Angela Davis Quotes
Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor--because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.
Davis, Angela Y. Women, Culture, and Politics. Random House, 1989.
The Job Corps was planning allowing poor girls to enter as well the program which had been so successful for the boys. The immediate issue of the supply of birth control devices faced the program. Shriver, then the Poverty Czar with the concurrence of President Lyndon Johnson authorized the use of Federal moneys to pay for birth control devices for the female Job Corps members. This appears to be the first time that the Federal Government officially used public funds for birth control. Even with the voluntary ability of the girls to obtain birth control, pregnancy was still one of the major reasons for dropping out of the program.
Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, philosopher, academic and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ideologically a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and is a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of over ten books on class, feminism, race, and the US prison system.
