Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Background

Angela Davis was born in Alabama, United States, in 1944 as the oldest of four children in a black working-class family. She was an activist from an early age, inspired by female parental figures who opposed the Jim Crow laws, and became involved with socialist groups and Marxism–Leninism. She studied in France and attended Brandeis University in the US majoring in Philosophy . She later studied under the philosopher Herbert Marcuse and joined the Communist Party USA in the late 1960s. After completing a Master's degree, she began teaching philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was repeatedly fired over her political beliefs and jailed for two years for purchasing guns later used by revolutionary Jonathan P. Jackson, being released in 1972 and later acquitted.[3]

The 1981 work Women, Race and Class was Davis' third book.[1][5][3] It followed If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (1971), a collection of writings edited by Davis, including contributions in which she discusses her experiences in prison, and Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), which was about the civil rights movement and its impact on her ideology.[3][6] Synopsis

Women, Race and Class is a collection of 13 essays about the American women's and Black liberation movements from the 1800's up to the point at which the book was published; and also about slavery in the United States.[7][5][1][4] She applies Marxist analysis to the relation of gender , class and race in capitalism in America.[1] She gives snapshots of Abolitionist and Communist Women historical figures . Davis criticizes that the women's liberation movement has been run by and for white middle class women, to the exclusion of black women, other women of color and other social classes.[1][5] She makes similar comments about women's suffrage.[3] Davis comments on the participation of white women in the abolitionism movement.[2] The book also describes the woman's club movement.[3]

Davis explores the economic role of black women slaves.[3] She writes that black women under slavery had similar struggles to black men, both groups sharing the task of manual labor and participating in abolitionist activism. However, women were also expected to perform the household labor, similar to women of other races.[1] Engaging in Marxist analysis, Davis argues that women's liberation should consist of women participating in wage labor and domestic labor becoming socialized.[2] She believes that rape is a crime of power, giving the example of white men raping their black slaves.[1] Davis describes the role of race in rape and the _myth_ of the black male as rapist and murderer .[3] She also comments on race and birth control, linking abortion-rights movements to the Eugenics Society and commenting on the sterilization of black and Puerto Rican women.[3]