Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 49. Chapters: Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Triple oppression, Carol Moseley Braun, Shirley Chisholm, Combahee River Collective, Bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Africana womanism, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jewelle Gomez, Pat Parker, Betye Saar, This Bridge Called My Back, Anna J. Cooper, Toni Cade Bambara, Barbara Smith, Faith Ringgold, Patricia Hill Collins, Womanist theology, Salsa Soul Sisters, Michelle Cliff, Florynce Kennedy, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, National Black Feminist Organization, Molara Ogundipe, Beverly Smith, Tricia Rose, Michele Wallace, Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians, Paule Marshall, Aileen Hernandez, Margaret Sloan-Hunter, Gloria Akasha Hull, Cheryl Clarke, Frances M. Beal, E. Frances White, Lorraine Bethel, Home Girls. Excerpt: Angela Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of "Critical Resistance", an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is presently a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department. Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music and social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s. Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, Frank Davis, was a graduate of St. Augustine's College, a traditionally black college in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was briefly a high school history teacher. Her father later owned and operated a service station in the black section of Birmingham. Her mother, Sallye Davis, a graduate of Miles College in Birmingham, was an elementary school teacher. The family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood, which was marked by racial conflict. Davis was occasionally able to spend time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City. Her brother, Ben Davis, played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Davis also has another brother, Regi