was charged and arrested for an alleged role in the August 7, 1970, failed escape of three inmates at the Marin County courthouse in California. Davis was accused of supplying guns used in the inmate escape and conspiring to free Soledad Brother George Jackson. While evading arrest on these charges, she became the third woman in U.S. history to be placed on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Arrested in New York on October 13, 1970, she spent 16 months in jail prior to being granted bail after a California Supreme Court decision ruled on a death penalty case that changed her bail status. A jury found Davis not guilty of all charges on June 4, 1972. Since then, she has continued to work for prisoners' rights throughout the world.

Biography

Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. While growing up, her family lived in a section of Birmingham known as “Dynamite Hill” because of the frequent bombings by racist whites attempting to prevent the neighborhood from being integrated. As a youngster, however, Davis spent summers in New York where her mother worked on her master's degree. Summers in New York were a striking contrast to life in Alabama. In New York, African American children could swim in public pools and eat in restaurants—activities restricted to whites only in Alabama.

During high school, Davis took part in an experimental program that allowed African American students from southern states to attend integrated northern high schools. Consequently, she spent two years at Elizabeth Irwin High School, a small private progressive school in New York City. Davis then went to Brandeis University where she graduated summa cum laude in 1965 with a major in French literature. After graduating from Brandeis, she spent two years studying philosophy on a scholarship in Frankfurt, Germany, before returning to the United States in 1967 to pursue her master's degree in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she worked with Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist philosopher who believed it was important not just to theorize but to act.

During her time at UCSD, Davis joined the Communist Party. She also became involved in the black power movements. Then, in 1969 after receiving her master's degree and while working on her doctorate, Davis signed a contract to work at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). When asked by an administrator if she were communist, Davis answered affirmatively. In a public battle, the California Board of Regents attempted to dismiss Davis despite her successful teaching, arguments about academic freedom, and a California Supreme Court ruling in her favor. The regents were eventually successful.

Soledad Brothers

At the same time that she was struggling to keep her teaching position at UCLA, Davis learned about the Soledad Brothers, three African American inmates who were accused of killing a white prison guard. Davis became the cochairperson of their defense committee and began an intense correspondence with one of them, George Jackson.

On August 7, 1970, Jackson's younger brother Jonathan attended the trial of James McClain, an inmate charged with assaulting a guard. According to some present in the courtroom, Jonathan stood up, took four guns out of his coat, and announced he was taking over. After conferring with Ruchell Magee and William Christmas, two inmates also present as witnesses in the case, the three men took hostages and left the courtroom. They made it to a rented van where a shootout left McClain, Christmas, Jonathan Jackson, and the judge dead and others injured.

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