On Friday, January 21, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. The next day, the leftist hordes descended on Washington and cranked up the volume. C-SPAN identified one keynote speaker only as Angela Davis, so millenials, GenXers, and even baby boomers should understand what she is all about.
“We represent the powerful forces of change that are determined to prevent the dying cultures of racism, hetero-patriarchy from rising again,” Davis said, adding: “history cannot be deleted like web pages.” Davis had a lot to say about the evils of America but did not get into her own colorful history of speeches before presidential elections. In those the African-American Davis always showed a flair for all-white, all-male totalitarian dictatorships.
In 1980 and 1984 Angela Davis was the vice-presidential candidate of the Communist Party USA, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union. That was how the Russian Communists interfered in the American electoral process, by running their own candidates or supporting proxies in other parties, such as Henry Wallace in 1948.
In 1980 and 1984, Davis was on the bottom of the ticket under white Stalinist Gus Hall, like her a real barrel of laughs. Davis and Hall twice lost to Ronald Reagan and George Bush, big time, but that defeat could not prevent Davis from becoming professor of the history of consciousness and feminist studies at UC Santa Cruz. Before that she gained fame for supporting violent male convicts such as Black Panther George Jackson, who killed a guard at Soledad Prison.
As this article described it, Davis brought the “arsenal of weapons” to spring Jackson. On August 7, 1970, “George Jackson’s 17-year-old brother, Jonathan, charged into a Marin County courtroom and took several people hostage, including Judge Harold Haley, the prosecuting assistant DA, and two jurors. The assailants taped a sawed-off shotgun (owned by Davis) to Haley’s chin. In the ensuing escape attempt, a shootout took place during which Haley’s head was blown off, and Jonathan Jackson was killed.”
The pro-gun Davis fled but was arrested in New York. At her 1972 trial more than 20 witnesses implicated her in the plot to free Jackson, but Davis gained acquittal. That made her a national figure and helped launch her political career.
In 1979, Angela Davis won the International Lenin Peace Prize, awarded by the Soviet Union. The award helped her rise in the Communist Party, but she was not America’s only star Stalinist.
Paul Robeson boasted huge talents as a singer, actor and athlete but spent much of his life defending the all-white Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union during the worst of Stalin’s repressions. The USSR duly gave him the Stalin Peace Prize, which Robeson proudly accepted.