The radical activist’s ‘settler’ roots remind us why no one should feel guilty about the actions of their ancestors.
Angela Davis’ encounter with her own ancestry has unwittingly exposed the follies of America’s reparations debate.
The name Angela Davis is a by-word for black radicalism in America. While a student at Brandeis University in the 1960s, she joined the Black Panther Party and also the Communist Party USA. She studied under Professor Herbert Marcuse, a living link between German Marxism and American liberation movements. In 1969, she was fired from a teaching post in California for being a Communist, at the order of then governor Ronald Reagan.
