Davis to speak at UND Feb. 6

The University Program Council, a division of Student Government at the University of North Dakota, invites the public to a conversation featuring Civil Rights activist Angela Davis at 7 p.m. Feb. 6 at the Chester Fritz auditorium. A reception and book signing will follow at the Gorecki Alumni Center at 8:15 p.m.

Born Jan. 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Ala., Davis is best known as an African American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues. As early as 1969, Davis began publicly speaking, voicing her opposition to the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, the prison industrial complex, the death penalty and her support of gay rights.

As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, she joined the Black Panthers, but spent most of her time working with the Che-Lumumba Club, which was an all-black branch of the Communist Party.

In 1970, Davis purchased the firearms used in an attack that killed a judge, juror, prosecutor and three prison inmates that attempted to escape after holding a courtroom hostage, leading FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to make Davis the third woman to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. She was arrested and, after spending 18 months behind bars, Davis was acquitted of all charges.

Davis has continued a career of activism, and a principal focus of her current activism is the condition of prisons within the United States. Considering herself an abolitionist, not a “prison reformer,” Davis was one of the primary founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison system.

She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches courses on the history of consciousness. Davis is the author of several books, including “Women, Race, and Class” (1980) and “Are Prisons Obsolete?” (2003).

Tags: community, education