ANGELA DAVIS
January 26, 1944
INFLUENCER, EDUCATOR, ACTIVIST, FEMINIST, AUTHOR, and ICON
Education: Brandeis University, BA
University of California, San Diego, MA
Humboldt University, PhD
“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society “
Angela Davis was born on Juanuary 26, 1944 to Mrl Frank and Sillye Davis. She is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, although she was never a party member. Her interests included prisoner rights; she founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.
Angela research interests are feminism, African-American studies, critical theory,, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan’s request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
She was Professor of Ethnic Studies at the San Francisco State University from at least 1980–84.
Davis was a professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1991 to 2008 and is now Distinguished Professor Emerita.
Angela was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Syracuse University in Spring 1992 and October 2010.
In 2014, Davis returned to UCLA as a Regents’ Lecturer and delivered a public lecture on May 8 in Royce Hall, where she had her first lecture 45 years ago.
Angela Davis has recently voiced her views on ‘police militarization’ at capacity MLK Convocation the Lecture, which packed 1,800-seat auditorium, dealt on reflection on the importance of the issues Martin Luther King’s fought for and his place in history
Awards
2006 Angela Davis was the year’s recipient of the Thomas Merton Center Award
The recipient of the Thomas Merton Center Award in 2006
Received the distinguished honor of an appointment to the University of California
Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies 1994
Received the Black Girls Rock Icon Award 2011
Recieved the Lenin Peace Prize 1979
Publications
Angela Davis: An Autobiography 1974
Women, Race, and Class 1981
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance 1972
The Meaning of Freedom 2011
Are Prisoners Obsolete 2003
If They Come Morning 1971
One of her biggest accomplishments was receiving the Lenin Peace Prize in 1979 for strengthening peace among people.