Angela Y. Davis (b. 1944) is a name that still inspires a lot of feelings in the United States. Davis has been something of a living icon, the image of a woman in an exquisite Afro, fist raised in pride and defiance. She ran from the law for so long, then was captured and placed on trial as an accessory to murder. Angela Davis has been perceived as someone both awe-inspiring and dangerous.

For a person with a PhD in philosophy, Davis really made a name for herself through her activism, which continues to this day. Not only does she have philosophy cred, but also general badass cred, having worked with the Black Panther Party, been a member of the Communist Party in the US, and run for Vice President of the United States twice. She is one of the last living iconic philosophers who is both a rockstar and an active activist.

Marxism Against Racism

Davis, who received her BA from Brandeis University, encountered another famous Marxist, Herbert Marcuse, and began studying under him, having been involved in communist groups since she was a young person in school. To Davis, the intersection of Marxism helped inform many of the things she saw growing up as a Black person in Alabama in the height of segregation and Jim Crow.

In her work, such as Women, Race and Class (1981), Davis very adeptly synthesizes the social criticism of Marx with feminist theory and researched observations on race in the United States. In her work, Davis keeps the questions pertinent, sharing a Marxism that is not reserved only for dead white men. For Davis, Marxism is a lens through which we can affect social change, when it comes to sexism and racism, as well as the obvious economic factors.

Women, Race and Class details where these things meet, and where the white feminism of the suffrage movement and later the 20th century often come short or are even entirely out of touch when it comes to understanding the difference in struggle of their Black sisters. Understanding this difference can create a feminism that is both intersectional and effective. For Davis, Marx brings these things together.

In her first chapter, which concerns slavery, Davis discusses the societal role of the enslaved woman and contrasts it to the societal role of the middle class white woman at the time. Industrialization, she argues, takes the work from the upper class white women, to the point where they end up doing very little creative work at all, but are meant to hide behind the doors of the household. However, for enslaved women, the work never ceases, be it the unpaid labor of slavery or the work of taking care of her own family. 

It’s important to note that this reading is not a complete trashing of the white feminism that secured the right to vote, but more a clearing of the throat to say that it’s important to understand the context of In Alabama during the mid-century, there were definite class differences between the white people who spent so much of their time oppressing their Black neighbors with threats of violence and with bombings, shootings, beatings, etc., etc.

Which is where we can turn to Davis’s controversy.

Davis the Activist and Fugitive

For Davis, though, writing on philosophical matters was not enough. Since a young person in Alabama, she has been an active proponent for social causes, especially against the prison-industrial complex, which she spent most of her life condemning, nearly half a century before The New Jim Crow pointed out the systemic racism of incarceration in the United States.

This was such a focal point for Davis that, after she was dismissed from a position at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for being associated with the Communist Party (at the behest of the then-governor Ronald Reagan), she decided to get back to her activist roots, working with the much maligned Black Panther Party, a leftist group that armed itself against a police that was known to harass and kill Black folk as its MO. The Party, however, wanted housing, food, and other necessities for its people, and helped organize the movement toward free lunch in public schools.

During her time as an activist, Davis advocated for the release of the Soledad Brothers, three men who decided to fight back during their imprisonment in a racially tense prison. Prisoners there had been arguing that the guards had been placing the white and Black prisoners against each other, encouraging racial violence, which culminated in one of the guards sharpshooting three of the Black prisoners, allowing them to bleed out for a while before getting medical help.

The Soledad Brothers, also prisoners in this facility, decided to take matters into their own hands, since petitions and pleas for help through licit means were just not working. They murdered one of the guards in the prison as an extreme sign of protest and revolt. From there, the violence in this prison increased, with riots and murders becoming commonplace, spurred by ideas of revolution and freedom.

Davis was instrumental in arguing for the release of these men, given that they were left leaning, and that she felt the conditions of their murder to be merited, given the unjust conditions of the environment in which they were living. Violence can only be met with violence sometimes, especially when the violence is systemic and approved of by a governing body.

Davis herself had purchased a few firearms, perhaps with this and her own safety in mind. A few days after the purchase of one of these weapons, the brother of one of the Soledad prisoners entered the courtroom where another prisoner was being tried in connection with the Soledad violence. He handed off weapons to this prisoner and several other associates, then made off with the judge, two female jurors, and a Deputy District Attorney. 

The gunfight that ensued after this 17-year-old and his associates fought with the police killed the judge, 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, two of his associates, and the judge. The weapons used were determined to be some of which Davis had purchased. 

Davis, terrified of possible consequences for her, given her outspokenness on the matter and her Marxist leanings during a time when people were really not into that, booked it out of state and spent several months running from the police, the FBI, and the Most Wanted list. She was discovered, arrested, and spent 18 months in prison as an accessory to murder.

A picture of the Angela Davis's Wanted poster, displayed by the FBI, courtesy of the Museum of African American History at the Smithsonian.

Exoneration and Moving Forward

A massive movement called for the release of Davis, big names writing songs about her, and celebrities speaking out. Davis herself details the demeaning nature of her time in prison in her autobiography. At trial, she was exonerated of the charges, as it was determined that, though the weapons were indeed her own, she had no knowledge of their future use in the kidnapping and gunfight at the courthouse.

Davis, who remained an advocate for the dismantling of the prison-industrial complex, had seen its workings firsthand. 

Now a professor emerita, having retired from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Davis continues to speak up against injustice, and remains a Marxist and a feminist. She is one of the few living philosophers who still capture the imagination, who became a rockstar, a cult of personality, even. And the activist force refuses to leave her.

Davis, having run in two presidential elections, continues to use her voice and academic clout to speak out against injustice in the prison system and in politics. Unlike many of the philosophers we discuss here, she walks and lives her work in some very tangible ways. When your way of life is revolution, it only follows that you live it.

Davis, Marxism, and Violence

Marxism and Davis herself have always been accused of supporting and inciting violence. The very idea that Davis would be outspoken for three men who murdered a person, no matter the cause, may seem odd. Her tangential connection to the people who kidnapped the courthouse judge and others may seem unfortunate. Her insistent demand for the abolishment of the prison-industrial complex may seem nonsensical to some.

A Marxist myself, as I’ve mentioned before, I confess I do struggle with the violence that is essential to readings of Marx, especially the Manifesto. I do not want anyone to die by the hand of violence. I find it odd that I can say that in the wake of what I see on social media everyday, in the wake of the casual bombing of young girls in Iran, in the wake of the beatings, the injustices of a world that seems so often to be inherently violent.

I’ve always thought that Marx and others have insisted on violence as a means for change because they want to “fight fire with fire.” How can you change something unless you speak its language, after all? 

I return to the first philosopher I encountered when I was a child. I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., who had many links to socialism, and the Civil Rights Movement he helped lead. I consider the graphic novel series March, that I’ve been reading for Black History Month, and the late John Lewis’s insistence on nonviolence.

Do we have to live in a violent world? I am inclined to believe that these things are so much part of the systems which we’ve created that it is difficult to untie the knots. Perhaps I am delusional enough to believe that if we try, if we band together, if we see the cycle of cruelty that oppresses us all (because it is cyclical, and will eventually come to affect everyone), we can work as a community to dismantle it. Without sinking to its level.

But I am inclined to believe, in the United States in 2026, that there are those who might find resonance with Angela Davis, and who see violence and arming to the teeth as the only way out of something that is becoming increasingly scary. Fear is a big motivator for violence, and especially when you get tired of living in constant fear, it is not unreasonable to see why someone might take this last resort, even if you don’t agree with the approach.

I will leave you with what Davis herself said on this matter in 1972.