Who Is Angela Davis? 9 Books and Articles by the Activist

Angela Yvonne Davis is an author, activist, and educator who hails from Birmingham, Alabama. She completed her master’s degree at the University of California, San Diego, under Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School. His Marxist and Freudian theories influenced leftist campaigns throughout the 1960s. Following graduation, Angela taught philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, until 1970. Since 2008, she has been a distinguished professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she began teaching the history of consciousness in 1991.

Angela is a notable figure in abolitionism—a movement seeking to dismantle prisons and the prison industrial complex—as well as the Black Power Movement, a revolutionary movement in the 1960s and 1970s that prioritized Black economic empowerment, racial pride, and the foundation of Black cultural and political institutions.

In addition to being an educator, activist Angela Davis is also an author, having written books, articles, and essays encompassing such topics as activism, Black history, the criminal justice system, feminism, prison reform, women’s rights, and others.

1. 1. “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves” (1971): In this article, Angela discusses the modern views on Black women’s resistance to slavery.
2. 2. Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974): The civil rights activist relates the major events of her life up through the early 1970s.
3. 3. Women, Race, & Class (1981): In this book, Angela focuses on issues that are especially important to Black women.
4. 4. Women, Culture, and Politics (1990): This collection of Angela’s speeches and essays centers on the fight for economic, racial, and sexual equality.
5. 5. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1998): Angela examines the struggles, achievements, and perspectives of three of the most important Black blues singers in history.
6. 6. Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003): In this book, Angela makes a case for the abolition of prison systems.
7. 7. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire (2005): This book collects interviews with Angela, in which she describes how activism can help political prisoners.
8. 8. The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (2012): These twelve speeches by Angela discuss class, gender, and incarceration.
9. 9. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015): This book combines Angela’s essays, interviews, and speeches, which center around matters of oppression and various liberation movements throughout history and the world.

There’s a lot of information that history textbooks don’t cover, including the ways in which systems of inequality continue to impact everyday life. With the MasterClass Annual Membership, get access to exclusive lessons from Angela Davis, Dr. Cornel West, Jelani Cobb, John McWhorter, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Sherrilyn Ifill to learn about the forces that have influenced race in the United States.