ANGELA DAVIS

Memories.  UCLA glorifies the memory of Angela Davis, an American communist from the 1960s and 1970s!  It brought back memories of her being hosted in Prague by Communist Czechoslovakia in the early seventies.  A friend told me how astounded a Czech limo driver was at her naivete about how wonderful things were in Communist Czechoslovakia when the average person was struggling to make it under Communism. Most Czechs living under Communism preferred what America had under Capitalism.  She never experienced their lives, but only saw what the elite wanted her to see and experience.

For those who can’t identify her, the photo depicts Angela Davis, the notorious former Communist Party USA leader who, beginning in the ’60s, molded together black nationalism with Marxism-Leninism. She created a heady brew for recruiting new cadre into the CP and the original Black Panther Party of Huey Newton.

Some optimist! Davis believed in the triumph of Communism.

For her loyalty to the Soviet Union and its foreign policies, in 1972 she was awarded a Lenin Centenary Medal in the Soviet Union, after which she spoke to thousands at an outdoor rally in Moscow. Next, speaking at a factory in Kirov, Davis praised the workers for not using “products of labor [to fuel] the irrational drive for capitalist profits as it is used in our country.”