Angela Davis is one of the few Americans who has achieved praiseworthy success in various functions she has held in her country. She is the author of several books, a political activist, educator, and communist who worked with her until 1991 when she left the party.
In her active years, Angela identified herself with numerous committees and movements, including the Black Panther Party. As an educator, she taught at a number of prominent universities and was the founder of the Corresponding Committees for Democracy and Socialism. She also appeared on several media platforms and gave interviews to the media on many issues affecting society. It is thanks to her that Angela was among those who founded the organization “Critical Resistance”. You can learn more about her here.
Angela Davis – Biography
The activist was born Angela Yvonne Davis on January 26, 1944, in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, in the United States. Davis grew up in the neighborhood of “Dynamite Hill” but occasionally visited her uncle’s farm in New York City.
Her parents Sallye Bell Davis and Frank Davis are also her siblings – Fania Davis (sister), Reginald Davis (brother), and Ben Davis (brother). Ben is a retired NFL player whose career in the league lasted ten years.
As she grew up, Angela’s intellectual development was significantly influenced by communist thinkers and loyalists. In fact, her mother was the principal organizer and national functionary of the Communist-inspired Southern Youth Congress. At a younger age, she was also a member of the Girl Scouts of the United States, a group that she said inspired her political involvement. As a Girl Scout, Angela Davis was among those who protested against racial discrimination in Birmingham and also participated in the 1959 nationwide raid of the Girl Scouts in the city of Colorado.
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Education
Davis began her academic career at a separate, non-white elementary school known as the Carrie A. Tuggle School. She was then accepted into a middle school called Parker Annex.
Angela Davis then began studying at Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village. While there, she was selected by an American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. This happened during her junior year at high school. While at Elisabeth Irwin High School, she joined Advance (a communist youth group).
After graduating high school, the activist won a scholarship to attend Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the College of Higher Education. Remarkably, she and two other students were the only black students in her class at the time.
Angela decided to switch to French in her second year at the university. This made it necessary for her to participate in the “Junior Year in France” program at Hamilton College. As she was about to finish her French studies, she discovered that she had developed a fondness for philosophy. She later completed her new course of studies at the University of Frankfurt, which she graduated magna cum laude in 1965.
Two years after leaving Frankfurt, Angela Davis went to the University of California, San Diego, for postgraduate studies. She graduated with a master’s degree in 1968 and later received her doctorate in philosophy at the Humboldt University of East Berlin.
Since the author rejected offers from Swarthmore University and Princeton University, she decided to teach as an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Davis was known as one of the radical feminists and activists. She was also involved in other activities and eventually became an ally of the Black Panther Party and then a member of the US Communist Party.
She was dismissed by the Council of Regency of the University of California in 1969 because of her identification with the Communist Party and was later reinstated. Her career at the institution ended abruptly in 1970, however.
From 1980 to 1984 Angela Davis worked at San Francisco State University as a professor of ethnic studies and later at the University of California as a professor in the departments of feminist studies and history of consciousness. She has also worked at other universities. On May 22, 2016, during the 48th Annual Welcome Ceremony of the California Institute of Integral Studies, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters in Healing and Social Justice.
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Family Facts: Children
Angela Davis was once a married woman. She first married a popular photographer named Hilton Braithwaite. They married in 1980 and divorced three years later.
She also has a daughter named Elenni Davis-Knight. Like Hilton, nothing is known about Eleni. Her father’s name, dates of birth, and information about her private life are still a mystery. Based on certain information on the Internet, Angela Davis was outed as a lesbian in 1997 in Out magazine. Nothing more is known about her family and her children apart from the information given.
