Dr. Mark Lomax, II

Born in Birmingham, Alabama on January 26, 1944, Angela Davis grew up with her parents and siblings in a middle-class Black neighborhood where houses were bombed so often by the Klu Klux Klan that it became known as “dynamite hill.” Her experiences with racism in Birmingham included watching her father and others defend themselves, families, and property against the KKK and being harassed by the police for organizing interracial study groups as a teenager. After graduate school (Ph. D, Humbolt University in East Berlin, Germany), Dr. Davis accepted a teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles where she found herself at odds with the administration due to her association with communism. It was her association with the Soledad Brothers that placed her on center stage as an enemy of the state of California and a prominent face of the Black Power Movement when she was charged with murder. Defending herself, Dr. Davis was acquitted after having spent 18 months in solitary confinement. She then became a full-time lecture, author, and activist fighting for the rights of all oppressed people. Dr. Davis continues to give voice to the voiceless in her recent book Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016).