Recalling the Free Angela Davis Movement: Daughter of the Revolution

Recalling the Free Angela Davis Movement: Daughter of the Revolution

“As black women, we must liberate ourselves and provide the impetus for the liberation of black men from this whole network of lies around the oppression of black women which serve only to divide us, thus impeding the advance of our total liberation struggle.”

– Angela Davis –

(February 1971)

“You know what her crime is? She is black, a black woman, beautiful and brilliant and brave, rising in 1970 in the tradition of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, a tribune of her people.”

These were the words of Joseph North, who represented a group of US journalists as he made an impassioned plea for world wide support for the release of Angela Davis at the Seventh Congress of the International Organisation of Journalists, which was held in Havana, Cuba, in January 1971.

According to North, Angela Davis “was awarded a professorship in the University of California to teach philosophy. She won the support overwhelmingly of the students and faculty. This enraged the racists there. They sent her threats of death. After the murders of such heroes as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and countless others, unknown and known to the black people and their white allies determined to safeguard the precious life of Angela.

“She had worked her way through a torrent of various ideas swirling across the USA today, anarchism, go-it-alone-ism and much else and she decided that the valiant Communist Party of the USA was the instrument through which freedom could be won for black America, as well as for all who suffer the ravages of imperialism. Thousands, increasingly, today see socialism as the reply to imperialism.

“Bodyguards had to accompany Angela day and night. Her compatriots Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many others died at assassin’s hands. She purchased guns for her safety. One of her guards was 17 year old Jonathan Jackson.

“Meanwhile another case was agitating the West and the nation. That was the Soledad Three, a tragedy occurring in the state prison at Soledad, California. A prison guard, brutal as the system, shot and killed three black prisoners. This is common in the US prison system today. The guard was found dead later that day. Three innocent black prisoners, chosen because they were militants, were charged with murder. They are known as the Soledad Three. One of the three was the brother of Angela’s guard.

“A trial was held and the 17 year old guard of Angela, brother to one of those innocently charged, passed guns to the defendants and an effort was made to escape, taking the judge hostage to guarantee their lives. The police opened fire, killed the judge, young Jonathan and two others.

“Angela, who was far from the scene, in another state, was charged with murder and conspiracy to murder under the laws of California. These laws say that the person who purchases guns that are later used by the others, suffers the same penalty.

“Angela today is in a California state prison threatened with death in the gas chamber – Governor Reagan’s way of putting crusaders for freedom to death. She has been framed in the classic way the American ruling class rigged evidence to kill many valiant working-class and other freedom champions. Actually what we see here is the blood lust of a decaying and desperate imperialism seeking to wreck the same havoc on its people as it does on the brave, indomitable people of Vietnam.

“Angela Davis is under triple jeopardy – one in being a woman under capitalism hence suffering discrimination because of her sex; two in being a black woman, thus suffering the repressions of racism. Third, with being a revolutionist, a Communist, one of the countless Americans who battle today to end the criminal war in Vietnam, to end racism, to end hunger. She represents the rebellious youth, black and white, the indomitable combination that can sweep imperialism aside and build a new world. Black and white unity, the unity of all races, for people and plenty.

“All this is involved in her case. Her fate is the fate of 25,000,000 black Americans. Angela Davis is a challenge to the system in which imperialism profits mightily in dollars – by keeping the black second and third-class citizens paying them much less for the same labour whites do in a class and race oppression, brutal as South Africa is brutal, brutal as the bombings in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as they were in Korea a few years ago.

“These are some of the main facts in the case. Never has America been roused so early in a classic case of capitalist justice as in this one. Millions already, in the first weeks of the process, have spoken out. Black and white, religious and radical, young and old. Such diverse groupings as the Young Women’s Association, the Black Panthers already under murderous fire, Union leaders in many trade unions have acted. But this is only a trickle compared to the Niagra of protest that must arise in order to free Angela. One million names already collected on her behalf must become 100 million.

“We urge a resolution from here, then mass meetings everywhere, marches, demonstrations of all varieties, special editions and massive flood of cable, resolutions and letters of protest to Governor Ronald Reagan, Sacramento, California, USA. … We of the North America here are greatly thankful to the International Organisation of Journalists in giving us the floor to sound the alarm on behalf of this dauntless daughter of America’s great black people. Her cause is the cause of black, white unity which is the sine qua non of freedom for all in the USA! We must have black-white unity to win.

“Her cause is the cause of the growing numbers of Americans seeking socialism; workers, youths, black and white. Her cause is the cause of all dark peoples and their sons languishing in the dungeons as in Cameroon facing death for seeking complete liberty in the colonial and semi-colonial world, as well as in the heartland of imperialism, the Puerto Ricans, the Chicanos, the American Indians. Her cause is the cause of all who would end the bestial aggression in Vietnam! Her cause is your cause, my cause, the cause of all decent humanity.”

– Joseph North –

Echoing the words of Joseph North, the Editorial Notes of The African Communist, in a piece titled, “Free Angela Davis: The Daughter of the Revolution”, said the following:

“The fight for civil liberties in the United States is today centred on the case of Angela Davis, the negro woman philosophy professor awaiting trial in a California prison on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping and murder. Angela Davis has taken the place of the Rosenbergs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Tom Mooney and the many other martyrs of earlier American history framed to satisfy the bloodlust of a reactionary ruling class fighting to defend its privilege against the challenge of the working class.

“Because the United States today in battlefield, with passions roused on both sides, the case of Angela Davis is of more than usual significance. The fears of the rulers, the hopes of the oppressed, not only in the United States but throughout the world, are centred on her person. Judging by past performance in the United States, the case of Angela Davis will drag on possibly for years, and the controversy even longer. For this reason, it is worth setting down the sequence of events which led to her arrest and detention.

“In the spring of 1969, Angela Davis, a graduate student of the University of California, San Diego, was awarded a two-year contract as Assistant Professor of Philosophy. The FBI leaked to the university authorities the fact that she was a Communist, and, challenged by the university chancellor, Angela Davis stated publicly that she was a member of the Che-Lumumba Club of the Communist Party of Southern California.

“On September 19, 1969, the regents of the University of California voted to dismiss Miss Davis under a 29-year-old university rule barring the employment of Communists. The academic community of the university saw this move as part of a continuing attack by the regents against civil liberties at the university, as well as an attack on the movements representing the negroes, women, youth, workers and progressives.

“On October 3 the faculty voted, by 539 votes to 12, to condemn the regents’ ruling, and by 551 votes to 4 to rescind its own 1950 resolution against employing Communists. The widespread support for Angela Davis was displayed on October 6 when 2,000 students turned out for the first lecture in her course ‘Recurring Philosophical Themes in Black Literature’.

“Davis’s dismissal was challenged in the courts, and on October 20 a Superior Court judge ruled that it was unconstitutional and ordered that she be reinstated. But by now Angela Davis was a target for right-wing attack, and she was subjected to harassment and threats by racists and hooligans.

“Angela Davis was no ivory tower academic. She was active in the struggles of the negro community, particularly in defence of the Black Panther Party and the Soledad Brothers, three Black inmates at Soledad State prison, California, themselves being framed for the murder of a White guard. The Soledad tragedy was closely linked with the case of Angela Oavis. It started with the shooting by a prison guard of three Black prisoners. The guard was found dead later that day. Three innocent Black prisoners, chosen because they were militants, were charged with the murder, and have become known as the Soledad Three.

“The friends of Angela Davis supplied her with a bodyguard when she became a target of attack. One of the members of her bodyguard was Jonathan Jackson, a brother of one of the Soledad Three.

“On August 7, 1970, while a Black San Quentin prisoner was on trial in San Rafael on charges of assaulting a guard, Jonathan Jackson entered the courtroom and handed weapons to the defendant and two other prisoners who were present as witnesses. Five hostages were seized, including the judge. According to the ‘Los Angeles Times’, someone shouted: ‘We want the Soledad Brothers freed by 12.30 today!’. As the group attempted to escape, guards and police opened fire. Jonathan Jackson was killed, as well as the defendant, the judge and one of the other prisoners. Police allege the judge was killed by a blast from the shotgun Jackson brought into the courtroom.

“Angela Davis was nowhere near the scene of these events. In fact, she was in another state at the time. Nevertheless, the police within a few days issued a warrant for her arrest on the grounds that she had provided the guns Jackson had brought with him into the court. They allege she bought them in 1968,1969 and 1970. Angela Davis was not around to receive the warrant for her arrest, and the FBI placed her on their list of the 10 most-wanted criminals. She was described by the FBI as ‘possibly armed and dangerous’.

On October 13, 1970, following a nation-wide hunt, she was arrested in a Manhattan motel with a companion, David Poindexter, who was charged with ‘harbouring a fugitive’. Poindexter was released on $100,000 bail, but Angela Davis was held without bail. On October 21 Governor Rockefeller signed an order to extradite Davis to California and in due course, after a number of court hearings, she was handed into the charge of Governor Ronald Reagan.

“Angela Davis was at the time of writing in a California state prison, threatened with death in the gas chamber if she was convicted. … When she appeared in court to face her accusers, Angela Davis gave the clenched fist salute. Even in a moment of great peril for herself, she was thinking politically of what must be done to save America. In a ‘Ramparts’ magazine interview, she has appealed for a broad movement of revolutionary change in the United States. The campaign in her support should be broader than just to free Angela Davis, she said.

“‘I cannot be truly free as long as there exists another political prisoner and, in turn, political prisoners will not know freedom until the last starving Black child in Mississippi is assured nourishment, clothing and shelter. A movement must be built which, even if I am released tomorrow, can continue until the very fabric of America has been thoroughly and radically altered.’

“‘It has almost become a crime to advocate the fight for the freedom of Black people, Chicanos (Mexicans) and Puerto Ricans, for the true liberation of women and against the exploitation of working people, Black and White’, she said.

“This true daughter of the revolution must be saved. The release of Angela Davis will be a blow not only to the racists of the United States, but to racists everywhere, not least in our own South Africa. Help free Angela Davis! Call meetings, sign petitions, march and demonstrate! Send protest telegrams and letters to Governor Ronald Reagan, Sacramento, California, U.S.A. Act now!”

Angela Davis was prosecuted for three capital felonies – including conspiracy to murder – and was held in jail for more than a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972. During the 1980s, she twice became the CPUSA Communist Party’s candidate for the Vice President of the United States and in 1997, she co-founded the Critical Resistance, a movement that was established to abolish the prison-industrial complex.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Davis broke away from the CPUSA to help establish the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), which was a democratic socialist group in the United States that originated in 1991 as the Committees of Correspondence, a moderate grouping in the CPUSA. That same year, she joined the Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she became Department Director before retiring in 2008.

Angela Davis received various awards, including the Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize and induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. As a consequence of the accusations that she advocated political violence in the 1970s and due to her support of the Soviet Union, she was thus regarded to be a controversial figure. In 2020, she was listed as the 1971 “Woman of the Year” in “Time” magazine’s “100 Women of the Year” edition and in 2020, she was included on “Time” list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2025, Davis was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the University of Cambridge. Angela Davis was also honoured in 2025 with the José Muñoz Award given by The Centre for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center).

Sources:
Wikipedia.
Joseph North, “Angela Davis is Being Framed”, Sechaba, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1971.
Editorial Notes, “Free Angela Davis: The Daughter of the Revolution”, The African Communist, No. 45, Second Quarter 1971.
Fifth Estate, “Interview with Angela Davis”, National Guardian, 4 – 17 March 1971.
Angela Davis, “Angela Yvonne Davis: An Autobiography”, Random House, 1974.
Events and Exhibitions, “Angela Davis: Freed by the People”, Lia and William Poorvu Gallery, Schlesinger Library, 20 September 2019 to 9 March 2020.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!