Today, Angela Davis is a respected professor of

Angela Yvonne Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Growing up in the South gave Davis many opportunities to experience the racism and oppression that she would later fight against. In the 1950's, while still a high school student, she became actively involved in the civil rights movement which was gaining momentum at the time. Davis was an extremely bright student, and at the age of fifteen she received a scholarship to attend the prestigious Elizabeth Irwin High School in New York City (Current Biography, 1973, p. 98). In 1961, she began studying French literature at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. During her educational career, Davis also spent a year studying at the University of Paris, and two years studying at the Goethe University in Germany.

In 1963, an important event occurred in Davis' life which started turning her toward militant activism. In September of that year, a group of white racists set off a bomb in a church in Birmingham. This explosion killed four little girls, three of whom Davis had known personally (Davis, et al., 1971, p. 184). Davis' outlook on life became further radicalized in 1964, when she began studying under the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse, who taught at Brandeis University, influenced Davis to develop a Communist philosophy focused on

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ed by the Board of Regents at the University of California. She realized that she was being fired because of her controversial political beliefs. By extension, she realized that her dismissal set a precedent for the Board of Regents "to get rid of everybody who doesn't agree with their politics" (Hardly the last word, 1970, p. 45). Davis argued that this manner of silencing dissent could be seen in all of America's political institutions at the time. In addition to being a spokesperson for Black civil rights, Davis is widely known as an advocate for feminist values. In particular, Davis is concerned with expanding the rights of Black women in America. The motivation for this struggle can be found in Davis' early upbringing and her awareness of "the small, everyday indignities of being a Black woman in racist America" (Davis, et al., 1971, p. 188). Davis has claimed that her desire to fight for Black women arose during the early 1970's, when she was incarcerated in jail and awaiting trial. At that time, the women's movement in America was primarily focused on the rights of white women. Davis has said: "In jail I found myself surrounded by women who had been relegated to such a status that they were not even perceived to
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