February 5, 2004
Still fighting after all these years
Civil rights leader, former professor will highlight Black History Month
By Bill Choy
Ashland Daily Tidings
Activist and women's studies scholar Angela Davis will speak at Southern Oregon University as part of Black History Month.
Davis is known as an advocate of prison abolition and received national attention after being removed from her teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for her social criticism and membership in the U.S. Communist Party.
She will give a talk at the college on Friday evening at 8 p.m.
In 1970, she was placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) Ten Most Wanted list and was imprisoned for 16 months. A "Free Angela Davis" campaign was organized, asking for her release, which occurred in 1972.
River Walker, vice president of the SOU Black Student Union said Davis will discuss a number of topics such as women's rights, civil rights, human rights and her activism.
"We always try to get a pretty high-profiled person for Black History Month," she said. "We want a representation of our culture on campus."
Walker said she admires Davis for her uncompromising and unwavering activism to stand up for what she believes in.
"I think if everyone could take a little bit of that, we could get a lot done," she said. "She's the type of person that shows that standing up for what you believe in is worth it."
Davis was born in January, 1944 in Birmingham, Ala., in an area which became known as Dynamite Hill because of the large amount of African American homes bombed by the Ku Klux Klan.
She is the daughter of two teachers. Her mother was a civil rights campaigner and had been active in the NAACP before the group was outlawed in Birmingham.
Davis attended segregated schools before moving to New York City when she was 15 to attend an integrated private high school in Greenwich Village, where several of the teachers had been blacklisted.
In 1961, she went to Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. to study French and studied for a year in Paris.
After graduating from college, she spent two years at a university in Frankfurt before studying under Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist philosopher at the University of California in San Diego.
In 1967, Davis joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party. The next year, she joined the American Communist Party.
In 1969, she was hired by the philosophy department of UCLA as an assistant professor but was terminated by the California Board of Regents in 1970, when the FBI informed them she was a a member of the American Communist Party.
During this time, Davis had been active in campaigning to improve prison conditions. She became interested in the case of George Jackson, who had established a chapter of the Black Panthers in Soledad Prison in California.
In January of 1970, three black prisoners were killed by a prison guard, which was later ruled a "justifiable homicide."
When a guard was later found murdered, Jackson and two other prisoners were indicted in the murder.
In August, 1970, Davis became only the third women in history to appear on the FBI's most-wanted list. She was charged by authorities with conspiracy to free Jackson in a bloody shoot-out in front of a courthouse in California.
The FBI said that Davis armed prisoners in the courthouse in Marin County with guns that were registered in her name.
Davis went on the run and was arrested two weeks later in a New York City motel room. She was formally charged with murder and kidnapping, even though she didn't actually take part in the shoot-out at the courthouse. Davis was incarcerated for 16 months.
A massive international "Free Angela Davis" campaign was initiated asking for her release from prison. In 1972, an all-white jury acquitted her of all charges. In 1974 she released her book "Angela Davis - An Autobiography."
Davis co-founded the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression, which continues to this day and taught at Claremont College and San Francisco State University. In 1980 and 1984, Davis was the Communist Party's vice-presidential candidate.
Davis helped found Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex in 1997.
She has given talks all around the world and in all 50 states.
She is a tenured professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.The talk begins at 8 p.m. in the Britt Ballroom on the SOU campus. Davis was originally scheduled to speak at 7 p.m., but was moved up an hour due to a scheduling conflict. Admission is $3 for SOU students, faculty and staff and $5 for the general public. Tickets can be purchased at SOU's Raider Aid, or at the event.
The talk is being sponsored by the Black Student Union and Women's Resource Center.