Angela Yvonne Davis is one of the handful of people in this lifetime who have totally committed their lives to the struggle for liberation of all people, particularly people of color. Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944 to Sallye and Frank Davis. Since early childhood, along with her mother, she has participated in demonstrations protesting such racist tactics advocated by "Bull" Conner and the Birmingham police force.

At the age of 15, she won a scholarship to attend a radical high school, Elizabeth Irwin High, in New York City. She sooned joined a Communist Youth group labeled Advance. Although the shy, girlish young student struggled to adapt to the more challenged academic atmosphere at Elizabeth Irwin, she soon excelled at her studies, and the won a full scholarship to the prestigous Brandeis University.

At Brandeis, she majored in French literature, and graduated magna cum laude in 1965. She spent a year of study abroad in Paris, France her junior year, where her stunning beauty and immense brilliance captivated the likes of the French and Algerian citizens, especially the young men. She accepted the advise of her mentor, famed Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, to study abroad again, this time at Van Goethe University in Germany. Finally, she received her masters' degree from the University of California, San in Diego, Philosophy.

In 1968, she made the tedious decision to join the Communist Party, after brief stints with the Black Panthers, SNCC, and Maulana Karenga's male dominated organization, "US". In 1969, she accepted a job as a philosophy professor at UCLA, fulfilling partial requirements for her PH.D. She received rave reviews from the student body and faculty alike for her brilliant, well-thought ideas and lectures.

But information soon leaked to the UC Board of Regents of her Communist Party membership. To the staunchly conservative, then governor of California, Ronald Reagan, this was enough to fire the popular young professor from her short-lived position. Sadly, her troubles would only expand largely.

Angela fought for her reinstation as a professor, clarifying that the Board of Regents' actions were beyond unconstitutional. She eventually took the case to the Supreme Court, who ruled in her favor.

Around February of 1970, she learned of the case of the "Soledad Brothers" three Black men who were being tried in court for the murder of a prison guard. There was no substantial evidence that the three men were in any way linked to the crime, but unfortunately for them (among hundreds of others) their radical political organizing and "Black militant" reputations caused prison officals to automatically indict them for the crime.

Angela, amidst her many other liberation and political activities, the ongoing battle over her job at UCLA, and attempting to complete her doctoral dissertation, immersed herself for the freedom of the Soledad Brothers. She became good friends with the late George Jackson's (famed prison-author and leader of the Soledad three).younger brother, seventeen year old Jonathan Jackson, and also established an intimate correspondence with George Jackson.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson went unassisted into a San Rafael courtroom with the guns that Angela had purchased to protect herself from various death threats. He distributed guns to a few other men in the room, including Ruchell Magee (Who remains in prison today) and together they taped a gun to the presiding Judge Haley's neck, took hostages, and hustled the group out to a rented yellow van.

They demanded the release of the Soledad Brothers in exchange for the captured jury members they took hostage. In the parking lot, a bloody shoot-out followed, resulting in the murder of William Christmas, James McClain, Jonathan Jackson, and Judge Haley, whose head was blown off. The guns used in the incident were quickly traced to Davis, whose was then indicted for the crime. Angela, who feared she would not receive a fair trial, fled into hiding.

She was captured in a New York motel and arrested on October 13, 1970. A "Free Angela" movement quickly erupted around the world, with a chapter of the National Committee to Free Angela Davis in nearly every part of the world.

During her time in prison in August of 1971, George Jackson was murdered by prison guards, who claimed he was making an escape attempt. According to friends, the tragic event left Angela inconsolable. After his death, letters were found in his cell from Ms.Davis that dicussed, for the most part, the Black liberation struggle in the United States.

However, it was also revealed in the letters, that they were in love, and that Angela considered herself married to the slain prisoner. Because of this, the prosecutors of her trial attempted rather poorly to convey that Angela was "involved" with the crime so she could "free" the man she loved, George Jackson.

Nonetheless, Angela, despite the filth and brutality of prison, and the intense pain of suffering for a crime unbeknownst to her, began to organize and educate the women within the prison complex of the liberation struggle and historical racist oppression and imperialism that was still practiced in America.

On June 4, 1972, for the three charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy, Angela was acquitted on all counts. Flanked by her mother, father, brothers, sister, and friends, she burst into tears. M

Nations around the world rejoiced, and soon Angela and others converted the chapters of the National Committee to Free Angela Davis (and all Political Prisoners) to The National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.

She also toured the Soviet Union upon her acquittal, although certain alleged contradictions involving her speeches and actions caused a few to question whether she was cynical, dishonest, or speaking of certain aspects to certain people to "buy" the support of selected socialist leaders, etc. Regardless of this, Angela Davis continued her lifelong habit of committing herself to work to defend and free those unjustifiably accused of crimes, victims of racism, political oppression, and under political persecution by the State.

As the 1970s' progressed, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy, awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, and held temporary lecturing, teaching jobs at Stanford, Claremont, and Moscow University. In 1979 she accepted a job as a professor at San Francisco State University. She married briefly in August of 1980 to Hilton Braithwaite, a fellow professor at San Francisco State. This was followed by a divorce.

Since 1992, she has attained the rank as a tenured Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1995 she was elected to a presidential chair in the History of Consciousness department at UC Santa Cruz. To this day, at age 56, she continues her stance as a lifelong freedom fighter by remaining active in the struggle for prisoners' rights, social reform, the abolition of prisons, etc. She remains a dinstinctive role model and overall inspiratiion to anyone committed to the welfare of others.