Angela Y. Davis

Over the last thirty years, ANGELA YVONNE DAVIS has been active in numerous organizations challenging prison-related repression. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944 Davis has studied at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, at the Sorbonne, and under Herbert Marcuse at the Goethe Institute and the University of California, San Diego. Her advocacy on behalf of political prisoners, and her alleged connection to the Marin County courthouse incident, led to three capital charges, sixteen months in jail awaiting trial, and a highly publicized acquittal in 1972. In 1998, Davis was one of the twenty-five organizers of the historic Berkeley, California conference “Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex.” She is the author of many books, including Are Prisons Obsolete? and The Meaning of Freedom, and currently teaches in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.