Butler was an original coordinator and participant the Nashville Sit-Ins, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a coordinator of the 1961 Freedom Rides, a coordinator of voter education and registration drives, a participant in the 1960 Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) “Miami Summer” with James Farmer, an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, and the Crisfield, Maryland Movement in December 1961.  Her total jail time from all these different events was about 40 days and nights with charges ranging from “Trespassing on Private Property,” “Loitering,” “Conspiracy to Obstruct Trade and Commerce,” to Florida’s “Ejection of Undesirable Guests” state statute.

Butler also was a patron of Septima Poinsette Clark, founder of Citizenship Schools, during the last six years of her life.  Clark spoke after each performance of Butler’s play, “Voices of a Sit-In,” which was performed at the Church in Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California during the spring of 1986 and 1987.  In 1987, The Los Angeles Times newspaper published a half-page feature article about Clark, “She wrote the book on Civil Rights:  Ready From Within,” as a result of her participation in Butler’s play; this brought Clark to national attention.  Butler also arranged for UCLA to co-sponsor Clark’s stay in Los Angeles.                                                                                                                       

She is currently on the faculty of John Jay College for Criminal Justice in New York. She previously taught as an instructor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California.  Butler also created and coordinated the Ellington Tree Project (1981), and as a director in theatre, she revived Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs.  She was, also, a company member at the Metropolitan Opera from 2003 to 2011 and previously worked at the Los Angeles Opera in 1996-97. Ms. Butler also recorded two albums, one in pop-rock music and one in folk music:  Angeline Butler/Impressions on CoBurt-MGM Records and The Pilgrims/ Just Arrived on Columbia Records (Producer Tom Wilson) with Robert Guilluame, Gilbert Price (and later Millard Williams).