This Day in History: African-American activist Angela Davis is acquitted of killing a white judge in 1972
The death of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white police officer has prompted one of the biggest revolutions of our time. George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin on May 25. White privilege and police brutality instantly became the center of a protest that broke out in Minneapolis and then spread across the nation.
Ten days later, more than 40 cities are in lockdown as demonstrators continue to swarm the streets and clash with police. On July 3, three more police officers were officially charged in the death of George Floyd, in the midst of the raging Black Lives Matter movement. As Floyd's daughter puts it, "Daddy changed the world", but things are from over. This is just the beginning.
While we continue the fight against racism, supremacy and police brutality, we also remember each individual, living or dead, who has worked to elevate the African-American community. And among these imminent figures is black activist, feminist, author and revolutionary Angela Davis, who on this day 48 years ago was acquitted of false charges of killing a white judge by an all-white jury.
She gained international recognition as America's most famed "political prisoner" during her imprisonment and trial on conspiracy charges between 1970 and 1972. Davis was born in 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that came to national attention during the civil rights struggles, to school teachers. Davis went on to become a professor in philosophy and had a strong affiliation with the Black Panther Party, a revolutionary socialist organization that was founded by African-American Marxist students in 1966. In the 1960s and 1970s, Davis incessantly worked to champion the cause of black prisoners.
However, despite her excellent record, her political opinions had her appointment renewal denied in 1969, while then California Governor Ronald Reagan had tried to have her fired. A year later, Davis became the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted criminals after an armed courtroom brawl in California's Hall of Justice, Marin County in 1970 killed a judge and four others, one of whom was Davis' friend. It was responding officers that had shot these people, but a gun recovered from the melee was traced back to Davis.
Investigators found a scapegoat in Davis, who smelled a frame-up. When the police sought after her she went off the radar becoming a fugitive, while President Richard Nixon branded her a "terrorist". She eluded the police for two months before being detained in New York City in October 1970 and returned to California to face charges of kidnapping, murder and conspiracy for which she could have been executed. She had been on trial for her life and her capture sparked an international outcry with progressive Americans, who took her trial as personal. They came to her defense and fought to "Free Angela", the woman that even John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang an ode to.
In 1971, she opened her trial with a solid declaration of her honor that echoed across the nation, asserting that, "I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by the state of California." And while she was acquitted at her final trial in 1972, her former Black Panther brethren who had been political prisoners along with her weren't as fortunate. Since then, Davis rose as a prominent activist who campaigned long and hard against prisons, viewing them as brutalizing, racist, capitalistic and money-grubbing institutions.
She became a defender from a defendant and spearheaded resistant movements against the structural causes of inequality and injustice. She has continued to wholeheartedly render her time an effort to defending black women, prisoners and the impoverished black community. She is among the Times' 2020 list of 100 Women of the Year.
"There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan," said Angela Davis in an interview with the Guardian. "There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice."