International Publishers (courtesy Mr. & Mrs. B. Frank Davis): New York 1. Angela at fifteen months. 2. Visiting New York, July, 1951. 3. Angela left, Fania right, summer, 1952 4. Junior year at Brandeis. KBR http://www.dztsg.netidocCopyright © 1974, 1988 by Angela Davis All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Reprint, 1988 by International Publishers, New York Printed in the United States of America This printing, 1996 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publ ication Data Davis, Angela Yvonne, 1944- Angela Davis--an autobiography. pec Reprint, with nex Introd. Originally published: New York : Random House, [1974}, ISBN 0-7178-0667-7 (pdk.) : $12.95 : 1, Savis, angela Ywonne, 1944- 2. Afro-Anericans--Biography. Title 023A3 1988 '2°0924~-dc 19 88-8232 cIP For my family, my strength For my comrades, my light. For the sisters and brothers whose fighting spirit was my liberator. For those whose humanity is too rare to be destroyed by walls, bars, and death houses. And especially for those who are going to struggle until racism and class injustice are forever banished from our history.Introduction This new edition of my autobiography appears nearly fifteen years after its first publication. I now appreciate the prodding of those who persuaded me to write about my experiences at what I thought was far too young an age to produce a comprehensive autobiographical work of significant value to its audience. Were I to contemplate today the preceding forty-four years of my life, the book I would write would be entirely different in both form and content. But I am glad that I wrote this book at age twenty-eight because it is, I think, an important piece of historical description and analysis of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also my own personal history up to that time, comprehended and delineated from that particular vantage point. During that period of my life when, like many others, every moment of the day was devoted to the quest for activist solutions to the immediate practical problems posed by the Black liberation movement and for appropriate responses to the repressions emanat- ing from the adversarial forces in that drama, I did realize how important it was to preserve the history of those struggles for the benefit of our posterity. Nevertheless, for the participants in those Movements, the frantic pace of events seemed to preclude the kind viiof contemplative attitude necessary to chronicle and interpret those struggles from the standpoint of history. , When I expressed my initial hesitancy to begin working onan autobiography, it was not because I did not wish to write about the events of that time and generally in my lifetime, but rather because J did not want to contribute to the already widespread tendency to personalize and individualize history. And to be perfectly candid, my own instinctive reserve made me feel rather embarrassed to be writing about myself. So I did not really write about myself. That is to say, I did not measure the events of my own life according to their possible personal importance. Rather 1 attempted to utilize the autobiographical genre to evaluate my life in accordance with what I considered to be the political significance of my experiences. The political manner of measurement emanated from my work as an activist in the Black movement and as a member of the Commu- nist Party. When I was writing this book, I was vehemently opposed to the notion, developed within the young women’s liberation move- ment, which naively and uncritically equated things personal with things political. In my mind, this idea tended to render equivalent such vastly disparate phenomena as racist police murders of Black people and the sexist-inspired verbal abuse of white women by their husbands. Since I personally witnessed police violence on a number of occasions during that period, my negative response to the feminist slogan, “the personal is political,” was quite under- standable. While I continue to disagree with all easy attempts to define these two dimensions as equivalent, I do understand that there is a sense in which all efforts to draw definitive lines of demarcation between the personal and political inevitably miscon- strue social reality. For example, domestic violence is no less an expression of the prevailing politics of gender because it occurs within the private sphere of a personal relationship. I therefore express my regrets that I was not able to also apply a measuring stick which manifested a more complex understanding of the dialectics of the personal and the political. The real strength of my approach at that time resides, I think, in its honest emphasis on grassroots contributions and achievements, 80 as to demystify the usual notion that history is the product of Unique individuals possessing inherent qualities of greatness. Many People unfortunately assumed that because my name and my case viii were so extensively publicized, the contest that unfolded during my incarceration and trial from 1970 to 1972 was one in which a single Black woman successfully fended off the repressive might of the state. Those of us with a history of active struggle against political repression understood, of course, that while one of the protagonists in this battle was indeed the state, the other was not a single individual, but rather the collective power of the thousands and thousands of people opposed to racism and political repression. As a matter of fact, the underlying reasons for the extensive publicity accorded my trial had less to do with the sensationalist coverage of the prisoner uprising at the Marin County Courthouse than with the work of untold numbers of anonymous individuals who were moved to action, not so much by my particular predica- ment as by the cumulative work of the progressive movements of that period. Certainly the victory we won when I was acquitted of all charges can still be claimed today as a milestone in the work of grassroots movements. The political threads in my life have remained essentially continuous since the early 1970s. In 1988, I remain a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party and I continue to work with the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. I have also become an active member of the executive board of the National Black Women’s Health Project. This is a time when increasing numbers of people find them- selves attracted to progressive causes. During the past eight years of the Reagan Administration, even as conservative forces in power have brought about the erosion of some of our previous victories, we have also witnessed a powerful surge of mass activism within the labor movement, on the campuses, and in the communities. Extensive and influential movements against apartheid in South Africa, against domestic racism, against intervention in Central America and against plant closings at home have compelled the political establishment to seriously address these issues. As more Jabor activists and women of color have begun to give leadership to the women’s movement, the campaign for women’s equality has acquired a much-needed breadth and has accordingly matured. As a direct result of grassroots activism, there are more progressive Black elected officials than ever before. And even though he did not win the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Jesse Jackson conducted a truly triumphant campaign, one that confirmed and ixfurther nurtured progressive thought patterns among the people of our country. As I write this introduction, I join many friends and comrades in mourning the untimely death of Aaron Boye. Aaron was the nephew of Charlene Mitchell, of Franklin and Kendra Alexander, and the cousin of Steven Mitchell—all of whom are frequently mentioned in the pages of this autobiography. When Aaron gradu- ated from UCLA two years ago, he invited me to speak at the Black students’ graduation ceremonies. In my remarks, Lurged the students to remain cognizant of the struggles which had carved out a place for them at that institution and to be willing, in turn, to add their own contributions to the ongoing quest for justice and equality. Surrounded in his childhood by relatives and friends who had dedicated their lives to these causes, Aaron was keenly aware that he had reaped the fruit of their contributions. And he had begun long ago to sow the seed for future struggles. ‘As this autobiography was originally dedicated to comrades who gave their lives during an earlier period, I add Aaron Boye’s name to the roster of those who, were they still among us, would be on the frontlines today. Angela Davis / An AutobiographyAickuoutedgments Unfortunately, it is not possible to include here the names of all those who helped in some way with the preparation of this book. However, there aré some people who deserve special mention. The writing of this book allowed me to work with and get to know a person who is a magnificent writer and inspiring Black woman. As my editor, Toni Morrison not only gave me invaluable assistance, but she was patient and understanding when the work on the book had to be continually interrupted by my responsibility in the movement to free political prisoners. I am deeply grateful to the Cuban Communist Party and its First Secretary Fidel Castro for having invited me to spend several months in Cuba to work full time on the manuscript. Charlene Mitchell, Franklin Alexander, Victoria Mercado, Bettina Aptheker, Michael Meyerson, Curtis Stewart, and my attorney, Leo Branton, read the manuscript at various stages. Sandy Frankel and the sisters and brothers on the staff of thexiv / Acknowledgments National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression al- ways tried to effectively blend my work on the book with the urgent task I had to perform as the Co-Chairperson of the Alliance, I am in debt to all of them. Preface 1 was not anxious to write this book. Writing an autobiography at my age seemed presumptuous. Moreover, I felt that to write about my life, what I did, what I thought and what happened to me would require a posture of difference, an assumption that I was unlike other women—other Black women—and therefore needed to explain myself. I felt that such a book might end up obscuring the most essential fact: the forces that have made my life what it is are the very same forces that have shaped and misshaped the lives of millions of my people. Furthermore I am convinced that my response to these forces has been unexceptional as well, that my political involvement, ultimately as a member of the Communist Party, has been a natural, logical way to defend our embattled humanity. The one extraordinary event of my life had nothing to do With me as an individual—with a little twist of history, another sister or brother could have easily become the political prisoner whom millions of people from throughout the world rescuedxvi/ Preface from persecution and death. I was reluctant to write this book because concentration on my personal history might detract from the movement which brought my case to the people in the first place. I was also unwilling to render my life as a per- sonal “adventure’—as though there were a “real” person separate and apart from the political person. My life would not lend itself to this anyway, but even if it did, such a book would be counterfeit, for it could not convey my overwhelming sense of belonging to a community of humans—a community of struggle against poverty and racism. When I decided to write the book after all, it was because Thad come to envision it as a political autobiography that em- phasized the people, the events and the forces in my life that propelled me to my present commitment. Such a book might serve a very important and practical purpose, There was the possibility that, having read it, more people would understand why so many of us have no alternative but to offer our lives— our bodies, our knowledge, our will—to the cause of our op- pressed people. In this period when the covers camouflaging the corruption and racism of the highest political offices are rapidly falling away, when the bankruptcy of the global sys- tem of capitalism is becoming apparent, there was the possibil- ity that more people—Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and white —might be inspired to join our growing community of struggle. Only if this happens will I consider this project to have been worthwhile. ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE six ~~ NNN Nets Rocks Waters Flames Walls Bridges 7 5 147 281 347The net will be torn by the horn of a leaping calf... PART ONE NetsAUGUST 9, 1970 D seior I thanked her but I am not sure. Perhaps I simply watched her dig into the shopping bag and accepted in silence the wig she held out to me. It lay like a small fright- ened animal in my hand. I was alone with Helen hiding from the police and grieving over the death of someone I loved. Two days earlier, in her house perched on a hill in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, I learned of the Marin County Court- house revolt and the death of my friend Jonathan Jackson. ‘Two days earlier I had never heard of Ruchell Magee, James McClain or William Christmas—the three San Quentin pris- oners who, along with Jonathan, had been inyolved in the revolt which left him, McClain and William Christmas dead. But on that evening, it seemed as though I had known them for a very long time. I walked toward the bathroom and stood before the mir- Tor trying to fit the ends of my hair under the tight elastic. Like broken wings my hands floundered about my head, my4 / Angela Davis thoughts completely dissociated from their movement. When finally I glanced into the mirror to see whether there were still bits of my own hair unconcealed by the wig, I saw a face so filled with anguish, tension and uncertainty I did not recog- nize it as my own. With the false black curls falling over a wrinkled forehead into red swollen eyes, I looked absurd, grotesque. I snatched the wig off my head, threw it on the floor and hit the sink with my fist. It remained cold, white and impenetrable. I forced the wig back on my head. I had to look normal; I could not arouse the suspicion of the attendant in the station where we would have to gas up the car. I didn’t want to attract the attention of someone who might drive up alongside us and look in our direction while we waited at an intersection for the light to turn green. I had to look as com- monplace as a piece of everyday Los Angeles scenery. I told Helen that we would leave as soon as it got dark. But night would not shake off the day that kept clinging to its edges. We waited. Silently. Hidden behind drawn curtains, we listened to the street noises coming through the slightly opened balcony window. Each time a car slowed down or stopped, each time footsteps tapped the pavement outside, I held my breath—wondering whether we might have waited too long. Helen didn’t talk very much. It was better that way. I was glad that she had been with me during these last days. She was calm and did not try to bury the gravity of the situation under a mound of aimless chatter. I don’t know how long we had been sitting in the dimly lit room when Helen broke the silence to say that it was prob- ably not going to get any darker outside. It was time to leave. For the first time since we discovered that the police were after me, I stepped outside. It was much darker than I thought, but not dark enough to keep me from feeling vulner- able, defenseless. Outside in the open, entangled in my grief and anger was fear. A plain and simple fear so overwhelming, and so elmental that the only thing I could compare it to was that An Autobiography / 5 sense of engulfment I used to feel as a child when I was left alone in the dark. That indescribable, monstrous thing would be at my back, never quite touching me, but always there ready to attack. When my mother and father asked me what it was that made me so afraid, the words I used to describe this thing sounded ridiculous and stupid. Now with each step, I could feel a presence which I could describe easily. Images of attack kept flashing into my mind, but they were not abstract —they were clear pictures of machine guns breaking out of the darkness, surrounding Helen and me, unleashing fire . . . Jonathan's body had lain on the hot asphalt of the park- ing lot outside the Marin County Civic Center. I saw them on the television screen dragging him from a van, a rope tied around his waist . . . In Jon’s seventeen years he had seen more brutality than most people can expect to see in a lifetime. From the time he was seven, he had been separated from his older brother George by prison bars and hostile guards. And I had once stupidly asked him why he smiled so seldom. The route from Echo Park down to the Black neighbor- hood around West Adams was very familiar to me. I had driven it many times. But tonight the way seemed strange, full of the unknown perils of being a fugitive. And there was no getting around it—my life was now that of a fugitive, and fugitives are caressed every hour by paranoia. Every strange Person I saw might be an agent in disguise, with bloodhounds waiting in the shrubbery for their master’s command. Living as a fugitive means resisting hysteria, distinguishing between ne creations of a frightened imagination and the real signs it the enemy is near. I had to leam how to elude him, outsmart him. It would be difficult, but not impossible. ° Thousands of my ancestors had waited, as I had done, for nightfall to cover their steps, had leaned on one true friend to