Angela Yvonne Davis was born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama. She was born and raised during a time and place of great political a racial controversies. In 1960, Davis traveled abroad where she studied in Germany at the Frankfurt School, and attended the University of Paris. When Davis returned to the U.S., she enrolled at the University of California at San Diego, where she began pursuing her master's degree, and career as of professor of philosophy. She began intensely involved in the Southern California black community. She joined organizations such as the in the communist party and the Black Panthers. Her involvement in these radical groups expressed proudly that she was a revolutionary black communist that challenge capitalism. This caused Davis to be watched very closely by the United States government and dismissed from her professor position at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1970, Davis became only the third woman in history to appear on the FBI's most wanted list. She was falsely charged with conspiracy to free George Jackson with a bloody shootout in front of a courthouse in California. FBI also asserted that Davis armed prisoners in the Marin County courthouse with guns that were registered in her name. After the warrant was issued for her arrest, Davis spent two weeks evading police. During this manhunt, a sign went up in windows of houses and businesses all across the United States. The sign read, "Angela, sister, you are welcome in this house." Finally, Davis was discovered in a Greenwich Village hotel, and was formally charged with murder and kidnapping, even though she didn't actually take part in the shootout in Marin County, California. Davis spent eighteen months behind bars, until her acquittal on June 4th, 1971.
During the last thirty-two years, Prof. Davis has lectured in all of the fifty United States, as well as in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the former Soviet Union.