For today’s Activist Tuesday, we will be featuring Angela Davis, an iconic activist, educator, and writer. Angela Davis has spent the last five decades flighting for the end of systemic racism and all forms of injustice in the United States, and she continues to be a powerful voice advocating for progression today.
Angela Davis was born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama. During her youth, the notorious white supremacist politician Bull Connor controlled the city, and terrorist attacks by the Ku Klux Klan were common. In her famous 1972 interview from her California State Prison cell, Davis describes a childhood frequented by neighborhood bombings and the painful loss of multiple close friends during the 16th Street Church bombing. This was to make a point about how she felt being asked whether she approves of violence: many people do not fully grasp the incessant violence that Black people have faced in America, since the very first slave was abducted from Africa.
As a young woman, Davis studied philosophy with Herbert Marcuse, and she joined groups such as the Black Panthers and an all-Black branch of the Communist Party. In the early 1970s, Davis gained international recognition due to her involvement with the Soledad Brothers case. The Soledad Brothers were three (unrelated) men who were inmates in Soledad Prison. During a fight at the prison, some African American men were killed by a prison guard. The Soledad Brothers were accused of killing a guard after the fact. Davis supported them and their proclaimed innocence. During the trial of George Jackson, one of the Soledad Brothers, a shootout occurred when Jackson’s (biological) brother tried to free him. Since the guns involved were reportedly registered under Angela Davis’ name, various charges were made against her, including murder. She spent 18 months in prison before being acquitted in 1972.
In the decades since then, Davis has continued to be a leader in grassroots social justice movements. She has spent years traveling and giving lectures, and she has written multiple books on topics such as race, class, feminism, and the prison system. Until her retirement in 2008, Davis was a professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis has long been a proponent for efforts such as prison reform, defunding the police, and reform of the bail system. These ideas have been considered extremely radical until very recently when they have made their way into the mainstream political discourse. Davis has expressed hope and optimism amid the enthusiasm by younger generations for the end of systemic injustice. Davis is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, an organization devoted to dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex, and she is a firm believer in intersectionality and the importance of marginalized groups working as a team. To this day, Angela Davis continues to inspire and motivate the next generation of change-makers with her fierce spirit and compelling wisdom.
Sources:
Angela Davis: ‘We knew that the role of the police was to protect white supremacy’ Lanre Bakare https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/angela-davis-on-george-floyd-as-long-as-the-violence-of-racism-remains-no-one-is-safe
Angela Davis History.com editors https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/angela-davis
Angela Davis- Biography Biography.com editors https://www.biography.com/activist/angela-davis