Angela Davis

123

Angela Davis : biography

January 26, 1944 –

Davis was tried and the all-white jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The fact that she owned the guns used in the crime was judged not sufficient to establish her responsibility for the plot. She was represented by Leo Branton Jr. who hired psychologists to help the defense determine who in the jury pool might favor their arguments, an uncommon practice at the time, and also hired experts to undermine the reliability of eyewitness accounts. Her experience as a prisoner in the US played a key role in persuading her to fight against the prison-industrial complex in the United States.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded their song "Angela" on their 1972 album Some Time in New York City in support. The jazz musician Todd Cochran, also known as Bayete, recorded his song "Free Angela (Thoughts…and all I’ve got to say)" that same year. Also in 1972, Tribe Records co-founder Phil Ranelin released a song dedicated to Davis intitled "Angela’s Dilemma" on Message From The Tribe, a spiritual jazz collectable."Message From The Tribe" Tribe Records AR 2506. The Rolling Stones song "Sweet Black Angel", recorded in 1970 and released in 1972 on their album Exile on Main Street, is dedicated to Davis and is one of the band’s only overtly political releases.

University of California, Los Angeles

Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), beginning in 1969. Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had expressed interest in having her join their respective philosophy departments, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location. At that time, she also was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA and an associate of the Black Panther Party.

Davis has continued a career of activism, and has written several books. A principal focus of her current activism is the state of prisons within the United States. She considers herself an abolitionist, not a "prison reformer," and has referred to the United States prison system as the "Prison-industrial complex". Davis suggested focusing social efforts on education and building "engaged communities" to solve various social problems now handled through state punishment.

Davis was one of the founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison industrial complex.Tim Phillips, , Activist Defense, January 26, 2013. In recent work, she argues that the prison system in the United States more closely resembles a new form of slavery than a criminal justice system. According to Davis, between the late 19th century and the mid-20th century the number of prisons in the United States sharply increased while crime rates continued to rise. During this time, the African-American population also became disproportionally represented in prisons. "What is effective or just about this "justice" system?" she urged people to question.

Davis has lectured at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, Bryn Mawr College, Brown University, Syracuse University, and other schools. She states that in her teaching, which is mostly at the graduate level, she concentrates more on posing questions that encourage development of critical thinking than on imparting knowledge. In 1997, she declared herself to be a lesbian in Out magazine.

As early as 1969 Davis began publicly speaking, voicing her opposition to the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, and the prison industrial complex, and her support of gay rights and other social justice movements. In 1969 she blamed imperialism for the troubles suffered by oppressed populations. “We are facing a common enemy and that enemy is Yankee Imperialism, which is killing us both here and abroad. Now I think anyone who would try to separate those struggles, anyone who would say that in order to consolidate an anti-war movement, we have to leave all of these other outlying issues out of the picture, is playing right into the hands of the enemy”, she declared. In 2001 she publicly spoke against the war on terror, the prison industrial complex, and the broken immigration system and told people that if they wanted to solve social justice issues they had to “hone their critical skills, develop them and implement them." Later, after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she declared, the “horrendous situation in New Orleans,” is due to the structures of racism, capitalism, and imperialism with which our leaders run this country.