Angela Y. Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an African American communist organizer and philosopher who was associated with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1971s, as well as the Communist Party of the United States of America. She first achieved nationwide notoriety when she was linked to the murder of judge Harold Haley during an attempted Black Panther prison break; she fled underground, and was the subject of an intense manhunt. After 18 months as a fugitive, she was captured, arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. She is currently Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California and Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She works for racial and gender equality and for prison abolition. Davis is a founder of Critical Resistance.
Wikipedia - Angela Davis

Interviews

Pittsburg Indymedia - Interview, Nov. 2006
Democracy Now! - On the Execution of Tookie Williams
Blackademics - Interview, Nov. 2006
Frontline - Interview, Spring 1997

Quotes

"Jails are thoughtless places. Thoughtless in the sense that no thinking is done by their administrators; no problem-solving or rational evaluation of any situation slightly different from the norm. The void created by this absence of thought is filled by rules and the fear of establishing a precedent... Because of the rules by which prisons survive, the only wellspring of passion left to their administrators is the proximity of pain and death. Those quickest to kill were always those most outraged by the infraction of a rule." -An Autobiography