Women, Race & Class

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Angela Y. Davis is a renowned activist, author, philosopher, and academic. Davis is famous for her lifelong activism, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, during which she was wrongfully arrested on charges of murder and kidnapping and placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1970. Davis wrote Women, Race and Class less than 10 years after her release from prison; the work is a pioneering example of we now know as intersectional feminism. Other well-known works by Davis on race, gender, and class include Women, Culture & Politics, The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues, and Abolition. Feminism. Now. Her writing draws frequently on abolitionist and Black feminist theories and practices, as well as Marxist analysis.

Davis is a graduate of Brandeis University (BA) and University of California, San Diego (MA); she additionally earned a doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Throughout her academic career, she studied philosophy and developed an expertise in class, race, and gender politics in the United States. In 1991, Davis joined the Feminist Studies Department at University of California Santa Cruz, eventually becoming department director. She retired in 2008 but remains a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz in both its History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies Departments.

Davis is a strong, vocal critic of capitalism, having argued throughout her life for leftist politics and policies associated with socialism and communism. She has been a member of the Communist Party USA and more recently became affiliated with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Her lifelong activism and work have earned her numerous awards and recognitions, such as her inclusion in Time magazine’s “100 Women of the Year” for the year 1971 and its 2020 “100 most influential people” list, as well as her induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Davis continues to engage in social activism through public lectures and her work for prison abolition, including as a founding member of Critical Resistance, a grassroots organization aimed at dismantling the prison-industrial complex.