As an activist, scholar, and professor, Angela Davis rose to prominence in the 1960s for her work in the black civil rights movement, especially in the Black Panther Party and the black communist group Che-Lumumba Club. Davis’s activism was driven by her background. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944, grew up in an area exposed to anti-black bombings during the 1950s, and attended a segregated elementary school.
Davis was fired from her teaching post at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1970 for her links to communism, but won her job back. That same year, she was implicated in the supply of guns to a black prisoner who died trying to escape. She was released from prison in 1972, and continues to lecture on women’s rights, race, and criminal justice.
Key works
1974 Angela Davis: An Autobiography
1983 Women, Race, & Class
1989 Women, Culture, & Politics
Sources: The Feminism Book (DK)
Haunted South: Hauntings, Urban Legends, History, Folklore, Mythology and Southern Folk Magic 