It’s extremely difficult to summarise the life of Angela Davis, civil rights activist, a so-called “Terrorist” who was the 3rd woman in history to hit the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list, a professor and academic, a true scholar, a communist!, A feminist and so so much more!

Davis is 72 at the time of writing and was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on January 26, 1944. Throughout her life she has done so much it’s hard to believe she is one woman.

She was a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 60s. She led the Communist Party USA, cemented close ties with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She was a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a member of the History of Consciousness Department she taught for many years, she was also a former director of the Feminist Studies department.

Wikipedia says “Davis was prosecuted under federal law and acquitted at trial of conspiracy in the 1970 armed take-over of a Marin County, California, courtroom, in which four persons died.”. This is the incident that led to her being a fugitive and on teh FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list, only the 309th person and 3rd woman. When she was finally caught President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its “capture of the dangerous terrorist, Angela Davis.”

She had a far and wide pop culture influence leading to many artists including The Rolling Stones (one of their only outwardly political songs) and John Lennon and Yoko Ono writing and dedicating songs directly to her.

You have to read more about this amazing woman. Wikipedia is a great start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis