Free Angela and All Political Prisoners Page #4

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Everybody in their Sunday best,

many people weeping.

When they brought the casket out,

and Mrs. Jackson followed,

people holding her up

and a handkerchief to her face.

And it said to me, what he had done

represented something.

'Cause that was thousands

and thousands of people

out there in the street.

Nobody organized that. People just came.

While we were standing there,

Franklin comes up, Franklin Alexander.

We were standing in such a way

that he was next to us,

but looking straight,

as though he wasn't talking to us.

And he said, "Angela's been implicated."

And he said, "She's gone underground."

And he said, "I'm just, you know,

letting you know. Okay?"

We said, "Okay. "

And then he disappeared into the crowd.

Today, it turned out that two of the guns

used in the courtroom

were bought some time ago

by Angela Davis.

It was clear

that that was not the time to make

myself available to the police for arrest.

Mr. Alexander, you say that

you are the chairman

of the Che Lumumba Club

of the Communist Party?

Miss Davis has identified herself

as a member of that group.

She is a member of that group.

Is it the doctrine of that club

to use guns for black liberation?

It is the doctrine of the Communist Party

that black people, that all people

have the right to defend themselves

and their homes.

When asked by a reporter,

"What would you tell Angela Davis

if you could speak with her today?",

he smiled and said simply,

"I love you, baby."

"You wouldn't tell her to give herself up,"

he was asked.

And he repeated, "I would tell her,

'I love you, baby.' Nothing more."

The FBI has put black militant Angela Davis

on its list of the 10 most wanted fugitives.

She's charged with murder in California,

where authorities say

she bought weapons

for that San Rafael courtroom shootout.

Hoover put her on the top 10.

The key to the top 10,

she was a communist.

They were not his favorite people.

And if you were on the top 10,

you're gonna get a lot of attention.

We were devastated, you know.

In our gut, we had to know

there was something wrong here,

that this could not possibly be anything

Angela would be involved in.

Not the Angela we knew.

It couldn't be her.

Anyone involved in planning a violent

operation like Jonathan Jackson's,

that was on a need-to-know basis.

So, only certain people would know.

You would think that somebody

with an advanced degree,

particularly someone

who had a public profile,

would be the last person

who would want to use

those weapons in an illegal act.

On a truly common sense perspective,

it doesn't make sense.

But on the other hand,

crazy sh*t happens.

What is the evidence?

The evidence is

that Angela Davis purchased four guns.

There was a provision in the penal code

that anybody in this state could buy as

many guns as he or she wanted to buy.

And that's the law of the state of California.

And because Governor Reagan

wanted it that way,

Angela Davis bought four guns.

And why did she buy them?

I don't know and you don't know.

But it is reasonable to suppose

that anybody who teaches

at this institution and who speaks up

for power to the people,

who speaks up for

the freedom of political prisoners,

who speaks out on any issue

receives every week...

I receive every week, letters,

and the theme and tone

of those letters ranges from

violent and vicious imprecations

to outright threats of death.

And for Angela Davis,

whose prominence as a black woman

and a communist, that mail came every day.

And there were threats on her life.

And she bought four guns.

The FBI and the police descended

on the black communities

all over the country and began pulling in

any young, tall, black woman

with a space between her teeth.

'Cause they just had

this general description.

We had her fingerprints and a photograph

of a girl with a big afro.

And every office gets

a box full of those things.

There were unmarked cars

parked across the street.

I knew then, this was the FBI

and that we were under surveillance.

So many hundreds

of black women with big afros

were stopped on suspicion

of being Angela Davis.

I decided that I did not

want to flee the country.

Because, certainly,

if I had decided to travel to Cuba

or some other country

that would have given me asylum,

and I probably could have gotten asylum

from any number of countries,

I would have been there

for the rest of my life.

I flew from Las Vegas to Chicago,

where I managed to hook up

with David Poindexter.

David was the person

who helped me for the remaining period.

The search for Angela Davis

has spread from Los Angeles,

through the Bay Area, through Canada,

to a series of raids

in her hometown of Birmingham

after a US district court judge

issued the fugitive warrants

and set bail at $100,000.

The attitude in the Bureau was,

the only way you're gonna solve

anything is to have an informant.

And we used to think most of

the Communist Party members are FBI.

It was thoroughly, thoroughly infiltrated.

A file was opened up in every office.

Everybody had a file on her.

I stayed at David's apartment,

and then had to leave

because he had gotten into

an argument with one of his friends

who lived in the building.

And we were afraid

that this person might reveal

that I was with him

if the FBI ever questioned him.

So we traveled to Miami,

and I was holed up in Miami for

what seemed like an eternity.

I was pretty scared.

At any moment, I felt

I was on the verge of being caught.

I had this fear with me all the time.

I thought a lot about

the people I had left behind,

my family, of course.

I worried about my mother.

I worried about my siblings,

I worried about my friends, my comrades.

And every strange noise I heard

I interpreted as, "The cops are coming.

"The FBI is knocking on the door."

And then the Alexander girl's name

comes into it, and they talked to her.

She wasn't helpful,

but nor was she antagonistic.

It was determined

that she had been in Chicago

with David Poindexter.

And there is some stuff

in there about David's woman,

she was jealous.

And she told us some things, that they were

there and they headed to Florida.

Once we identified the car,

and Chicago did that,

now we knew what we were looking for.

Sooner or later, we're gonna find that car.

And they located one place

where the guy thought

that they might have been here.

But the girl didn't look like her.

They questioned his mother

who lived in Florida,

which meant we had to leave Florida.

They had vacated the apartment,

and the agents went in there

and they looked all around.

And in the cushions of the couch,

they found an exposed roll of 35mm film,

which becomes a big thing in this case.

Now, they were all pictures of Angela,

but she doesn't have an afro.

She's got a little pixie cut.

They had vacated the apartment,

and they were traveling north.

The best place to hide in this world

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