Angela Yvonne Davis born January 26, is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She was active in movements such as the Occupy movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama ; she studied at Brandeis University and the University of Frankfurt , where she became increasingly engaged in far-left politics.
She also studied at the University of California, San Diego , before moving to East Germany , where she completed some studies for a doctorate at the University of Berlin. After a court ruled the firing illegal, the university fired her for the use of inflammatory language. In , guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County , California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital feloniesβincluding conspiracy to murderβshe was held in jail for over a year before being acquitted of all charges in During the s, Davis was twice the Communist Party's candidate for vice president.
In , she co-founded Critical Resistance , an organization working to abolish the prisonβindustrial complex. That same year, she joined the feminist studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she became department director before retiring in In , she was listed as the "Woman of the Year" in Time magazine's " Women of the Year" edition.
Angela Davis was born on January 26, , [ 8 ] in Birmingham, Alabama. She was christened at her father's Episcopal church. Davis occasionally spent time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City. Ben played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late s and early s.
Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a segregated black elementary school, and later, Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time, Davis's mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress , an organization influenced by the Communist Party aimed at building alliances among African Americans in the South.
