The Professor's Guns

The brutal, bizarre attempt to free a man on trial in a Marin County, Calif., courthouse two weeks ago seemed to have no ramifications beyond its bloody toll: the judge, the defendant and two of his would-be liberators dead in the gun battle that thwarted the escape (TIME, August 17). But a routine investigation by the police of the weapons used in the attempt turned up some startling news last week. Three of the guns--a .380-cal. Browning automatic pistol, and two .30-cal. Plainfield carbines--belonged to Angela Davis, 26, the brilliant black former U.C.L.A. assistant philosophy professor fired last year because she was a Communist. Davis openly professed her Communist party membership, and a conservative majority of the California board of regents blocked her reappointment as a teacher amid a stormy debate about academic freedom.

The three guns, among several Miss Davis has purchased in recent years, were brought to the Marin courthouse by Jonathan Jackson, 17, who died in the ensuing shootout. For some time the boy had been a frequent companion of Angela, often traveling with her as she raised money and organized the legal defense for the "Soledad Three." The three are blacks accused of killing a guard in a Soledad, Calif., prison, whose case has been made a cause Cele by the black militant community. The youthful Jackson had more than an ideological interest in the Soledad Three: one of them was his brother. In his raid on the Marin County trial, Jackson demanded the release of the Three.

Whether Jackson acted on his own and stole Angela Davis' guns for his raid without her knowledge, or whether she participated in the plot remains a mystery. To the discomfort of her U.C.L.A. partisans, who are fighting her ouster in court and raising money to continue her salary in the meantime, Miss Davis last week vanished. The Marin County authorities have sufficient cause for suspicion that there have been warrants issued for Miss Davis on charges of kidnaping and murder.

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