A critical race theory (CRT) activist and former Black Panthers member Angela Davis discovered that she had white ancestors and one arrived on the Mayflower ship to the United States in 1620.. Angela Davis OSU .“No, I can’t believe this. My ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now,” said Davis, a University of California professor..Davis went on the PBS show “Finding your Roots” to learn about her ancestry. Host Henry Louis Gates Jr interviewed Davis and at the end of the show told Davis that her tenth great-grandfather was a white Englishman named William Brewster, who came to America on the Mayflower..In the late 1960s, Davis was a civil rights activist and a Communist Party member. Davis' activism landed her on the FBI’s 'Ten Most Wanted Fugitives' list for allegedly being involved with an armed seizure of a California Courthouse, killing four people, including a judge..Davis purchased the guns in the armed seizure. She went into hiding, but the FBI caught her and charged her with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy.. Angela Davis The Library of Congress .For 16 months, Davis sat in jail before getting released on bail. In 1972, an all-white jury acquitted Davis of the charges..Davis said she assumed all her ancestors were slaves. On her grandmother’s side, Davis descends from slave owners..Gates had another surprise for Davis. Her maternal grandfather was John Austin Darden, a white Alabama lawyer and lawmaker..Davis asked Gates if “he [John Austin Darden] was a member of the Klu Klux Klan or the White Citizen’s Council? That’s something I would also want to know because in those days if one wanted to achieve that power one had to thoroughly embrace white supremacy," she said..Gates continued with the surprises. Her fourth great-grandfather Stephen Darden, born in 1750 in colonial Virginia, fought in the Revolutionary War. After the war, he moved to Georgia, where he purchased a farm and had six slaves..Murphy Jones, the white next-door neighbour of her grandmother, is Davis' biological grandfather. Davis' grandmother had four children with Jones..Davis ended the interview by telling Gates that “I always imagined my ancestors as the people who were enslaved. My mind and my heart are swirling with all of these contradictory emotions.”.Davis promotes Critical Race Theory (CRT), which divides society by race, with white people oppressing the oppressed black people. CRT, which is a variation of Karl Marx’s 'Critical Theory,' blames white people alive today for slavery in the past. .As many states are banning CRT in schools, Davis said groups are trying to stop “the education of students in our schools about the history of this country, and of the Americans, and of the planet.”
