During her second year at Brandeis , Davis decided to major in French and continued her intensive study of philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre . She was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program . Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne . In Paris , she and other students lived with a French family . She was in Biarritz when she learned of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing , committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan , in which four black girls were killed . She grieved deeply as she was personally acquainted with the victims
Birmingham church bombing
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
Angela Davis