Blackwell Reference Online

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Angela Davis is a political activist and Marxist philosopher. In 1970 this African American woman, a unique product of varied experiences – the Jim Crow South, left-leaning activist parents, an elite and international education, a faculty appointment at UCLA, membership in the Communist Party of America (CPUSA), and solidarity with the black liberation movement – became a celebrated political prisoner and an internationally recognized revolutionary and symbol of black resistance. Davis was born and raised in the racially segregated city of Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents were college graduates and educators. Her mother was an elementary school teacher; her father, initially a high school history teacher, eventually left the low-paying field of education to become a small businessman and became the proprietor of a service station in the black section of Birmingham. From an early age, Davis was acutely aware of, and often subjected to, the indignities, hostilities, and terror of segregation. Violence was not uncommon; her family's modest middle-class dwelling was at the very edge of a contested residential demarcation line separating black and white neighborhoods. The continuing black influx which traversed that line of demarcation was met by white flight and armed resistance. The tense area became known as Dynamite Hill, so frequent were the bombings to frighten away encroaching ... log in or subscribe to read full text