A UNIQUE COLLECTION
161
●
(BLACK PANTHERS.) DAVIS, ANGELA.
Collection of material from the
German Left in support of Angela Davis.
Includes: a number of very artistic hand-
painted broadsides and petitions, a magazine, plus correspondence and a group of nearly
100 special postcards, printed up to show both individual and group support for Davis dur-
ing her trial.
MUST BE SEEN
.
Germany, 1971
[3,000/4,000]
A RARE COLLECTION OF MATERIAL FROM ANGEL DAVIS
’
S EAST GERMAN SUPPORTERS
.
After her studies at Brandeis University, and as part of her further education, Angela Davis
studied abroad, in Frankfort Germany. There she managed to survive with a stipend of $100 a
month. At first she lived with a German family, but later she moved into a loft in an old
industrial building with a group of radical students. After visiting East Berlin during the
annual May Day celebration, she felt that the East German government was dealing better
with the residual effects of the Nazis and their fascism than were the West Germans. Many of
her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS) and Davis
participated in some of the SDS actions. But events unfolding back home, and especially the
formation of the Black Panther Party and the transformation of SNCC, encouraged her to
return to the U. S. Later, in the United States, when she was arrested and put on trial, her
young East German as well as West German friends rallied to her support and drew up peti-
tions to the U.S. authorities on her behalf. The special post cards and artistic little broadsides in
this collection are from her German supporters, some of them children, inspired by her. This
tremendous outpouring from Germany - seldom spoken of - shows the kind of support that
Davis and other African Americans had from the international community.
