Angela Davis to Speak Saturday at Compton College Conference

COMPTON — Angela Davis, a noted political activist and university professor, will deliver the keynote address Saturday at a Compton Community College conference entitled “Women Moving Progressively Into the 21st Century.”

Conference organizers say the program from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. is designed to inform women about the skills they will need to compete in future job markets. The session is free and open to the public. The campus is at 1111 E. Artesia Blvd.

Davis, a professor of Pan-African studies at San Francisco State University, has been “in the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights” as well as human rights, said Billie Jo Moore, director of the college’s extended opportunity program.

In the early 1970s, Davis gained national notoriety when she was accused and later acquitted of aiding radicals in a courthouse shooting in Marin County. She has since been active in a variety of black and women’s causes, and twice ran for vice president on the Communist Party ticket.

Also appearing at the conference will be businesswomen Chris Birdsong and Elida Chavez, educators Omowale Fowler and Milda Carroll, sociologist Julie Hare and politician Hilda Solis, college officials said.