Angela Davis: An Autobiography

Angela Davis: An Autobiography, originally published in 1974, is a political autobiography focused on the imprisonment and trial of activist and scholar Angela Davis in the early 1970s. In 1970, after guns belonging to Davis were used in an uprising at the Marin County Courthouse in California, Davis was accused and convicted of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. A jury acquitted Davis of all charges in 1972. She published her autobiography two years later to center the plight of political prisoners in the United States and the systemic racism of the carceral system.

This study guide uses the third edition of the book published by Haymarket Books in 2021.

Content Warning: The source material contains extensive discussion of systemic racism, including the police murders of Black Americans, mass incarceration, Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist terrorist organizations, and the history of enslavement in the US.

Summary

The book opens with Davis in hiding. The FBI has placed Davis on their most wanted list after connecting her to Jonathan Jackson and others involved in an uprising at the Marin County Courthouse in California that resulted in the death of a judge alongside Davis’s friend, Jackson. Though Davis is innocent of conspiring in the events that unfolded at the courthouse, her activism in the Black liberation movement and her membership in the Communist Party make her a target of the authorities.

Davis explains the circumstances that led her to join the Communist Party and engage with the movement for Black liberation in the 1960s and 1970s. She grew up in a Black middle-class family in Birmingham, Alabama, during Jim Crow and came of age during the civil rights movement. The racist violence and class- and race-based deprivation she witnessed in her youth led her to study Marxist thought, eventually earning a doctorate in philosophy. Her studies informed her involvement with the quest for Black liberation. She became a professor of philosophy at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where she was targeted by the governor’s office and the Board of Regents for her communist beliefs. The Board of Regents first tried to fire her and then refused to renew her contract. Meanwhile, Davis remained dedicated to the Che-Lumumba Club, the Black Communist cell she’d joined in Los Angeles, and the Black liberation movement. She was involved in the effort to free three Black inmates collectively known as the Soledad Brothers, who were accused of killing a white guard during a riot at California’s Soledad Prison. Davis became close with all the men and their families but was especially drawn to George Jackson, with whom she corresponded and developed a deep connection. Jonathan Jackson, George’s younger brother, participated in the uprising at the Marin County courthouse and was killed as guards fired shots into the van where Jackson and several hostages were. Authorities suggested that Jonathan Jackson and others acted to free the Soledad Brothers and other political prisoners. Moreover, Jackson had used a gun registered to Davis, leading authorities to implicate her in the events.

Davis goes underground with the help of various friends around the country but is apprehended in New York, where she is jailed for some time before her extradition to California, where she stands trial. Davis recounts the squalid and cruel conditions at the women’s jail in New York and highlights the deprivation that imprisoned women face. Davis is initially isolated from the other prisoners on the grounds that they may harm her because of her politics, but this proves untrue. Davis builds community with and acts as a mentor and educator to her fellow prisoners once her legal team secures her movement to the general prison population. Likewise, she maintains community with activists outside the jail, both in New York and in California, where she is held first in Marin County and then at the Santa Clara jail. Black liberation activists and fellow Communists organize numerous demonstrations demanding her freedom. This support sustains Davis through her imprisonment and trial. Her experiences while jailed also solidify her lifelong commitment to advocate for the rights and freedom of all political prisoners, especially after George Jackson is killed at San Quentin prison. Davis believes that guards killed Jackson for his revolutionary politics, though authorities claim he was involved in a botched escape attempt.

The prosecutor in Davis’s case uses her close bond with George Jackson to explain her supposed involvement in the events at the Marin County Courthouse. Authorities confiscated letters from Davis to Jackson after his murder and use them as evidence of a crime of passion. The prosecution claims that her love for Jackson motivated Davis’s supposed involvement with the uprising at the courthouse. She disputes this claim as entirely false and rooted in sexism. The jury acquits Davis of all charges in June 1972.