Lather In The Autobiography Of Angela Yvonne Davis

1798 Words8 Pages

As Angela Davis states in her autobiography, “For my family, my strength, For my comrades, my light. For the sisters and brothers whose fighting spirit was my liberator. For those whose humanity is too rare to be destroyed by walls, bars, and death houses. And especially for those who are going to struggle until racism and class injustice are forever banished from our history.” This quote shows you what kind of miraculous person Angela Davis is and how she felt about this time period. Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, Scholar, and Author. She started off her career as being a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960’s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther …show more content…

During the time period of her life being a counterculture activist she was arrested, charged, tried, acquitted of conspiracy and watched by police. In the first part of her Autobiography she tells a story about her two friends, Franklin and Kendra Alexander who had hosted a SNCC fund-raising cocktail party at their apartment. After the party, the police had raided the Bronson Street apartment of the communist party members. Money and guns were confiscated and everyone there was arrested and charged of armed robbery. As soon as the police discovered that one of the weapons was registered in Angela Davis’s name, they called her in for questioning. The charges did not stand up in court and, after a few nights in jail, the sisters and brothers were released and the guns returned to their owners. Also, the same gun that the L.A.P.D. had reluctantly returned back to Angela Davis was now in the hands of the Marin County authorities, having been used during the courthouse revolt. The judge during this trial had been killed and the district attorney had been wounded. This was the beginning of people, police and authorities lurking around Angela’s house. People were getting suspicious of her being part of the communist party, so she had to be more on her toes and careful about where she went, who she talked to and what she got involved with. Months after this event, she spent all of her free time building a mass movement to free the Soledad Brothers, who were facing a fraudulent murder charge. Governor Ronald Reagan had also fired her from her teaching job at University of California, because she was a member of the communist party. Through this time of agents following her every move, she had to hide and live in other people’s houses so that the police and agents wouldn’t find her. This was a very stressful time for Angela but added more