Students of ancient history may think of Angela Davis as the Communist murderer who was the second black woman to make the FBI”s 10 Most Wanted List. She earned that distinction as a fugitive wanted on murder and kidnapping charges stemming from her role in a notorious attack on a Marin County courtroom. Her back pages are usually obscured by reference to her as a “radical” or “activist” or some such gauzy euphemism. Ron Radosh told this part of her story in the 2012 Washington Times column “Jury isn’t out on Angela Davis.”

Unfortunately, Davis has now has become an honored academic celebrity. She illustrates my thesis that “only the wrong survive,” if you’re a leftist wrongman.

Davis has received the Henry Louis Gates treatment in season 9/episode 8 (“And Still I Rise”) of PBS’s Finding Your Roots series. (At the moment video of the episode is accessible here.) The New York Post covers it here.

Near the end of the episode Gates advised Davis that the show’s researchers had determined her descent from William Brewster, one of the 101 people who came to the colonies in 1620 aboard the Mayflower. Gates has posted the video clip of the moment below.

Davis is also a Daughter of the American Revolution, or a daughter of the American Revolution.

Adam Coleman devotes the New York Post column “We’re not guilty for crimes of history” to the story. Coleman seems to accept Davis’s premise that her Mayflower ancestor is some kind of villain. I agree with the substance of Coleman’s column, but it is not amusing to see him working to salve her conscience. Brewster took two of Samuel More’s children as indentured servants, but I don’t think we know of any crime he committed and Davis in my opinion has her own wrongdoing for which to atone.

William Faulkner is a complicated writer treating the complications of American history. What we seem to have here is a sort of Faulknerian twist to the Davis story.