Angela Davis went from Brownie to Communist, from bookworm to black revolutionary. To her it seemed natural. To accept American society the way it is would be to accept that there is something wrong with black people.
She grew up under Jim Crow in the American South in the 1950s in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents taught her to think for herself. The black schools in Birmingham were in terrible shape, but they did teach her black pride and black history. What she did not learn at school she made up for by reading books.
In 1959 at age 15 she won a scholarship to study at a private high school in New York: Elisabeth Irwin High School. It was where all the teachers who were too left-wing for public schools went to teach. Her school did not turn her into a communist, but it did make communism a respectable opinion.
She got another scholarship, this one to Brandeis University. She was almost the only black person there. She largely kept to herself – it was easier that way – and so she read and read, read books of French and books of philosophy – and books of French philosophy.
In 1963 she went abroad to study a year in France. She was barely in France when news hit that four black girls were killed in the bombing of a Birmingham church. She knew two of them. From growing up in Birmingham she knew bombings were used to keep blacks in line by fear and terror.
She noticed that the French saw the Algerians like how whites saw blacks back home. The Algerians were fighting a war to free themselves from French rule.
After Brandeis she studied philosophy in Germany under Theodor Adorno and then under Herbert Marcuse in San Diego in America. Of all the schools of philosophy she thought Marxism was the closest to the truth.
One summer she went to Cuba with friends, helping to cut sugar cane and seeing first-hand how communism had overturned racism.
Then back in America she saw first-hand how the Los Angeles police tried to wipe out the Black Panthers.
The police ruled the ghetto by fear and terror, not law and order. Shooting a man in the back they called “justifiable homicide”. They would break up protests by blacks, not allowing them the right of peaceful assembly. They would break into houses without a warrant and start shooting. In the prisons it was even worse. The police and the prisons did whatever they wanted to black people – the courts and the press did not care.
The only way to make them care was to stage mass protests. She helped to do this first as part of SNCC and then the Communist Party. She joined the Communist Party in July 1968 by paying 50 cents in dues. From her study of philosophy she found they had the best-grounded ideas and from her experience of Cuba they were the only ones who proved they could overthrow racism.
See also:
- Angela Davis
- black ghetto
- the police
- Jim Crow
- Marx
- fellow black bookworms:
- From the Wikipedia: Brownie, SNCC
Ab, seems like that book is getting really good! I gotta hurry to the library so I can catch up with you. Or are you done?
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I am done! It was due on Saturday.
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Hey, Abagond! How about a piece on Assata Shakur?
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I never read her book, but if I can find enough material on the Internet I will. Good suggestion.
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[…] Something about Angela Davis […]
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