Table of Contents

Series Editor Preface Preface: Cold War as Context Acknowledgments Introduction I. Socialization and Education 1. “Sweet Home Alabama” 2. Sallye Davis’s Red Diaper Babies 3. Student Assimilationists and Rebels 4. From “Bombingham” to the Big Apple 5. Traumatic Awakenings in Devastated Children II. University 6. Undergrad 7. Marcuse’s “Most Famous Student” 8. 1967 Entry Points 9. Philosophy Professor and Communist Target III. Political Activism 10. Not Your Mother’s CPUSA: The Che-Lumumba Club 11. Doppelganger Panther Women: Roberta Alexander, Fania Davis Jordan, Angela Davis 12. Queering Radicalism: On Tour with Oakland Panthers and Jean Genet 13. Crucibles Conclusion: Context and Democracy Notes Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

A critical study of Angela Davis’s educational journey, familial influences, and political contexts between 1944 to 1970 that provides deep insight into Davis’s iconic status.

About the Author

Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College, USA. She is the editor of The Angela Y. Davis Reader (1998) and the author of several noted books and publications on feminism, critical race theory, political prisoners, and democratic politics. Her most recent books include New Bones Abolition (2023) and In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love (2023).

Reviews

Excavating and connecting layers of the ideological influences on Angela Davis's familial, educational, activist and academic experiences, Joy James provides an incisive transdisciplinary analysis of paths taken by the world-renowned human rights advocate, feminist and abolitionist. Adroitly avoiding hagiography while embracing inevitable contradictions, James offers nuanced context with which to reflect not only on an iconic progressive figure of our times, but indeed the imperative of critical praxis that planetary antiblackness permanently engenders.
*João Costa Vargas, Professor in the Departments of Black Study and Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, USA*

Joy James the activist, as well as Joy James the intellectual, is an indispensable thinker; one of five people who I trust to contextualize the 1960s/70s. This book is a compassionate biography of Angela Davis which does not slide into hagiography, written by the Ida B. Wells of our time.
*Frank B. Wilderson III, Chancellor’s Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Irvine,USA*

Joy James offers a crisply written intellectual and political biography of Angela Y. Davis, one of the world’s most iconic radical feminist leaders. Drawing on a range of materialist and transdisciplinary approaches, James’s argument is impeccably evidenced and thoughtful in its methods. James humanizes Davis through detailed attention to the trajectory of her life and work. This is a riveting work.
*Falguni A. Sheth, Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University, USA*