Thou Wilt

On January 26, 1944, Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in a neighborhood locals called Dynamite Hill because of how often it was bombed by white supremacists targeting Black families. She grew up learning that survival meant resistance.

Nobody could have guessed where that lesson would lead her.

By 1970, Davis was 26 years old and teaching philosophy at UCLA. She'd already been fired once over her Communist Party ties, only to be reinstated by court order. Then, on August 7, 1970, everything changed.

That day, 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson walked into a courtroom in San Rafael, California, carrying guns he'd bought the day before. He was trying to trade hostages for his older brother, George, held at San Quentin Prison. The guns were registered to Angela Davis.

In the gunfire that followed, Judge Harold Haley lost his life, along with Jonathan Jackson and two inmates. Davis hadn't been anywhere near the courtroom. But her name was on the weapons — and that was enough.

Eleven days later, on August 18, 1970, the FBI placed her on its Top 10 Most Wanted list — only the third woman in the list's history. President Nixon publicly branded her a "dangerous terrorist." Davis went underground.

For two months, she moved between safe houses, changing her appearance, staying ahead of federal agents. On October 13, 1970, she was found in a New York City motel and arrested. She would not see freedom again for sixteen months.

Jailers placed her in solitary confinement, separated from every other prisoner. Her legal team fought that decision and won a federal order to end her isolation. The cell walls, though, stayed exactly where they were.

What moved instead was public opinion. Within months, more than 200 local committees across the U.S. and 67 more abroad had formed demanding her release. John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote and released a song called simply "Angela."

Singer Aretha Franklin offered to personally cover her bail. She was out of the country when the hearing came, so a Fresno dairy farmer named Rodger McAfee put up the $102,000 instead. On February 23, 1972, Davis walked out on bail — five days before her trial began.

The case moved to Santa Clara County after her lawyers won a change of venue. For four months, a courtroom in San Jose decided whether a professor could be tied to a crime she insisted she had no part in. The jury was all white. Would twelve strangers see it her way?

On June 4, 1972, after thirteen hours of deliberation spread across three days, the verdict came back: not guilty, on every charge. Owning the guns, the jury decided, wasn't proof she had planned what was done with them.

She didn't fade into a quiet life. In 1991, Davis became a professor at UC Santa Cruz, and four years later she was named to a presidential chair in African American and feminist studies. She kept writing and teaching until she retired in 2008.