(audience applauding)
- Thank you.
Good evening, we've got a
wonderful program in store for you
and Chad, I can't thank you
enough for this gathering.
Because
(audience applauding)
that first panel was
amazing, I wanna say that.
And Randall Bailey, your
challenge to the university
I support that 1000%.
(audience applauding)
Words can't express how I
feel to be standing here
in front of all of you.
Almost 43 years ago, it's hard to say,
I graduated from this august institution
with a great stateswoman Barbara Jordan
as our commencement speaker.
And I thought at that time, it
couldn't get better than that
Then three years ago, I
was asked as Chad said
to give Brandeis' 66th
commencement address,
while receiving an honorary doctorate
from my blessed Alma Mater.
Surely, it could not get better than that.
But tonight, oh no, no, no.
Tonight beats all others.
And I can only say that
standing here in front of you,
it does not get better than this.
She is home.
(audience applauding)
She is home!
Thank you Chad once again
for bringing her here
in celebration of the 50th anniversary
of Brandeis's department
of African American studies.
And to the Brandeis community
and all of you gathered here,
she has come home.
She child of Brandeis,
you brought her here.
Eldest daughter of
educator Sally Bel Davis
and entrepreneur B Frank Davis,
oldest sibling of brothers Ben and Reggie
and sister Fania, protected
by the love of family
and friends, you have
brought her home Brandeis
At a time when a prestigious
award was revoked
because of a dangerous lack of tolerance
for a difference, and a time
and place that our country
and our world finds itself in.
Who would have thought,
I've been thinking recently
that blackface was in
such plentiful practice.
Her message has consistently
been one of championing
the underdog, she is a protest mover
believing that change does not come easily
and requires consistent
and collective action.
She is a critical theorist
whose work both informs us
and requires and challenges
us to think and be better.
Not ever has she been
satisfied with the status quo.
For her, oppression is bottom down,
and change, bottom up.
She warns us against
individual heroism's, racism,
classism, xenophobia, the
prison industrial complex
and all of the racial
underpinnings is slavery
in another name.
She has come home, at
a time when the nation
and the world is struggling
with it's demons.
It is appropriate, very
appropriate that we have her here.
She has been, her work has
always been historically based.
History surrounded her in
Birmingham's dynamite hill,
she herself is walking history
in a symbol of a principled life.
It was when she was in
prison that she wrote
here first article on the role of women
in the African slave trade.
She has consistently looked at racism
through a historical lens.
Angela Davis.. A, is for always being
on the right side of justice,
even when times are hard.
The N is for never giving
up even in the darkest hour
the G is for going
forward, never backwards.
Because change does not
happen with backward action.
The E is for enlightenment,
that has been her quest
and her calling.
L is for love, because she
is true love for humanity
and the second and last day
of her name is for aint.
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around.
Turn me around, turn me
around, aint gonna let nobody
turn me around, keep on
walking, keep on talking,
gonna build a brand new world.
She has been on this earth
three quarters of a century
she has lived in the
public eye for 50 years
and she has done so with
a servant leader mindset.
She has great intellect, grace and class.
She has spent her life,
trying to help us build
a brand new world, ladies and gentlemen,
I want you to stand now,
and give here the respect
that she is due, because
Angela has come home.
(audience applauding)
- Okay thank you.
Well, Angela look at this.
- What an overrated
introduction.
- Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure
but you know look at
everybody here Angela,
you know, you were here,
I was looking it up
24 years ago.
- When I was last here.
- When you were last here it was 1995
and it was right here in Levin ballroom
and there were 700 people
like tonight in attendance.
- And I think it was
organized by Decima Williams,
am I right, yeah he was
teaching here at the time.
- That's right, that's right.
- Good afternoon everyone.
- You know, and the thing
is, I was a little sad
to think when we were talking earlier,
that you haven't been back
because you were not invited back
and so we have to really once
again thank Chad Williams
for doing that, thank you.
(audience applauding)
You know, at the time, you
said that we need to disconnect
our vision of 1960s radicalism,
we want to envision a new
movement for the 1990s
it was the 1990s at the time.
And you also said that
each generation had to find
it's way so what did you mean by that?
And how is that related to to day.
- Well, that was a long time ago.
If I remember accurately, that was a time
when we were on the verge of
a movement against the
prison industrial complex.
But at the same time, there
was a tendency to look
backwards for leadership
that if we were to have
a new movement it would have to replicate
the civil rights movement and the point
I think I was making, was that
influential radical
movements are always led
by young people.
And young people have to
learn how to acknowledge
the influence of their elders,
but at the same time perhaps
move in a different direction
I always like to refer to the metaphor of
each generation stands on
the shoulders of the previous
generation, well that means
that they not only are able
to absorb the wisdom and the
knowledge of the previous
generation, but they are
standing on the shoulders
so that they can actually see further,
they can see new things,
I was, I think if I recall
that was the point I was
trying to make 25 years ago.
- And you know, at that
time also, you had just
been given the president's
chair and you were under attack
and I thought that particularly,
and because you are under attack now,
we saw on January eighth
on the New York Times,
that award that had been
the Fred Shuttlesworth award
had been revoked and I mean
and we were standing here
at this point and time, I
wasn't anything you had done,
but I want you to talk about that.
- I don't know what it is, you know,
it seems like each time
I've been at the center of
public attention, it
hasn't necessarily been
because of something I've done,
(audience laughing)
I mean I was fired from my job at UCLA
I didn't expect to be fired,
I didn't expect that kind of
controversy to emerge, well,
I could perhaps narrate
50 years of my life's
trajectory by saying,
I did not expect, yeah.
In the early 90s, when did you say it was?
- It was 1995.
- 1995 about 1994 I believe
I was given the presidential,
University of California
presidential chair in
African American and Feminist
Studies I think, Karina,
you were at UC Santa Cruz
at that time, you remember,
Karina Ray was a member
of the triple AS department here.
And I had no idea that
there were still regents
sitting on the board
who came out with these
absolutely scandalous assertions about me
and as it turned out, my
graduate students at the time
had to wage this campaign
to defend my right to hold
the presidential chair,
but it's interesting
I did have a conversation
with the president
of the university of the
entire system at that time
and he said that someone had called
the office of the president
and had wanted to know
why Angela Davis was
made the president of the
University of California.
So humorously as it is, he said,
"Well, she is not the president,
"but we do have a campus named after her."
(audience laughing)
- But you know, but let's
talk for those people
who read that article like
I did in the New York Times
that day, what actually happened?
- Well, you know, I was born and I grew up
in Birmingham Alabama.
And I was extremely happy
to learn of the creation
of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
I've supported it for the
entire duration of the
institution, as a matter
of fact, my mother was
one of the most passionate
volunteers there.
And it was my Sunday School teacher,
Odessa Wolfolk who had the
idea for such an institute
and really pushed it to it's completion.
So, when I was told that
they wanted to offer me
the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award,
I felt so honored, I
knew Fred Shuttlesworth
and went to school with his children.
And so I assumed that I
would go to Birmingham
and you know, give a
talk and get the award.
But then, a couple months later,
after I had been informed
that I was getting the award,
I get this phone call and
the person informed me
that the award had been rescinded.
And so I asked why?
And I was told that it had
to do with public statements
that I had made that were
a part of the public record
and I pushed for more substantive
answers to my question
but I was never told
anything aside from that.
And then of course some
of you may know that
there was a self critique
by the board of directors
of VCRI and then there was an announcement
that they wanted to
rescind their rescission
and offer the award so I
actually haven't responded
to that yet, because I
think it's about a range
of issues that really
require public discussion.
So I am going to Birmingham next week.
- There are a lot of people coming out
when you go to Birmingham.
They've moved to a whole large place.
- I'm here with a cold
so if I have to cough,
oh you don't even allow
me to mute this do you?
I see.
There's tape by this,
I was expecting I could mute
whenever I have to cough.
- But they're 5000 people
gonna be in attendance
- But what I wanted to
tell was that originally
the community event had been
scheduled in the Lyric Theater
this historic theater that
I only know as a place
where black people have
to sit in the balcony.
And my sister reminded
that we sat in the balcony
and we used to throw
popcorn on the white people,
(audience laughing)
There were many forms of resistance.
So I was really looking forward to going
to the Lyric Theater but
it only holds 700 people
and they said it was sold
out in less than an hour.
So they moved it to the
largest venue in Birmingham.
- But you know it's really
about your support of Palestine,
the issues around that was really in the
center of the controversy,
and Michelle Alexander
wrote that powerful piece
in the New York Times
talking about that she
had even been guilty of
standing on the sidelines.
- Yeah I was so happy
to see Michelle's piece,
her column in the Times,
did you all read it?
About three weeks or so ago?
You know it's interesting,
I don't know how they
could not have known,
that I've been active around a whole range
of issues surrounding Palestine
for many many many years,
I've never tried to hide it.
(audience laughing)
So it was bizarre.
But I also don't think that
the members of the board
were aware of what response might be,
Birmingham is still somewhat provincial,
and in a lot of ways the
US is still provincial.
(audience laughing)
You know, not just Birmingham.
But I've often pointed
out that I'd first learned
about Palestine when I was
a student here at Brandeis
(audience applauding)
Since I came to this University in '61
and that was not very
long after the founding
of the state of Israel.
So I learned about what
was happening in the region
when I was here, and I also learned about
Palestine Solidarity here.
I've pointed out that I
simultaneously learned
about how important it was
to challenge anti-Semitism,
and to speak courageously
against the continued
perpetuation of anti-Semitic
ideas and practices,
and at the same time to speak
out for justice for Palestine.
(audience applauding)
- So Angela I want, I
mean I know you wrote
your autobiography, but I'd
like to, just in the case of
our tradition at the (mumbles)
I'd like to take you back to your family,
and your mother who
was really in many ways
your activism may have
started with your mother,
so can you talk about (mumbles)
- Yeah, you know it took
me a long time to recognize
that my mother was really the
primary influence in my life,
during my years as a young activist,
I saw myself as also
rebelling against my parents,
and later I recognized that
she had carved out the path,
in a sense the whole
trajectory that I had followed,
she was an activist in the campaign
to defend the Scottsboro nine.
She joined the Southern
Negro Youth Congress,
that was a formation that
was led by black Communists
As a matter of fact W.E.B Du Bois spoke
at one of their most important gatherings,
and so I was telling
Julianne I think I absorb
all of that by osmosis, not
realizing that it had come
from my mother.
But when I myself ended up on the FBI's
most wanted list and in
jail and all of that,
my mother and other members of my family
were my most important advocates,
my mother traveled all over the country
speaking out on my behalf
as a matter of fact
there are photographs of
her holding my sisters
one year old or nine month old
I guess my sister is in Europe traveling
urging people to join the
campaign for my freedom
and my mother's carrying
the baby and has her fist
(audience laughing)
and I said, yeah, yeah, yeah I am walking
in my mother's path.
And your father also though,
he ran the gas station there
you know, in town but that
gas station first of all
for a black man to be
running a gas station
but it was also--
- It was the, one of the
only black gas station in Birmingham
and you know, black people couldn't even
buy gas from white people, yeah.
And he had the only parking lot
in the downtown area and black people
could not park in white
people's parking lots
and so almost all black people
in Birmingham knew my father
because they had to pass
through to go shopping.
But my father was also a major influence.
He is actually responsible for my decision
to finish high school in New
York which then led me to
Brandeis because of my father.
There are a lot of details
that you are probably not
even that interested in
but I was also accepted
in an early admission
plan to Fisk University.
And so at one point, I
sort of imagined myself
going to Fisk, I wanted
to be a doctor then
I think I was 15 years
old, I would graduate
by the time I was 19,
then I would go to Meharry
across the street and you
know, I would be a doctor
by the time I was like 23 years old
that was what I imagined
and my father had actually
attended Fisk for a while, he got his BA
at another HBCU, St.
Augustine's in North Carolina
in Raleigh and so he said,
he looked at me and he said
Fisk?
I don't think so.
And I see he was absolutely
right because I had actually
tentatively agreed to
go and then I got a list
of all the clothes that
I would have to bring
including the long formals
and the white short formals
and this and that and I said, Hmm
I think I'll go to New York.
- So talk about your experience
because you went to a
Quaker school in New York.
- No it wasn't a quaker school
- As far as run by them.
- No it wasn't the program was.
The program had just been
established by the American
Friends Service Committee.
And it was, it was kind
of an exchange program
where black students from the South
would attend a school in the north
and would live with white families.
And I always wondered why
it didn't go the other way
(audience laughing)
but anyway, so I attended
Elisabeth Irwin High School
which is part of little red school house
and I live with a family,
an Episcopalian minister
and my father had been and
Episcopalian lay minister
so he was happy to hear about that too.
And but this was an Episcopalian minister
who had had his church
taken away from him.
I'm just thinking about
it, for some reason
I always end up inside
these controversies.
He had his church, he and his father
had their church taken
away from them because
of their work with the Soviet
American Friendship Society
I never thought about that, that, you know
- But how was that
experience, because you know
it's like you come out of
really a black community
and in Birmingham and then
you are essentially living
with a white family and I
remember even talking to
your brother Ben and he said that it was,
it was somewhat lonely and
it was somewhat difficult
but I'm wondering what
your experience was.
- Well, it was different.
(audience laughing)
And I do have to tell you
that I was not unfamiliar with New York.
My mother ended up getting her MA at NYU
my mother was a foster child by the way.
And she had to run away
from her foster parents
to be able to get a high shool education
that she grew up in the
country in the deep country
in Alabama and so when we were young,
she traveled each three
summers to New York
to take courses at NYU and we
lived with the Vernon family
and they were black
communists who had originally
come down to the south to do organizing
and organizing the Southern
Negro Youth Congress
that's how my mother met them.
But they got run out
of town by Bull Connor.
So yeah, I had already
experienced New York,
I knew, I wasn't completely ensconced
in the provincialism in the segregated
provincialism of Birmingham.
But what I remember is that
it was really exciting,
I went to a high school where
we were at the communist
manifesto, and where we read
the Froyd in high school.
And it was a high school
that had been created
by a number of teachers
who had been blacklisted,
in the public school system
because of their politics.
So it was a largely Jewish high school,
and everybody wanted to go to Brandeis.
(audience laughing)
But I was one of the few who got in.
(audience applauding)
I was just talking to one of my classmates
just the other day and she said,
"I really wanted to go to Brandeis,"
- So can you talk about,
that is true, that is true.
but can you talk about the
Brandeis that you came to?
It's 1961.
- Well I slipped in to hear the last part
of the panel, I was
sitting in the back there,
and it sounds like that
was a really exciting
time at Brandeis.
You know, Brandeis was
exciting for me too,
but there were hardly any
black people here, there was,
- You were one of three I think you said
something like that.
- Yeah maybe two of us in my class,
just a handful on the entire campus.
And actually we became friends
with a graduate student
who's name was Witty
Lewis and his wife Gwen
they were the resident's
directors at Ridgewood dormitory?
And I can remember a funny story,
I hadn't planned to tell
these Brandeis stories but,
you know, those were the days of curfews,
and one of my good friends
and I decided that we would
hitchhike to Gloucester
Just because it was so beautiful,
and we wanted to experience the beauty,
and we did, and by the
time we made it back
it was after curfew, so
we went to Woody and asked
if, now there was some,
there was a guy in the dorm,
men's dorms, right?
So he left his room,
so that we could sleep,
spend the rest of the night there.
And it was discovered,
and we were brought up
before the, what is it called?
The, yeah but it was the
student disciplinary board,
and there was students
questioning us about,
you know, not upholding
the values of Brandeis.
(laughing)
We didn't get kicked out though.
But it was worth it because
Glouster was so beautiful.
I'll never forget that trip.
- So after your freshman year you spent
the summer in Europe,
and then your junior year you're in France
and you're ensconced at that
point in French literature,
everything French, right?
- Well, yeah, I was studying
French literature here,
and I had the opportunity to
have as one of my teachers
one of the greatest French poets
(speaking in foreign language)
he taught here for a while and that was
an experience I'll never forget.
Yeah I, when I went to Elizabeth Irwin
the requirement was four years of French.
I was in my third year, and I had never
heard of French.
So finally we just worked hard
and high schools in Alabama,
at least not the black ones.
And so I had to learn three
years of French in one year,
in order to catch up with my class.
That was a pre-requisite for graduation.
And I think I just became
so immersed in the language
and culture, that I
decided that I didn't want
to become a doctor after all,
remember I told you about that,
but I like the humanities,
and I had wonderful French
teachers here, as a matter
of fact after my first year
I went to France for the summer.
You know, the way I think about it now
I made this journey from
the south to the north
in search of some kind of freedom.
And what I thought I would
find in the north wasn't there,
I discovered new forms of
racism that I could not
at the time articulate as racism,
but I can remember in high school I got,
I would always get
invited to people's houses
and to their summer houses,
cause many of the people
were pretty wealthy.
And when I was there
oftentimes what would happen
would be that they would ask the servant
to come and join them because
they had a black servant there.
And so there were these
really awkward moments
that I didn't know how to explain.
But that was the time, that
was before we had developed
the vocabulary to talk about
the influence of racism.
So I think I began to
imagine France as that place.
Because if you study French
literature, French culture,
you can't avoid (speaking
in foreign language) right?
So I think I had this in my mind,
that if I could only make it to France,
I would find freedom.
And my first trip to
France was at the height
of the Algerian revolution.
(audience laughing)
And so when I got there I met
these women from Marinique
who told me that I had
to be really careful
because the police might
think that I was Algerian.
There were police attacks,
there were rallies,
and that was the summer I first read
(speaking in foreign language)
You know I first became familiar
with his work in French,
so now when I tell this story I say
I went to France in search of
(speaking in foreign language)
but instead I found (speaking
in foreign language)
(laughing)
- So talk about relationship with Marcuse
- Yeah see that's,
I am so happy I came to Brandeis.
Because I think that when I
discovered Herbert Marcuse
I discovered what I really wanted to do,
and I didn't know how express it before.
But I remember sitting in his lectures,
and I have notes now, they're
at Harvard with my papers,
like elaborate detail
notes from his lectures,
I could probably rewrite
the lectures from my notes,
I fell in love with not philosophy per se,
but philosophy as critical theory,
as a way to think about the world,
not in terms of what exists,
but what can possibly be.
I had heard him speak
and attended his lectures
and then I went to him and I said,
"You know, professor Marcuse,
"I think I'm really
interested in philosophy.
"But the problem is I haven't taken any
"courses in philosophy."
When I was in France for my junior year
I had read French philosophers, (mumbles)
and of course John Paul Sartre and Nicolo
and Simone de Beauvoir
and all of those people.
So he said, well,
this was at the beginning
of my senior year
because I was gone my junior year,
and he was away for my sophomore year,
he was teaching in Europe then.
So the first semester of my junior year,
he did an independent study with me,
and we started with the pre-Socratics
and traced the history
of European philosophy,
up to Hume, we hadn't yet reached Kant.
That was one of the most
exciting intellectual
experiences of my life.
And then he was giving a graduate seminar,
he was in the department
of history of ideas,
he was giving a graduate seminar on Kant's
critique of pure reason.
And he told me I should
take the graduate seminar.
I said "But I've only had
a semester of philosophy."
Not only did I have to take the seminar,
but he made me give the very first paper
of that graduate seminar which was on Hume
as of the predecessor to the development
of Kant's critical theory.
And I think after that
I was totally hooked.
- What did he see in you?
(audience laughing)
just a relationship between
the mentor and mentee
that wasn't supposed a funny question.
But how could you have a special,
you have a special relationship once
- Yeah but you know,
I think he just saw curiosity,
I was really deeply interested,
and one of the reasons I'm
so glad I came to Brandeis
was because there was a really,
how would you put it?
Say intellectual atmosphere here.
Do you know, those of you who went?
And I don't think I have ever experienced
anything like that before,
and it has remained with me,
I remember the long
conversations we would have,
I took an independent
study with professor Benet
now we read (speaking in foreign
language) and then we read
(speaking in foreign language)
and a semester, and so it
meant that you had to spend
hours and hours reading and
thinking and discussing,
and that's a great thing,
I tell my students now, I say, you know
you won't realize until much later that
this is the only time when you can devote
all of your life to reflection and reading
and thinking and so, yeah,
Brandeis gave that to me.
I don't think I was any
different from other people.
So I never thought about that question
why and I never ask Herbert
why it is he agreed to do that.
But yeah, it was a defining moment.
- So you even went, you went
off to the Frankfurt school
for two years which,
that's a school that he,
that's the school of
thought he was a part of
and studied but then it
was, what brought you back
was what was happening
in the United States.
- You know, the Frankfurt School,
The Institute (speaking
in foreign language)
was established by a German Jewish
intellectuals who were compelled to flee
during the Hitler era and
had gone to various places
Switzerland, some in France
Walter Benyamin unfortunately
was killed where you
may know his story about
trying to cross the border
and he took cyanide because
he thought the Nazis had caught him.
Horkheimer and Adorno and Marcuse
came to the US and for a while
were at Colombia and then
they went to California
so I knew those stories
and I had began to read
Horkheimer and Adorno and so I,
yes he suggested that that
would be the best place to study
so I did spend two years in Frankfurt.
- So Angela, when is your
radicalization happening,
coming because when does it start?
- But I think that's what
I've been telling you about
the intellectual environment, that was
- Radical.
- Radicalization, you know,
often times people assume
that there is a moment
to use a French term,
(speaking in foreign language)
And I never experienced it that way.
I think that I brought the
sense of radicalism with me
from the way in which my
parents had taught us how to
engage in a segregated
society and I often point out
that my mother constantly said to us
when we would ask for explanations
as to why black people
couldn't do this or go there
why can't we go to the, why
can't we go to the symphony
why can't we go to the library,
why can't we go to the
amusement and she would say
that this is not the way
things are supposed to be.
So she and she would always say,
and one day they will be different.
So I learned from the time
I was a very young child
to imagine a different future
and not to inhabit simultaneously,
that segregated world, but also to inhabit
in my imagination, a very different world.
And in that sense, I think I learned
to adopt a stance of critical
theory when I was a child.
And I think that may be one
of the reasons I felt so drawn
to it because of the
insistence of critical theory
on not accepting what is,
simply because it is given.
To always recognize that
things are going to change.
And that as a matter of fact
we can be a part of the process
that brings about the change.
(audience clapping)
- Now, you followed, you
were just talking about
UC San Diego, you follow
Marcuse there and then 1969
there is a controversy swelling around you
and at that time Governor Ronald Reagan.
And this is, and we look at this, I mean,
this is the same time
that Brandeise is erupting
with it's call to take over Fort Hall.
So I wanted you to talk about
both things in some respect.
So you weren't aware necessarily
of what was happening
at Fort Hall at that time.
- Yeah, I was reading about
it, it was in the newspapers
I mean that's how we got our
information in those days
we read the newspapers, right?
So I was definitely aware
of what was going on here
and I felt maybe a little
nostalgic that I wasn't here
when it happened or it didn't
happen when I was here.
But yeah, I was fired
from my job, my first job
before I delivered my first lecture.
And that was because of my
membership in the Communist Party
and you know it's really
interesting, I have since gone back
to UCLA many times and
I recently taught there
for a semester in the gender,
the women and gender studies
department and I ended up giving
a lecture in the same space
Royce Hall where I gave the first lecture
of my class because there
was so many people interested
in it, the first lecture was
in a two or three thousand
seat hall when the first
lecture of my entire
academic career and the
then, the current chancellor
spoke and introduced me and
told a very interesting story
which, well he said that the chancellor
and the administration
tried their best to keep me
at UCLA and it was the regents.
I didn't quite remember it that way.
But because I remember the
chancellor writing me a letter
asking me whether I was a
member of the communist party
and I remember writing
a letter back indicating
that while I resented his
infringements on my political
freedom and my right to make
my own independent decisions
about my political
affiliation, but that I was not
I wasn't afraid to say
that yes I was a member
of the Communist Party and
that's how the whole thing
got started but then now,
not too long afterwards
they had a big poster with a picture of me
advertising UCLA so you know, I was
I've been reclaimed by UCLA
(laughing)
You know that's what happens if you stay.
Who was it, Simone de Beauvoir or somebody
who said if you hang around long enough
history will absolve you.
That comes from Fidel Castro of course but
- You know, you think
about that time period
by 1970 you are on the
FBI's most wanted list.
I mean there is a lot happening, you know,
you work with the black panther,
it is a political party, hear me?
Okay, so you know there is a lot happening
at that time and I wanna
go back to your mother's
statement about the you
know, really in many ways
the imagining, you know,
because when you look at this
and you look at black studies starting
at San Francisco State, I
mean, people were trying
to imagine what it would
be, they had to even imagine
a curriculum and you were doing that work
even at, so can you talk about
your worth at work there?
- Well, you know, that was
such an exciting conjuncture.
It's true that the first
black studies program
was created as San Francisco State,
was a part of the third
world studies department.
But all over the country it
was a moment when people were
realizing that we needed something new,
we needed something different
and I was telling you about
the work we did on the
campus at UC San Diego
where I was a graduate
student to try to create
a new college, a third
college was in the works then
and we demanded that that third college
be called Lumumba Zapata
College because we wanted
the black African revolutionary tradition
and the Mexican revolutionary tradition
to come together and we
look at the curriculum
of the two existing colleges,
you know, we were graduate students
and undergraduates and we
decided we were gonna do this
innovative curriculum for this new college
so that it would be
relevant to black students
Chicano, Latino students and
working class white students.
We had a kind of mechanical
demand, we demanded
that one third of the
students would be black
and one third would be
Latino and one third
would be working class white students.
But we really tried to
imagine what it might mean
to teach science as a way
of transforming the world
that would make it a more
habitable place for all people.
So the think about
anti-racist approaches to,
and we had no idea what
we were doing of course
but we did all of this meticulous work
with creating new courses,
but this was in the air.
When I went to UCLA and gave this course,
my first philosophy course,
of course I was the only
black person in the philosophy department
and so I taught a course
called philosophical
themes, recurring philosophical
themes in black literature.
Because I thought it was
so important to teach
students in a way that would
allow them to be cognizant
of what was going on,
but also how do we think
about our history, our cultural history,
our literary history,
what role does that play
in generating transformation.
- And so that's what we are
essentially talking about
when we talk about the
creation of black studies
which has begat women and gender studies,
LBGTQ, I mean, all of
that came out of those
initial movements when you look at that.
And that's what I'm, I'm
struck when I think of
your life that you know,
you've been at the center
of history, I mean I came to Brandeis
because you had come here,
cause my father was like
(audience applauding)
that's the school Angela Davis went to.
And so but I just wonder how you
- But it's not because of what I did,
let me be really clear about this.
It's because of the
- It's maybe how you handled
it
- Also because I became
involved in movements, you
know, nobody would ever know
my name had not it been
for this amazing movements
that developed, first around
my right to teach at UCLA
and then when I was in
jail and at that time
facing the death penalty,
people allover the world
came together and basically
said to Richard Nixon
and Ronald Reagan, and
J Edgar Hoover, right
that no, no,
she will not be executed
she will not spend the
rest of her life in prison
she will be freed and
so it was an indication
that when people come together
in that kind of united
and concerted way, it is
possible to thwart the plans
of even the most powerful
people in the world.
(audience applauding)
And I was the beneficiary of
that, I did not produce it
I was the beneficiary so
I have to be very clear.
That I didn't do most of the
things people attribute to me.
- I mean this is the thing,
I think it's also how you've
handled it, during that time and after it.
And I say that because of your family
and the other people I even remember
when you interviewed R C Davis for us,
and how you know, how happy they were
but what they talked about
in terms of their work
you know on their behalf, so I mean,
it was really sort of amazing.
- Yeah, they were the head
of the fundraising component
of the committee
- But I think also you know
and Angela I am sort of
struck also because your work
there are many many issues and movements
that you have championed
but I think about your work
and you know, the work about
the prison industrial complex
you know as someone who had actually
been in that environment and have come out
for almost 40 years, you
have been championing that
and a lot of the things, I
was saying this to you earlier
when I was listening to you speak,
and I said Hmm, abolition of prisons
I mean that sounds like
a really radical notion
but at the same time, the
way the things that you were
talking about and engaging the audience
to imagine a world, you
know, what that would be,
if you did not have prisons.
And especially when you look
at the prison population
that's there.
- Yeah, I think you have
to cultivate that kind of
long range imagination.
We wouldn't be here today,
had not it been the case
that in the 1600s, and the 1700s,
there were black people who
believed in the possibility
of freedom and we are the beneficiaries
of that imagination.
It may have taken a long
time, well we are still
not there really, because
we are still living
the after-lives of
slavery and colonialism.
But if people had given
up on those dreams,
who knows where we would be today?
And so, yeah, I first
encountered abolition
when I was in jail.
As a matter of fact,
the Attica brothers 1971
who rose up and called
for a number of things
in their demands, but
they called eventually for
abolitions, the abolition of prisons
as the routine form of punishment.
And now, I mean I used to say abolition
and people would look at
me like I was absolutely
out of my mind, absolutely insane,
well I shouldn't use the word insane
but now I think people are recognizing
that prison reform has
so frequently led to
stronger and more repressive
modes of punishment
and this is where we are now.
Even though nowadays,
everybody knows about
mass incarceration and
everybody is aware of the fact
that there is a crisis
in terms of the fact that
25% of all of the imprisoned
people in the world
are in jails in prisons in the US
and that as a matter of fact,
a third of all the women
on the planet are in prison in the US.
And that's another thing,
when I went to jail
I had been doing work on prisons
and political prisoners
and it occurred to me
that nobody ever talked
about the very particular
set of conditions
surrounding women in prison.
And so as we develop an
approach to the prison
industrial complex, we
recognize that by centering
the experiences of woman in prison
even though they
constitute a small number,
that aspect of the
workings of the apparatus
that come clear in ways
that would not be possible
the connection for example between
state violence and intimate violence
and the same thing is
true about looking at
trans prisoners and
recognizing the insights
that one acquires about
the whole apparatus
by looking at the particular experiences
of trans people in prison,
we came to recognize
we came to recognize that
the institution itself
is a gendering apparatus,
it promotes a binary notion
of gender so yeah,
I have to stop lecturing.
- So you know, I want to
transition a little bit here
because I see Chad to my right
and we have said that we were
going to allow for questions
and so I want to bring
Chad up to the stage
so we can spend the rest of the time
with the allowing you and the audience.
Ask questions of our esteemed guest.
- Again, we have three
microphones in the aisles
please, in the interest
of time ask a question
don't make a statement.
- You know, Chad, let me really thank you
for inviting me
- Yes!
(audience cheering)
- I will say when I became
department chair in 2012,
the first thing that I said to myself is
Angela Davis needs to
come back to Brandeise.
(audience cheering)
Yeah, question please.
- Hello, thank you all so
much, I'm like beyond grateful
just to be witnessing this conversation.
Hello, my question is
about kinda following
where you just took us, I'm curious about,
what about, I'm curious
about the production
of your article, the role
of African American Women
in the community of slaves
and like was it about
your experience of incarceration or like,
how did that experience
lead to the production
of the article and how did you think about
or have you thought about
the impact that the article
had on black feminist theorizing since.
(audience cheering)
- That's one of our graduate school.
(laughing)
- You know, it's so interesting when I,
oh I have to cough again, excuse me.
- You got some water?
- Yeah.
I wrote that article in
the Marin County Jail.
And I, well first of all, I
was in solitary confinement.
And I was also a co-council in my own case
I had, in California, you
either have the right to counsel
or the right to defend yourself.
So I made an argument to the judge
that I wanted both the right to counsel
and as a feminist approach,
the both and rather than
the either, or, and so he granted it.
And so therefore, I was
able to get all these books
because I needed books to prepare my case.
And it was with those books
which I actually did use
to prepare my case because
very important aspects
of the defense during the
trial of related to gender
and race and US history.
But see, the immediate
catalyst for conceiving
this article had to do with the impact
of the Moynihan report.
The assumption that black women
were a part of the problem.
This was a period during
which the movements
there were assumptions that
movement leaders were male
I mean all of the leaders
during that period,
the so called leaders,
well they were leaders
they weren't so called
leaders, they were leaders.
And so I had actually
been involved in a series
of conversations with George
Jackson who was absolutely
brilliant and was
responsible for us moving
from a rather narrow
approach to the prisons
that focus on political prisoners,
to thinking about the role
that the apparatus itself
played in the production
and reproduction of racism.
But George had undergone the influence
of the prevailing sexist
and patriarchal ideologies
and so I had many arguments
with him about that
the fact that women should
stand behind their men
and so I did that research
because I wanted to
dispute these notions
that were circulating
in movement circles
that as a matter of fact
if one looks at black history,
men are always the dominant figures.
And so what, I wasn't
thinking about influencing
any feminist theories I was just thinking
I was thinking in terms
of what would help us
clarify where we were at that moment.
Both in terms of our
intellectual development
but also in terms of the
way in which we imagined
movements unfolding and in a sense I think
all the work we do has some
resonance, some connection
with the present, the past and the future.
I think I was being more
explicit because the
I think I did a brief
preface of the article
in which I did acknowledge
that the ideas came
from conversations with
sir George Datson about
the role of women in what
was a contemporary movement
in the 1970s.
- Hi, I'm Pamela Anderson, class of 79,
and like Julianna, I
would say that I came here
because of you, to hear
you to day what I would say
is that I came here because
of all of the great things
that you did.
I'm just curious particularly
in light of your work
both in feminism and black history,
there is some concern
after the 2016 election
that perhaps those two
movements, the women's movement
and the black movement, there
has been some strain there
and I'm just curious if you
have a sense of perspective
as to whether or not that's real or not.
- Well, you know that's only if we assume
it's only if we assume
that feminist movements
are white movements.
(audience applauding)
And I think over the
last decades, we've done
new genealogies and
have made it very clear
that the feminist movement, first of all
there isn't one feminist
movement, I think we have to stop
thinking in the singular and
think in terms of a plurality.
You know there is always
been a feminist movements
that have focused more on
people of the dominant class.
As a matter of fact, I didn't
even learn how to identify
what I was doing as feminist theory
until after I wrote a book
called Women, Race and Class
and people started calling me a feminist.
And I said, I'm not a feminist,
I'm a revolutionary black woman.
(audience laughing)
But then, I realized that
I was a part of a community
of working class white
feminists, Latino feminists
black feminists, native American feminists
who were theorizing
feminism very differently.
As Anti racist, as anti capitalist.
And I think that one
can see that tradition
going all the way back
to, you know, someone like
Anna Julia Cooper so I like to think
that the feminisms that have
been produced by women of color
and by anti-racist feminists
regardless of their
ethnic backgrounds are rapidly becoming
the dominant feminism.
What is the most recognizable concept
associated with feminism?
Intersectionality, right?
People are familiar with
that allover the world.
And that tells us precisely that the work
that we've done is made a
difference and we have to
stop assuming that we are
always the underdogs in this.
And I mean it's true that
there can be these problems
with the women's march,
and people but you know,
there are always people
who don't understand
the direction of history.
I mean we are dealing with someone,
the person who resides in
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
right now who does not
recognize the extent
to which what he is doing
and what he has done
militates against the movement of history.
I really think that 50 years from now,
when people look back, that's you know,
those four years, are
going to be recognized as
as a deviation, as a minor deviation.
- We hope.
- We hope.
(audience applauding)
- Charles Alexander, also
class of 79, Hey Pam.
People always ask me
why I went to Brandeise.
There was only one answer,
because Angela Davis went there.
- [Angela] You know, I never knew this.
- So I have to say thank you.
Kamala Harris is running for president.
She is being dismantled in the press
and in social media and many of the people
that are dismantling her
are African American.
I got my own views but I'm curious because
she did work in the state of California.
What are your opinions
about Kamala Harris.
(audience laughing)
- You know, okay, first
of all, let me say that
it is so important that so
many women are not in congress
is running for office.
(audience applauding)
You know, I'm not too happy
about Kamala Harris's history
as an attorney general, as
a DA and an attorney general
in California, often times
in death penalty struggles
a whole number of campaigns,
she was on the other side.
But I also have to say,
that this next election
is going to be pivotal and
we had the wrong candidate
the last time around, we
did not have a candidate
and I know many people will
be upset when they hear me
say this, I voted for Hillary
Clinton and I urged people
to vote for Hillary
Clinton, but I don't think
she was the right candidate.
(audience cheering)
So when it comes to electoral politics,
we have to make decisions
that aren't always
principal decisions, you
know, as a matter of fact
the last time around, I was
trying to encourage people
who were saying that they
didn't wanna have anything
to do with electoral
politics because you know,
they are revolutionaries
and they wanted to change
the world and I was really
attacked in social media
when I suggested that
people should vote for
Hillary Clinton and I said something like
I'm not so narcissistic as to say,
that I can't bring myself
to vote for Hillary Clinton
I mean that was a practical decision.
And it had nothing to
do with the fact that
she was not the candidate who represented,
even within the narrow
confines of electoral politics
what I would have liked to have seen.
So I think we have to
find the right candidate
and I don't know whether she
will be the right candidate
or not I'm very cognizant of her history
and I don't know whether she is willing
to make some efforts to
revise her positioning
in some of those, that would be good,
but you know, politicians
are usually opportunistic.
THat's who they are,
even someone like Obama.
We, so many people deposited
all of their dreams
in Barack Obama's lap and what did he do?
He didn't even really push
to dismantle Guantanamo.
You know, we all thought
that would be the first thing
he would do so I think
we have to be really
sophisticated participants in the arena
of electoral politics this way.
This time around and we
have to make sure that
everybody votes and this
will be the first time
that many former prisoners
will be able to vote
a major victory.
(audience cheering)
- (mumbles) for one brief question.
- Okay, hi, okay hi, I'm Mackayla Coats,
I'm from Oakland California and I
- I tell you what, can we just do three
and I'll answer them altogether.
Let's do one, two, three,
one after the other.
- Okay, being from Oakland we
learn about the Black Panther
but we only learn about
the male leadership
and I was wondering if you can share
what it's like to be a female leader
and the oppression that you dealt with
within the inside of that organization.
- Hi, I'm Kayla Jasman
from Memphis Tennessee
a recent graduate from
Birmingham Southern College
and I wanna know more
about just how it felt
to get this type of, well
now the proper homecoming
from the organizers
you've been working for
but also like as a black
woman who wants to go back
and focus on like a lot of Southern roots
how to do it's so skeptical
now like New England area
like even how the South is talked about.
There was a lot.
- I'm Ben Visnick, I
grew up in Madipen and
one of the reasons I went
to Brandeise is because
you sister Davis went there too.
But I'm from Oakland too
(audience cheering)
and I wanna say on behalf of
the teachers of California
and you are a teacher
yourself in California
I just came back from LA,
helping teachers in LA
win their strike and the
teachers of Oakland have voted
to strike and I have a letter
from my president Keith
Brown who is our first
African American president
and we wanna invite you
to join us in an upcoming
really so I'm gonna give you this letter.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you.
- Not quite a question but
I'll make sure the letter
is delivered.
- Rose Brayboy, class of 76.
I'm proud of you Juli,
76 class I love you all.
Look at , look at, listen
this is my question thought.
This politics thing, I
think we still thinking
in a very binary Democrat, Republican.
Does anyone remember Lani
Guinier and what she was
talking about and don't you,
do you or do you not see
this as an opportunity for
that type of intervention
of where you start looking at elections.
(audience laughing)
- Should I answer now?
- Please.
- Okay, well, the Black
Panter party, you know,
I was a member of the Black Panther Party
I wasn't a leader and I
always get represented
as a leader of the Black Panther,
I was a kind of rank and file member.
I did political education
in the Black Panther Party
and then there was a
point in the development
of the organization when
people were told that
if they were members of other parties
that they had to choose.
I was also a member of the Communist Party
and so I said, okay, I
think I choose Communists.
So I remained a member
of the Communist Party
and but I did continue to
support the Black Panther Party
there weren't any bad feelings.
Now, in terms of the
question that you ask,
many people are not even
aware of the fact that
the majority of the membership
of the Black Panther Party
were women.
(audience applauding)
Yeah, and women were
leaders at the Erica Haggens
for example who is still a
very close friend of mine
ran the whole school
program, of course there was
Elaine Brown but there are
many people, many women
whose names are not
known who really played
critical roles in the black panther party.
So, you know, I was
talking about having to
I was talking about feminism and marxism
teaching us how to live
with contradictions.
Not being compelled to
choose one side or the other.
And so I went on the one
hand to be very critical
of the Black Panther
Party, especially from
the vantage point of today,
a contemporary understandings
of misogyny and masculine is militarism
of course we didn't have that vocabulary
these theoretical frameworks at the time.
But we knew something was wrong
when we realized that the
women had to figure out
how to be better men, than the men,
in order to be accepted.
(audience cheering)
I was just this reminds
me of Felicia Langer,
who was a Israeli Jewish attorney
who defended Palestinians
for many many years.
I had the opportunity
to meet her in the 1970s
and she said that at first
people didn't believe
that she could do the work.
It was hard work because she was a woman.
But then the word got
around that she was a woman
but she was more like eight or nine men.
And so everybody flocked to her.
But anyway so you know,
I think on the one hand
we have to be critical
because we don't want to
we don't want these notions to continue
unchallenged, uncriticised
we cannot have that kind of
masculinism, that kind
of patriarchic al notion
of what it means to fight for,
because at that time the
struggle for black freedom
was a struggle for
freedom for the black man.
And we know that in
virtually all black movements
women did more than their share
did more than half, well, maybe I'll say
more than 75% of the
work, but I don't know.
I might just, but you
understand what I'm saying.
So we recognized both
the amazing contributions
that the Black Panther
Party made even with that
criticism, I say that
people like Huey and Bobby
were brilliant, I mean
to come up with this idea
of challenging the police
occupation of Black communities
and the way they did
was not only brilliant
but it also meant that
they understood the times
because within a short period of time,
there were Black Panther
Party organizations
all over the country, there
was a Black Panther Party
in Brazil, in New Zealand,
in Israel there was a
Black Panther Party allover the world.
And so we have to both appreciate that
and at the same time be critical.
So that's the answer to your question.
And then the next one, oh the South.
I think it's really
important for the South
in a lot of ways the
South has more potential.
You know because we know that
the South has that history
and often times we fail to recognize that
the same history unfolded
in different ways
in other parts of the country.
This is why when I went to High School,
I didn't know how to call
the responses to me, racism.
Because it was like, oh, you know,
everybody has to invite the
black girl from the south
to dinner because,
so I think that places like
Birmingham have changed
I still enjoy returning to Birmingham,
I still have my friends
whom I grew up with
from the time we were like
two or three years old
and we, we talk about
how we used to play games
in the neighborhood, we used to have games
that required us to run
across the street to the
white zone, I often tell the story
but this is one of our childhood games.
That we would dare each
other, to cross center street
because black people weren't allowed
to be on the other side of the street.
That was a white neighborhood
and so we would also
dare each other to run up on the porch
without getting caught,
and run up on the porch
and ring the door bell
before the white person
you know, I mean that's how we grew up.
And that was a form of resistance too.
So yeah, I hope you, you
said you are from Birmingham?
You went to Birmingham Southern,
You went to Birmingham Southern.
So do you go back?
(mumbles)
Okay, well I'm really
looking forward to going back
on the 16th I think it
is and I don't know,
maybe you will decide too.
But I wanted to tell you about a project
that is done by SONG
Southerners on New Ground.
And they have an amazing
project and it's called
it's an LGBTQ project, and it's called
something like Doing The Lord's Work.
It's about doing the Lord's work.
And does anybody get it?
Doing all the LOrd's work.
(laughing)
You know there is some really (mumbles)
so there is some really
exciting developments
in the South and then Oakland Teachers,
thank you so much yeah, we are so excited
about the teacher strike, you know,
maybe it can measure up to
the Chicago Teacher Strike
(audience applauding)
Or surpass it.
And then the final question
about how we think about
this coming election
and the electoral sphere
you evoked Lani Guinier,
who and her idea of
what was it called, her project?
Proportional representation, absolutely.
I also think we have
to, we have to organize
a new party, you know,
not that a new party
is going to be the answer to everything,
but this binary political system we have,
it doesn't work, and I am thinking about
a party that is based in labor,
became we've always talked about a party
that's based in labor that's feminist,
that's anti-racist, that's anti capitalist
and I think we've done
the ground work for that
but yeah, I can remember the coalition of
Black Trade Unionists
talking about the importance
of a new Political Party
that would be founded
along the lines of the
traditions of labor struggles
in this country and that
would be anti-racist
and internationalist and this is one thing
we haven't talked about
during our conversation here
again, the importance of internationalism.
I think I sort of pointed to
the provincialism of the US
but our sense of who
we are in this country
cannot be founded on the history
of the United States of America.
And I think we also have to
recognize that at this point
the nation state is very
rapidly becoming obsolete.
And we see this with this
effort to build a wall
and I think that's very
clearly and indication
that the nation state is not
the most appropriate form
of human community, especially
since it was established
for the purpose of doing
the work of capitalists
and it has only existed
for a short period of time.
So I think it's also time
now not only to imagine
the evolution of prisons and
all that that would entail,
but to think in a more capacious
way about how we imagine
a future for ourselves and for the world,
thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
- Ms Angela Davis!
Thank you.
