Angela Davis: An Autobiography

Content Warning: This section contains extensive discussion of systemic racism, including the police murders of Black Americans, mass incarceration, Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist terrorist organizations, and the history of enslavement in the US.

Angela Davis goes into hiding in Los Angeles in August 1970 after the Marin County Courthouse revolt in Northern California. She struggles to conceal her identity as she puts on a wig in her friend Helen’s home, and she mourns the death of her friend Jonathan Jackson in the revolt.

As night falls, Davis and Helen leave to begin Davis’s journey to evade the FBI. She is placed on their most wanted list: A gun registered to Davis was used in the courthouse revolt that led to the death of a judge and several others, including Davis’s fellow activist, Jackson. Davis is already known to authorities because of her membership in the Communist Party, and California governor Ronald Regan had her fired from her teaching position in the philosophy department at UCLA. Moving from home to home, escorted by friends and allies, Davis eventually makes her way to Miami and then New York City, accompanied and aided by her friend David Poindexter.