Angela Davis (1944 - )

Wed Jan 26, 1944

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Angela Davis, born on this day in 1944, is a Marxist and feminist activist, prison abolitionist, philosopher, and educator.

Ideologically a Marxist, Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA until 1991, after which she joined the breakaway “Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism”. She is the author of over ten books, covering topics such as class, feminism, and the U.S. prison system.

Born to an African-American family in Birmingham, Alabama, Davis studied French at Brandeis University and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. Back in the U.S., she joined the Communist Party and, as a Marxist feminist, involved herself in a range of radical movements, including second-wave feminism, the Black Panther Party, and the campaign against the Vietnam War.

In 1969, Davis was hired as an acting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1970 UCLA’s governing Board of Regents fired her due to her Communist Party membership; after a court ruled this illegal, the university fired her again, this time for her alleged use of “inflammatory language”.

Praised by Marxists and others on the left, Davis has received numerous awards, including the Lenin Peace Prize in 1980. Davis has also been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and was Time magazine’s “Woman of the Year” for 1971 in its 2020 “100 Women of the Year” edition.

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

- Angela Davis

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    4 days ago

    “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

    goddamn right

    if more people would stand the fuck up the world would not be where it is today