Angela Davis

A civil rights icon, closely associated with the Black Panthers, and twice a candidate for Vice President of the United States, Angela Davis is one of the most controversial activists of this century and the last. Born into poverty in 1944, a descendant of slaves, a scholarship allowed her to go to New York and study philosophy. In the summer of 1970, accused of conspiracy in the escape of three prisoners in San Francisco, she was placed on the FBI's most wanted list; captured and demonized by the authorities (woman, black, Marxist), she was acquitted after a media trial and a strong popular movement for her release. Her fight against racial discrimination and social inequalities, her activism for women's rights, and her saga to dismantle prisons are evident in her vast body of work – in which her achievements stand out. Women, Running and Class (1981) and Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) –, which denounces forms of human imprisonment and teaches us to look at the dungeons of the world.