Angela Davis
...Though she is an extremely well educated woman, you only hear about one part of her life. Davis is more than a Communist or Black Panther. She is a person who has lived a full and influential life. She had a childhood, was involved in a very powerful movement and is still doing positive things. Her accomplishments should be looked at in their entirety and without prejudice.
Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on 26th January, 1944. Her father, a graduate of St. Augustine's College, left teaching high school history due to the low salary. He then owned and operated a service station in the black section of Birmingham. Her mother, also college educated, was an elementary school teacher with a history of political activism. She is the eldest of four. Her brother, Ben Davis, played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The family lived in an area known as Dynamite Hill, given the name due to the large number of African American homes bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Her mother was active in the Birmingham chapter of the NAACP and a civil rights campaigner. Davis knew about the harsh reality of racial segregation.
Davis was extremely smart and entered school at an early age. She attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a Black elementary school and later Parker Annex, middle school. Davis read vigorously. At 14, she applied for and was accepted to a program of the American Friends Service Committee which placed Black students from the South in integrated schools in the north. She chose to attend high school at Elizabeth Irwin High School, also known as the Little Red School House, in Greenwich Village in New York City. This was a small private school favored by the radical community. There Davis was introduced to study of socialism and communism and recruited to the Communist youth group, Advance, where...
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