Angela Y. Davis - Angela Davis: An Autobiography

Copyright 1974, by Angela Davis

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Unfortunately, it is not possible to include here the names of all those who helped in some way with the preparation of this book. However, there are some people who deserve special mention.

The writing of this book allowed me to work with and get to know a person who is a magnificent writer and inspiring Black woman. As my editor, Toni Morrison not only gave me invaluable assistance, but she was patient and understanding when the work on the book had to be continually interrupted by my responsibility in the movement to free political prisoners.

I am deeply grateful to the Cuban Communist Party and its First Secretary Fidel Castro for having invited me to spend several months in Cuba to work full time on the manuscript.

Charlene Mitchell, Franklin Alexander, Victoria Mercado, Bettina Aptheker, Michael Meyerson, Curtis Stewart, and my attorney, Leo Branton, read the manuscript at various stages. Sandy Frankel and the sisters and brothers on the staff of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression always tried to effectively blend my work on the book with the urgent task I had to perform as the Co-Chairperson of the Alliance. I am in debt to all of them.

I was not anxious to write this book. Writing an autobiography at my age seemed presumptuous. Moreover, I felt that to write about my life, what I did, what I thought and what happened to me would require a posture of difference, an assumption that I was unlike other women other Black women and therefore needed to explain myself. I felt that such a book might end up obscuring the most essential fact: the forces that have made my life what it is are the very same forces that have shaped and misshaped the lives of millions of my people. Furthermore I am convinced that my response to these forces has been unexceptional as well, that my political involvement, ultimately as a member of the Communist Party, has been a natural, logical way to defend our embattled humanity.

The one extraordinary event of my life had nothing to do with me as an individual with a little twist of history, another sister or brother could have easily become the political prisoner whom millions of people from throughout the world rescued from persecution and death. I was reluctant to write this book because concentration on my personal history might detract from the movement which brought my case to the people in the first place. I was also unwilling to render my life as a personal "adventure" as though there were a "real" person separate and apart from the political person. My life would not lend itself to this anyway, but even if it did, such a book would be counterfeit, for it could not convey my overwhelming sense of belonging to a community of humans a community of struggle against poverty and racism.

When I decided to write the book after all, it was because I had come to envision it as a political autobiography that emphasized the people, the events and the forces in my life that propelled me to my present commitment. Such a book might serve a very important and practical purpose. There was the possibility that, having read it, more people would understand why so many of us have no alternative but to offer our lives our bodies, our knowledge, our will to the cause of our oppressed people. In this period when the covers camouflaging the corruption and racism of the highest political offices are rapidly falling away, when the bankruptcy of the global system of capitalism is becoming apparent, there was the possibility that more people Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and white might be inspired to join our growing community of struggle. Only if this happens will I consider this project to have been worthwhile.

The net will be torn by the horn of a leaping calf...

AUGUST 9, 1970

I believe I thanked her but I am not sure. Perhaps I simply watched her dig into the shopping bag and accepted in silence the wig she held out to me. It lay like a small frightened animal in my hand. I was alone with Helen hiding from the police and grieving over the death of someone I loved. Two days earlier, in her house perched on a hill in Los Angeles' Echo Park, I learned of the Marin County Courthouse revolt and the death of my friend Jonathan Jackson. Two days earlier I had never heard of Ruchell Magee, James McClain or William Christmas the three San Quentin prisoners who, along with Jonathan, had been involved in the revolt which left him, McClain and William Christmas dead. But on that evening, it seemed as though I had known them for a very long time.

I walked toward the bathroom and stood before the mirror trying to fit the ends of my hair under the tight elastic. Like broken wings my hands floundered about my head, my thoughts completely dissociated from their movement. When finally I glanced into the mirror to see whether there were still bits of my own hair unconcealed by the wig, I saw a face so filled with anguish, tension and uncertainty I did not recognize it as my own. With the false black curls falling over a wrinkled forehead into red swollen eyes, I looked absurd, grotesque. I snatched the wig off my head, threw it on the floor and hit the sink with my fist. It remained cold, white and impenetrable. I forced the wig back on my head. I had to look normal; I could not arouse the suspicion of the attendant in the station where we would have to gas up the car. I didn't want to attract the attention of someone who might drive up alongside us and look in our direction while we waited at an intersection for the light to turn green. I had to look as commonplace as a piece of everyday Los Angeles scenery.

I told Helen that we would leave as soon as it got dark. But night would not shake off the day that kept clinging to its edges. We waited. Silently. Hidden behind drawn curtains, we listened to the street noises coming through the slightly opened balcony window. Each time a car slowed down or stopped, each time footsteps tapped the pavement outside, I held my breath wondering whether we might have waited too long.

Helen didn't talk very much. It was better that way. I was glad that she had been with me during these last days. She was calm and did not try to bury the gravity of the situation under a mound of aimless chatter.

I don't know how long we had been sitting in the dimly lit room when Helen broke the silence to say that it was probably not going to get any darker outside. It was time to leave. For the first time since we discovered that the police were after me, I stepped outside. It was much darker than I thought, but not dark enough to keep me from feeling vulnerable, defenseless.