Angela davis biography black history

Angela Davis: Early Life and Education

Angela Yvonne Davis is best known as a radical African American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues.

Angela Davis's Biography - The HistoryMakers

She was born on January 26, , in Birmingham, Alabama to Sallye and Frank Davis, an elementary school teacher and the owner of a service station, respectively. Davis knew about racial prejudice from a young age; her neighborhood in Birmingham was nicknamed “Dynamite Hill” for the number of homes targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. As a teenager, Davis organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police.

She also knew several of the young African American girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing of

Angela Davis later moved north and went to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she studied philosophy with Herbert Marcuse. As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, in the late s, she joined several groups, including the Black Panthers.

But she spent most of her time working