Biography
Angela Davis became a national and international symbol of Black liberation and left politics at the intersection of activism, scholarship, and campaigns against incarceration. Her organizing and advocacy included work supporting imprisoned activists and challenging the legitimacy of carceral power—positions that made her both influential and intensely targeted during a period of heightened state repression of radical movements.
In 1970 she was charged in connection with the Marin County courthouse kidnapping-and-shootout incident and accused of crimes including kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy, in part because firearms used in the attack had been purchased in her name and because of her association with prisoner-defense organizing. She went on the run, was placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted list, and was arrested in New York City later that year. After a highly publicized period of pretrial detention and a global campaign demanding her freedom, she was acquitted in 1972. The experience shaped her later decades of work—especially her prominence in critiques of prisons and in abolitionist organizing.
