- I'm Elizabeth Hinton, chair
of the conference committee,
and now I would like to invite
to the stage the panelists
for our opening conversation
moderated by my dear colleague,
Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Henry
Lewis Gates is a Alphonse
Fletcher, Jr. University
professor in the faculty
of Arts and Sciences and
director of the Hutchins Center
for African and African-American
research at Harvard.
We are all here in no small
part thanks to Professor Gates.
And one of the most important
things the Hutchins Center has
done is to put up half
the funds to acquire
the papers of Angela Y. Davis.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Skip.
Professor Gates will be joined
by Fania E. Davis, consultant
and founding Director
[? Emerita ?]
of Restorative Justice
for Oakland Youth,
and sister of Angela Davis.
Margaret Burnham, university
distinguished professor
of law and director of the Civil
Rights and Restorative Justice
project, Northeastern
University School of Law,
who has known Angela Davis
since they were both children
in Birmingham and served as
one of Angela Davis's lawyers
during her trial.
And Bettina Aptheker,
distinguished professor
and University of California
presidential co-chair
and feminist, critical race and
ethnic studies, UC Santa Cruz,
and Angela Davis's
co-author and colleague.
Skip, I will hand it over to
you and invite the panelists
to come to the stage.
[APPLAUSE]
- Great.
Thank you, dear.
Where do you want me to sit?
- Jessica wants to
be on this side.
- You want me over here?
- Yeah, I guess.
- Beautiful.
Is this on?
Great.
Please give it up,
Terry Lynn Carrington.
[APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHS]
That was amazing.
I'm Henry Lewis Gates,
Jr., and it's my pleasure
to be with you
here this afternoon
for the opening panel
of radical commitments,
the life and legacy
of Angela Davis.
Give it up for
Angela Davis please.
[APPLAUSE]
A conference organized
by my dear colleague,
Professor Elizabeth Hinton.
Give it up for
Professor Hinton please.
[APPLAUSE]
And I also want to acknowledge
two other individuals and two
institutions, Radcliffe
Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin--
[APPLAUSE]
--and Jane Kamensky, Carl and
Lily Pforzheimer Foundation,
Director of the
Schlesinger Library.
[APPLAUSE]
As well as, of course, the
staffs of both the Schlesinger
Library and the
Radcliffe Institute
for making this
conference possible.
Please give it up to the set,
especially Becky Wasserman.
[APPLAUSE] [LAUGHS]
We've gathered here today to
mark an historic occasion,
the acquisition of the
papers of Angela Y. Davis
by the Schlesinger Library
at Radcliffe in the Hutchins
Center.
Those papers are now
available for use
by scholars and researchers.
Oh, Friday, those papers
will be available--
[LAUGHS] for use by scholars and
researchers on Friday at 9:00
AM.
Is that the right time?
OK, great.
[LAUGHS]
Interest in Angela
Davis's life and legacy
has never been greater
or more relevant to where
unfortunately, we find
ourselves in this country today.
We needed you then, Angela.
We need you more today.
[APPLAUSE]
Now, I've admired Angela ever
since Herbert Marcuse mentioned
her as his most
brilliant student.
Now, I had become acquainted
with Marcuse's work
as an undergraduate
at Yale when I
was assigned the 1960 edition
of his classic 1941 text, Reason
in Revolution.
But as a [INAUDIBLE] by a
political science professor
named Isaac Kramnick.
Now, although his 1955
Arrows in Civilization
is more widely read, no doubt
because of the word arrows
in the title, it was
the other volume,
in particular Marcuse's
preface to the 1960 edition
that transformed my own
understanding of revolution
is rational and strategic,
not irrational or spontaneous.
Believe it or not, we were
studying Reason in Revolution
precisely when Bobby Seale
was on trial for murder
in the New Haven courthouse
just a block away
from our classroom.
I'll get to Erica in a minute.
[LAUGHS] In 1969, along
with Erica Huggins.
Now, the connection
between Davis and Macuse
becomes clearest perhaps in
the preface to the 1960 edition
in which Marcuse
claims that the purpose
of dialectical or
negative thinking
is to expose and then overcome
by revolutionary action
the contradictions
by which advanced
industrial societies
are constituted.
And thank you, the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
for refreshing my memory.
Now, this idea encompasses
both the dominant
social and
psychological mechanisms
employed to ingrain such
contradictions of wealth
and poverty of freedom
and incarceration
in a capitalist society.
It is these
mechanisms that Davis
has sought to dismantle,
ladies and gentlemen,
for her entire career.
And we are all indebted to
you, Angela, for doing that.
[APPLAUSE]
In fact, Angela Davis is one of
the major political theorists
of the last century.
And whether one agrees
with her opinions or not,
there is no gain saying
her prominent place
in the history of American
political thought.
Her critique of the prison
system, for instance,
and its effects on the
African-American community
was prophetic.
You got there long before
so many, many others did.
Her case was for some of us a
primer in criminal injustice.
We were concerned about
how the criminal justice
system was treating her.
Numerous black intellectuals
and black intellectual life
in general were inspired by
those momentous days and months
surrounding your arrest, your
incarceration, and eventually,
your trial.
My own intellectual growth
was sparked by you, for sure.
Because of you, I actually
enrolled in a philosophy course
and quickly discovered
that I was not
meant to be a philosopher.
[LAUGHTER]
And when I returned to Yale
after a year abroad in Africa,
I proudly hung a free Angela
poster on my dorm room wall
right next to posters urging
us to free Bobby, free Erica,
and free Mandela.
When I would later
eventually, to my amazement,
actually meet Angela
Davis, I learned
that Angela Davis, like
Erica, like Bobby, like Nelson
Mandela, had always been free.
[APPLAUSE]
I wasn't the only one captivated
by her power of thought
and courage in action.
As some of you may know, the
great and now heartbreakingly
late Toni Morrison worked
closely with Angela
when Morrison was still toiling
on the editorial side at Random
House.
Looking back at their
friendship years later,
Morrison said working with
Angela was "sui generous,
and I didn't just edit her book.
I went on her book
tour with her.
I was her handler, all over it."
She said this was, "before
I was Toni Morrison."
[LAUGHTER]
She continues, "We were in
Scandinavia at one point,
and I was a good handler.
People would come up to
her, my brother's in prison,
I was wondering could we have
a cocktail party to raise some
money for him?".
And the thing was, Angela
would stop and listen and say,
where is he?
And I would say, Angela,
come on, we're late.
[LAUGHS] Before you say the
same about this introduction,
let me advance our--
[LAUGHTER]
Let me advance our program
toward the main event.
We'll begin with
opening statements
from each of our three
panelists in a moment.
But first, I'd like to
recognize someone very special
to me and to many people
in the audience tonight.
And that is Professor
Dorothy Burnham.
Dorothy is, in many
ways, the mother
of many of the participants
of our program.
And at the age of 104,
ladies and gentlemen, 104--
[APPLAUSE]
--is definitely--
[APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHS]
Yep, that's you.
She is the matriarch
of a long line
of incredibly strong women.
A civil rights and feminist
activist, as well as
microbiologist, Dorothy Burnham
worked in the Southern Negro
Youth Congress in Birmingham
with Angela Davis's parents,
Sally and Frank, coordinating
sit-ins, freedom rides,
and voter registration
drives, and working
to integrate public
transportation systems
in public institutions.
Later, she was also
active in Women
for Racial and
Economic Equality,
Sisters Against South African
Apartheid, Genes and Gender,
and Women's International
League for Peace and Freedom.
Her dedication and work deeply
inspired her four children,
Claudia, Margaret, who
is part of our panel,
Linda and Charles, as well
as the four Davis children,
Angela, Ben, Fania, and Reggie.
A tireless teacher, activist,
humanitarian, and mother,
Dorothy Burnham's long
advocacy for social justice
has influenced and improved
the lives of countless people.
Ladies and gentlemen, give
it up for Dorothy Burnham.
[APPLAUSE]
That's great.
Thank you, and now, we will
go to the opening statements
starting with Fania Davis.
Thank you, sir.
You're quite welcome.
Maybe can you help me
with this microphone?
There you go.
Oh, it's on.
It's-- you can hear me, great.
An African proverb
says those who go
before us make us who we are.
Dorothy was a significant
radicalizing influence
in my sister's life.
Honoring her is the perfect
way to open this conference.
This beloved centenarian is
one of the last living black
radicals of her generation.
Dotty, our mother's
best friend, is also
a mother of our movement
as was said earlier.
Tonight, my mother
is beside her.
The seed--
[APPLAUSE]
The seed planted and
cultivated decades
ago by these two
phenomenal black women
instilled in Angela the belief
we could create a better world.
And this seed has developed
into the towering radical black
feminist and abolitionist
Angela is today.
Many radicalizing elements
nurtured that seed.
Being born and coming
of age in Bombingham
with all its bombings meant
to terrorize activists
in the rising civil rights
movement, living atop Dynamite
Hill, a neighborhood targeted
because black families dared
move into this all white area.
As a child, being awakened
by dynamite blasts
demolishing nearby
homes, the sight
of our father grabbing
his gun to protect
his family from racial
terrorists lurking nearby.
Suffering the loss of
two of my closest friends
in the 1963 Birmingham Sunday
school bombing, learning
to read our first words,
colored and white,
on the signs of bathroom
doors and water fountains
in Birmingham.
Playing games that were
acts of resistance, forced
to climb the back stairs
and sit in the balcony
of the local theater, we threw
popcorn and poured Coca-Cola
onto white heads below.
[LAUGHTER]
Crossing the racial
dividing line,
we'd ring the doorbell
of a white person's home,
and then run back
across the street
as fast as possible to escape
before the door opened.
Another, Angela and I
were learning French,
and while downtown
one day, we pretended
to be French speaking
people from Martinique.
Using the French accent,
we inquired about shoes
in an upscale store.
The clerk seated us in
the front of the store
and rolled out the red carpet.
After a few minutes
of trying on the shoes
and communicating in strained
English, we burst out laughing.
The clerks laughed
along politely, then
asked what's so funny.
In our black southern
English, we replied, all
us black people got
to do is pretend we
from another country, and you
treat us like we dignitaries.
[LAUGHTER]
We laughed our way
out of the store.
The seeds of black radicalism
planted in Bombingham
were nurtured steadily and began
growing into a strong tree.
Angela attended a progressive
high school in New York,
became active in a
youth group allied
with the Communist Party,
engaged in solidarity actions
with the rising
sit-in movements,
attended Marxist lectures by
historian Herbert Aptheker,
read the Communist
Manifesto, studied
revolutionary
political philosophy
with Herbert
Marcuse at Brandeis,
pursued critical theory
graduate studies in Frankfurt,
taught Marxist
philosophy at UCLA
while enduring hundreds of
threats, death threats, daily,
engaged in a community
organizing with the Black
Panther Party and Che-Lumumba
Club, an all black collective
of the Communist
Party, led a campaign
to free prison activist
George Jackson and the Soledad
brothers.
She was then fired by
Governor Ronald Reagan
for this radical activism.
When the court
overruled the firing,
the state targeted
her for execution.
Capital kidnapping,
conspiracy, and murder charges
arose out of the events
of August 7, 1970
when George Jackson's
brother, Jonathan,
took over a court room
with guns in Marin County,
freed prisoners, took
hostages, demanded
the freedom of his brother, and
attempted to escape in a van.
Firing a hail of
bullets into it,
officers killed Jonathan,
two prisoners, and the judge.
Jonathan's guns were
registered in Angela's name,
and the state seized upon
this to prosecute and attempt
to eliminate her.
After two months underground on
the FBI'S 10 most wanted list,
Angela was captured.
President Nixon
immediately publicly
cheered and branded
Angela a terrorist.
From that day forward, we,
her family, and comrades
worked nonstop with
countless others
building an international
movement formidable enough
to save my sister's life.
Along with me, seasoned
black communist organizers
such as Charlene Mitchell,
Franklin and Kendra Alexander,
and Latinx organizer
Victoria Mercado--
and can we just honor them, the
last three our ancestors now?
Can we just honor them?
- Sure.
[APPLAUSE]
- They all played leading roles.
We assembled an amazing,
mostly black, legal team,
including Margaret with Bettina
as legal advisor and historian.
The Communist Party activated
its impressive global network,
mobilizing millions.
During the 20 months
after Angela's arrest,
I ceaselessly spoke and
organized throughout many US
cities and the world.
My baby, Angela Issa,
right over there
was only three months old when
leaving her with my mother,
I went on tour to speak
to hundreds of thousands
at demonstrations in Montreal,
London, Berlin, Helsinki, Rome,
Moscow, Santiago de Chile,
and many other cities,
including a mobilization
of 60,000 in Paris.
And you've seen those images,
I believe, in the exhibit.
The cry to free
Angela reverberated
throughout the world.
Millions of ordinary people
mobilized themselves,
black women, butchers, fighters,
teachers, electricians,
black police officers, even
Appalachian coal miners
for Angela.
Free Angela stickers and
Angela afros were omnipresent.
How many of you had
Angela afros out there?
All right.
[LAUGHS] Musicians
dedicated songs.
We heard some of them.
And playwrights, plays.
Schoolchildren launched massive
letter writing campaigns.
Celebrities stepped up
like Aretha Franklin, who
offered to put up
$250,000 in bail,
saying she didn't
believe in communism,
but believed in freedom
for black people
just like Angela did.
The spectacular free Angela
and all political prisoners
movement enriched the soil for
the tree who sees in fruits
became the prisoners'
rights anti-mass
incarceration and abolitionists
and other organizations
of today.
Also, today's transformative and
restorative justice movements,
of which I am a part, are fruits
of the abolitionist impulse
to create alternatives
to the carceral state.
Though many have researched
the movements Angela helped
engender, few have written about
the movement that freed her,
making possible its
progeny, movements
that today are growing
their own trees.
With the Schlesinger Library's
acquisition of Angela's papers,
this will change.
So from the seeds of her
beginnings in Bombingham,
a great tree has
come forth, one that
has engendered new seedlings
and the magnificent burgeoning
movements of young
people of our time.
And so it is from childhood
to family, to community,
to adulthood, to elder hood,
and then back again, the return
of the ancestors tracing the
spiral of life and the never
ending quest for freedom.
- Thank you.
Oh, that's fabulous.
[APPLAUSE]
That's great.
Margaret?
- Thank you.
Thank you, Fania.
Thank you so much.
I want to first of all,
thank the organizers
of this conference, thank
the Schlesinger Library,
and the Radcliffe Institute,
and the Huggins Institute
for this historic acquisition
and for this conference.
I want to acknowledge Fania's
recognition of our parents,
Louis and Dorothy Burnham,
and Sally and B. Frank Davis,
and Herb and Fan Aptheker, and
the Pattersons as well, William
Patterson and Louise Patterson.
[APPLAUSE]
When you're a kid, you don't
know who your parents are
in the world, and then
you get in the world,
there are people who tell you
what to do and what not to do.
But then you get
out in the world,
and you realize, oh,
that's who they are.
[LAUGHTER]
And the Davises and the Burnhams
had a very close friendship,
especially the women.
Not so much the guys, but
certainly Sally and my mother
had a very close and
enduring and long friendship.
And we finally
realized that it was
a bond that was forged
in fire in Alabama,
in their work in Alabama.
And we were a rambling bunch
of eight kids from Birmingham
to Brooklyn.
And out of that, our
friendships blossomed.
And certainly when Angela was
arrested in October of 1970,
I went to the jail
to see my friend.
So I was at that point a lawyer.
We were both in our mid 20s.
And as I think back on
that work and the case,
I really see three different
phases of the case.
The first I would call
Angela, the prisoner,
and the second Angela,
the political prisoner,
and the third Angela,
the political icon.
So the first phase was
really Angela's period
of incarceration at the
women's house of detention
in New York, which lasted
just about three months.
But until you've been in
prison, you don't know prison,
you don't know the silence,
you don't know the noise,
you don't know the dirt, you
don't know the community.
You know nothing.
You can talk about it,
you can theorize about it,
but Angela was
actually in prison.
And it was those
three months really
that shaped, informed her,
put prison in her bones
and in her blood in a way
that could not otherwise
have happened.
And I say she was Angela,
the prisoner because it
was a period of time in which
she was not in solitary.
She was in that community.
She saw those women, she worked
with them, she slept with them,
she ate with them,
she pained with them.
And that has
informed and bleated
through all of her work since
those months in New York City.
After that, the next
period that I would bracket
would be her period in
solitary confinement
when she was in Marin Prison
first and then in San Jose
for a period of over 11 months.
And I call that her Angela, the
political prisoner because she
relied so heavily on
people like George Jackson
to learn how to live in
solitary confinement.
And it was George who said,
you exercise for five hours,
you sleep for three hours,
you study, and you read
and you write for all
the remaining hours.
And that's what Angela did.
That's what she did.
And she grew her voice,
she grew her confidence.
And she began talking not just
about prisoners in California,
but prisoners all over the
country and all over the world.
The third period I would call
Angela, the political icon.
And it relates back to what
Fania has talked about,
the movement that we
grew over from the moment
of her incarceration until
the moment of her freedom.
And when she got
out of jail, we had
the wind at our back
because of that movement.
And it was a point at
which Angela, too, agreed,
I'm not going back to jail,
I'm free, I want to be free.
And we knew at that point,
that if we kept pushing,
that she would-- and until
bail, we did not know it,
but once we got that bail
and once she got out--
and for I have to-- this is I'm
telling stories out of school
now.
But we're all family here.
So when she got out, she put the
books down for a little while.
She wasn't reading,
she wasn't writing,
she was listening
to Herbert Hancock.
[LAUGHTER]
She was in the street.
My girl was in the street
for a little while.
She was enjoying her life,
and she wasn't going back.
[APPLAUSE]
- Hey, that's great.
- She wasn't going back.
[APPLAUSE]
So when I think
about my own role
in this case from the
very inception as Angela's
longtime friend and
then as her lawyer,
I thought my role was
really to keep her mind
set on her own freedom.
Because as I think back on
it, in those initial days
in the house of
detention, I think really
Angela didn't really see the
light at the end of the tunnel,
that she saw that this
was going to be lifetime
incarceration or
the electric chair,
that those were the options.
And our job as her lawyers,
as her friends, as her family
was to get her to believe
that we could win this,
that we could do this, that
she could be out here 50 years
later, seven or
eight books later,
and be the voice of our
movement for 50 years.
Our job was to get
her to believe that.
Now, I just want to finish
up by reading two statements
that Angela made to show the
distance that we had to travel
and that she had to travel.
Here's her statement in October
of 1970, "The bourgeois"--
she had just been arrested.
"The bourgeois press seized
upon my recent capture
by the federal
pigs as an occasion
to inject more
confusion into the minds
of the American public.
Regardless of what
degrees I have,
regardless of my
external appearance
and my physical makeup,
the reality is this,
the reactionary pig
forces of this country
have chosen to
persecute me because I
am a communist revolutionary
participating together
with millions of
oppressed people
in a revolutionary
movement to overthrow
all the conditions that stand
in the way of our freedom."
All true, all strong,
all beautiful,
not speaking to
any jurors who were
going to be on our jury
in Santa Clara County.
September 22, 1971,
here's Angela's statement.
"I write on the eve of trial.
As that date draws
near, the need
to ensure judicial fairness and
bail in order that I may better
prepare my defense becomes
increasingly urgent.
While we may disagree
on many things,
we are surely united
in our affirmation
of principles of due process
and equality before the law.
Millions of people
throughout the world of all
political persuasions and
national and racial origin
have voiced their concern over
the fairness of my trial."
And then she cites to support
statement from the California
federation of teachers.
So if you think about
those two statements,
how did we get there?
Angela carried herself
there, number one,
and the movement
carried her there.
She knew that she had
a deep responsibility
to all of those who had thrown
down their lot with her.
And she threw them down
her lot with them as well.
I just want to conclude
with a vignette
from my time with Angela
at the Marin County Jail.
She had a cell, a writing
cell and a living cell.
They were both jail cells, but
her books were all lined up on
it was a double--
what do you call bed?
And her books were lined up
on both sides of the bunk bed,
and then she had
little desk in there.
And Bettina and I and Fania
spent more hours in there
than we really care to tell you.
On one of those
occasions, it was usually
one of the three of
us it was usually
one of the girls who went in.
And on one of those
key occasions,
we took all kinds of
people in, her friends.
And on one of those
occasions, I picked up
John Conyers from San
Francisco, and he wanted
to go out and see Angela.
And so the congressman and
I get to the place where
you give your ID and you
tell them who you are,
your date of birth and all that,
and he reaches in his pocket,
and he says, I didn't
bring any ID with me.
I'm a congressman.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm like, John, you're kidding.
We're trying to get in to
see the most famous prisoner
in the world.
Where's your ID?
[LAUGHTER]
Long story short, we
begged, we pleaded.
I think that maybe they
made a call to Washington,
but John Conyers came in.
And we had a lovely
visit with Angela.
And after that, he issued
a marvelous statement.
And he was a friend of
Angela's and of our committee
NUCFAD for years thereafter.
- Beautiful.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
Beautiful.
Bettina, Bettina Aptheker.
- We're dropping stuff here.
[LAUGHS] Well, I'm
feeling very emotional.
It is a joy to be
here this evening
and to have been invited
to be on this panel
and to partake of the
richness of this conference,
and I thank you.
OK, I'm together.
[LAUGHS]
- Take your time.
- Angela, Margaret, and I first
met each other as children.
Our families intertwined through
our parents' radical and shall
we say subversive activities.
[LAUGHTER]
When the three of us
were in high school, all
of us living in
Brooklyn, we were
members of a socialist youth
organization called Advance.
It was a very optimistic title.
[LAUGHTER]
This was in the late
1950s, early 1960s.
We met in the basement
of my parents' home.
The part of the
basement where we met
was finished and furnished.
The other part had a cement
floor, a washing machine,
and a clothesline, and
all the way in the rear
was the boiler room.
Under the clothesline,
there were
rows of metal filing cabinets.
These contained the
papers of WEB DuBois.
He and Shirley Graham-DuBois
were soon to depart for Ghana.
In that time of McCarthyism
and house committees
on un-American activities
and virulent racism
and anticommunism,
no university library
would touch DuBois's papers.
He left them with
my father until they
could be properly housed
in a university library,
should such a time ever come.
These are the papers that now
fill the archive of the WEB
DuBois Library at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst.
[APPLAUSE]
In this way ever so young,
I learned a powerful lesson
about the significance
of archives, a treasure
trove of incalculable value.
What a gift the
radical commitment
it is today for the
Schlesinger Library
to house the papers
of Angela Davis.
- Amen.
[APPLAUSE]
- Angela was arrested on the
FBI 10 most wanted list warrant
on October 13, 1970.
Five weeks later,
many of you may
recall that James Baldwin
wrote an open letter
to my sister, Angela Davis.
Quote, "The enormous revolution
in black consciousness
which has occurred
in your generation"--
sorry, "in your
generation, my dear sister,
means the beginning
or the end of America.
Some of us, white
and black, know
how great a price
has already been paid
to bring it into existence.
A new consciousness,
a new people,
an unprecedented nation.
If we know and do
nothing, we are
worse than the murderers
hired in our name.
If we know, then we
must fight for your life
as though it were
our own and render
impassible with our bodies
a card to the gas chamber.
For if they take
you in the morning,
they should be coming for us
that night, therefore peace."
Brother James.
Angela was incarcerated
for about 485 days--
I actually counted
before she was finally
released on bail February
23, 1972, which also happens
to be Dr. DuBois's birthday.
[LAUGHS]
- That's true.
- And five days before the
start of her trial, in that time
she studied and
wrote and published
an astonishing body of work.
Together, Angela and I
compiled and edited a book
called If They Come in the
Morning, Voices of Resistance.
How we managed to do this
without being able to exchange
papers unless the lawyers
were there, as Margaret
was describing, and drafts
of essays with each other
and often a plexiglass barrier
between us is another story.
In her opening essay,
Political Prisoners, Prisons,
and Black Liberation,
Angela began
to redefine who was
a political prisoner.
Of course, she referenced Nat
Turner and John Brown and Dr.
DuBois as in the mid
20th century was arrested
and scores of others as
classic examples of what
is meant by a
political prisoner.
But she also observed quote,
"prisoners, especially
blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto
Ricans are increasingly
advancing the
proposition that they
are political prisoners in the
sense that they are largely
the victims of an oppressive
politico economic order,
swiftly becoming conscious
of the causes underlying
the victimization".
We documented the trials of Huey
Newton, Erica Huggins, Bobby
Seale, Ruchell Magee, the
Soledad brothers, and so
on using their own voices
with their own words.
Here then Angela had already
begun to call attention
to the politics of
mass incarceration
and the articulation of the
prison abolition movement.
The book was translated
into dozens of languages
and published all
over the world.
At the same time, Angela was
writing a definitive essay
called The Reflections
of Black Women's Role
in the Community of Slaves
published in the Black
Scholar in December
1971 and dedicated
to the memory of George Jackson.
In it, she challenged the
then quite popular idea
of the black woman as matriarch
as a collaborator in her own
and her community's enslavement.
Quote, "The designation of
the black woman as a matriarch
is a cruel misnomer.
It is a misnomer because
it implies stable kinship
structures within which
the mother exercises
decisive authority.
It is cruel because it
ignores the profound traumas
the black woman must
have experienced when
she had to surrender
her childbearing
to alien and predatory
economic interests."
Angela went on to
discuss and document
black women's resistance,
redefining resistance,
and building it into
the everyday lives
of the enslaved community.
Here in this essay,
Angela helped
inaugurate what was to become
the ground shattering field
of black feminist studies.
Invited to give a paper
for a symposium sponsored
by the Society
for the American--
this is a mouthful,
the Philosophical Study
of Dialectical Materialism.
[LAUGHTER]
You remember that?
Oh, gosh, OK.
[LAUGHTER]
At the American Philosophical
Association Convention
in New York in
December 1971, Angela
wrote a 60 page manuscript
called Women and Capitalism,
Dialectics of Oppression
and Liberation.
Juliet Mitchell, the
British socialist feminist
who had written a book
on women's liberation
called The Longest Revolution
was Angela's co-presenter.
Angela, of course, was in jail.
I presented a
portion of the paper
as best I could in the 20
minutes allotted to me.
[LAUGHTER]
The hall where we spoke was
packed with hundreds of people.
A speaker phone was set up.
We telephoned Angela in
the judge's chambers.
The judge had agreed
to this, which
was in itself simply amazing.
And in this manner, folks asked
their questions and Angela
responded.
It was one of the most dramatic,
moving, astounding experiences
for all of us.
Hushed into an awed silence,
listening to her voice,
the voice of a brilliant
intellectual shamefully
imprisoned.
Angela's prisons
writings are too
much to enumerate beyond
what I've done here,
but in each carefully
considered work are
the prescient seeds of the
subjects for this conference,
revolution, feminism,
and abolition.
After a trial that lasted
a little over three months,
Angela was found not
guilty on all counts.
It was June 4, 1972.
News of the verdict was
broadcast around the world.
In Los Angeles, members of the
Angela Davis Defense Committee
ran through the
neighborhood with bullhorns
announcing the verdict.
Traffic stopped, people
rushed from their homes.
A few miles away in
Watts, Democratic Party
presidential hopeful
George McGovern
addressed an election
rally of several thousand.
The news swept
through the crowd.
A chant started way
in the back and rolled
into a thunderous wave, power
of the people set Angela free.
- Beautiful, beautiful.
[APPLAUSE]
Give it up for our panelists.
That's fabulous.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Fania and Margaret,
how do you think
going to school in the
South and then in the North
had an effect on Angela?
Particularly on a
critical distance,
giving her a critical
distance on the country
and the central story of race,
gender, and justice in it
that are her signature.
Was that move important?
And it was a move
that you made as well?
For both of you.
Yes.
- Yes, it was really important.
Angela always had her eyes
on another way of being,
another society, another
social arrangement.
And I think one of the things
that she found when she went up
North was that there was
racism and discrimination
and oppression there, too.
So I imagine it
probably expanded
her notion of what freedom
means from perhaps freeing
her people from racism
in the South to freeing
black people everywhere
and then to freeing
women and other people of color.
So I imagine that that
move from the South
had a huge impact
on her in that way.
And also she was able in her
exposure to Marxist theory,
to revolutionary theory,
was able to articulate
what was wrong and what was
needed very importantly.
- Great, thanks.
Margaret?
- Well, I would just add that
I don't think it was just
the relationship between
her time in the South
and her time in New
York City, in Brooklyn,
but also was her travels
during her college
years to France and
Germany that created
an international humanist that--
and the South was very
much a part of that.
The South was kind of the
core or the background,
the hard core of that.
But ultimately being able
to spread out and understand
the commonality
across continents,
across geographical
space, across time
periods with this grounding in
the South was very important.
- Margaret, looking
back, is there anything
that you would have done
or handled differently
with Angela's case?
I mean, the result
was spectacular,
but I'm just curious
and in retrospect.
- This is going to
sound weird, but I
don't think so because
well, let me just
say that Angela played
a really critical part
in her own defense.
She worked carefully with the
lawyers, she learned the law,
she presented the law, she
spoke on her own behalf,
gave an opening
statement and closing
and examined witnesses
on her own behalf.
So and we moved her
from that statement
that she made in October of
1970, which was not designed
really, as I say, to open up a
space so that we could actually
make a case on her behalf.
But so having-- so
she got really deep.
She's an intellectual,
so jury selection, oh, I
want to know all about it.
Voir dire, what does that mean?
How do we do it?
I mean, so she was deeply
involved in all aspects.
It was a truly collective
defense in that sense,
and that's--
so when I say I don't
think we made any mistakes,
I will also say that
she listened to us.
But we also had to listen
to her and be guided by her.
And that presented some very
challenging choices for us
as lawyers where with a
client less determined
to carry about a public
defense in a particular way,
we would not have
been concerned about.
And let me just
give one example.
At the very inception
of the case, of course,
Angela's case was tied to
that of Ruchell Magee, who
had been part of the events in
San Rafael in August of 1970
that led ultimately
to Angela's arrest.
That was challenging.
We didn't know what
kind of defense
he was going to present, and
we didn't know to what extent
it would help or hurt our case.
Angela insisted
that we handle that
with as a political matter,
not simply as a legal matter,
but that we look at the
political implications
of that joint defense.
And I could give
many other examples.
- Let me ask the
three of you, you're
all like sisters to her
in one way or another,
but I've always
been curious, too.
I've known you for a long
time, and I knew your father.
And I know your
daughter as my student.
But I've always wanted
to ask the three
of you a personal question.
What did you learn, if
anything, about Angela
by watching her go
through this experience?
And what might those of us
outside miss about this story
when we read about it
in the history books?
Could you break it
down for us, Bettina?
[LAUGHTER]
- Because I haven't
spoken before.
Well, we saw each other
I think almost every day
when you were in jail.
I think I was out there
pretty much every day.
And Angela's capacity to focus
with that razor intellect
was something I hadn't quite
seen before in that way.
Stamina, tremendous stamina
under enormous pressure
from all directions
and all different kinds
of ways, which is connected
to the focus and then
her remarkable compassion.
There was an
incident with my son,
who was only three years old
at the time and something that
happened at school.
And he said something
very inappropriate,
but he didn't know that.
And what it was really about
was that I was never home.
He was barely three,
and I was gone.
And who was Angela?
It was like this figment
or something, phantom.
And she made him
for Christmas, she
knitted a cap, a little
hat and a scarf for him
and wrapped it up.
And I brought it home,
and I said to him,
this is from Angela.
And when she got out on
bail, she came to our house.
We lived in San
Jose, so our house
was sort of the
center of everything.
Fania lived with us.
And when I came--
I came in after Angela,
Angela was there first,
and I came in afterwards.
And Margaret's son, Hollis,
was sitting on one knee
and Joshua was on
the other knee.
And they were at the dining
room table as I remember.
And they boys had this
beautiful grin on their faces.
They were like
lit up like trees.
And I thought to myself,
yes, Angela has finally
come to visit Joshua.
- Oh, beautiful, beautiful.
Margaret?
- Well, I would say leadership.
I would second everything
that Bettina's just said,
but I would also say that when
this case started, Angela,
she was not a global leader.
And she became that,
and she took that
on with a kind of,
as Bettina says,
compassion and
dignity and honesty.
That is what transformed this
case and also made her story.
A lot of other people
would have shunned
it, would not have
known how to handle it,
would have had more ego
than was required for that.
She had exactly
the right amount.
I have a position.
I have a hard core, and I mean
that in the very best sense
of the term.
I have a hard core.
I'm not deviating from
that, but I'm also flexible.
And so she was--
it was that kind of
leadership that emerged over
the course of the
trial I think that was,
for me, most impressive.
Now, let me just, one example.
Handling the press,
Angela once told me,
and I've never forgotten
it that doesn't matter
what question the
reporter asks you,
you have an answer you give.
- Right, right.
- But those kinds of things that
made her own her words I think
were very, very unusual.
- Beautiful.
Fania?
- It's kind of a
hard question for me
to answer because I'm so close.
But I would say that her
constant refrain I am who
I am because of this movement.
It is not me that
they are targeting.
It is not me who has
the ear of the world.
It is the movement,
and every time she
had the opportunity,
that yeah, that was--
and I kept hearing that.
I still hear that now.
And we were talking,
I was talking
to someone about the South
and how the South, just being
an African-American growing up
in the 50s and 60s in the South
can itself be radicalizing.
And then we started to talk
about Condoleezza Rice.
Well, actually she--
- Who grew up with you.
- Who grew up with us.
She went to a rival high
school, and she knew--
[LAUGHTER]
- Well, you might say she still
goes to a rival high school.
[LAUGHTER]
- She might, she might.
She knew two of the girls that
were killed in the bombing,
and we knew the other two.
And I was talking to this
about Angela, I believe.
Angela was saying that she
heard her say somewhere
when she was speaking
on an interview
that she was raised to believe
that she could be the best
and she must be the best.
And the best, better
than whites, of course.
All of us, many of us
blacks knew that we
had to be better than whites.
- That was the
mantra of the race
that we had to be
10 times better.
- We had to be 10 times
better, but for her it
was 10 times better
than anybody.
And I have to be on top.
It was this individualism,
just the opposite
of what I was talking
about earlier, this quality
of Angela, this sense
of collectivity,
this sense of her knowing
that she is who she is because
of Dorothy Burnham,
because of Louis Burnham,
because of the Strongs,
because of the Pattersons,
because of our ancestors.
And she never forgot that.
She still does not
forget that to say,
but I think
Condoleezza Rice just
didn't have that
communitarian understanding.
- Could each of you share--
it's very interesting
to be, have
been a student in the late
60s to have a room with all
those free this, free that.
And then to become a
professor, and to see
political consciousness
shift among our students.
Can each of you share,
particularly with our students,
how you became radicalized,
how you came to your politics.
- She was born into it.
- Now, Bettina,
Bettina had no choice.
[LAUGHTER]
- A red diaper baby,
they called her.
- No, she is.
And for those of
you who don't know,
WEB DuBois, our
hero, a great mentor,
picked her father personally to
be the executor of his estate.
And the worst mistake
Harvard University
ever had was turning down the
offer to buy those papers.
And I was determined that
wasn't going to happen again
with Angela Davis's paper.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
So would you talk about
your evolution in politics?
And if you don't
mind, each of you.
- Well, so this is a
conference about Angela,
not about us really.
[LAUGHS]
- But we want to hear it.
- But for me, I went south as a
young student after high school
really, after the
first year of college
to join the Civil
Rights movement, which
was a step my parents
had taken, which
is what took us to Birmingham
in the first place.
My parents ultimately got
chased out of Birmingham
by Bull Connor.
And we grew up in New York
City, but I ultimately
returned to the South
because in the early 60s,
when I was a young child,
that's where the action was.
And it was again, that
sort of grounding that
became the landscape on which
I decided to paint my life.
- Right.
Fania?
- Well, my story
is Angela's story.
It's really not very different.
All of the things that I
talked about in my statement,
the radicalizing influences,
living on Dynamite Hill,
living in Bombingham,
Alabama, every day
suffering all of the indignities
of living in an apartheid
society.
But it wasn't just that
because, as I said earlier,
Condoleezza experienced
all of that.
It was the presence of role
models of inspiring people
in the movement all around us.
And my mother was just a real
central figure, of course,
because she was there
every day, reminding us
that the world can
be a better place,
and you can make
it so with others.
And of course, the summers
in New York with the Burnhams
and the times that they lived
with us actually in Alabama,
that was a very strong
radicalizing influence as well.
I mean, they were
black communists
and brilliant organizers.
I mean, William Patterson,
my gosh, Louise.
- He's famous.
- Yeah, and the
Apthekers and so having
these people in our lives,
these influences really
made a difference for me.
- And what was it
like for you having
these people in your life?
- Well, so a lot of stories
went through my mind
because a lot of teenagers
and young people rebel.
You rebel against your
parents, but I didn't.
- Yeah, you could have gone
to Harvard Business School
and become a--
- No, I didn't, I couldn't.
- --investment banker.
- Or but I didn't, and no
offense to anyone here.
[LAUGHTER]
But I also really wanted
to strike out on my own.
I wanted to be an
independent person,
and so that's why
I went to Berkeley.
But I picked Berkeley
because of the students
had been washed down the steps
of the city hall in 60 or 61
protesting the house un-American
Activities Committee, which
I hated for very good
personal reasons.
And my dad had been called
before the McCarthy Committee
in May of 53.
- And DuBois had been arrested.
- And DuBois had been arrested.
So these were all things
I was very aware of,
but I think Berkeley
radicalized me
in a little bit different
way, which is that I developed
an independent voice.
See, when you have parents
as powerful as I did,
and when you are around
someone as incredible as Dr.
DuBois so much of my childhood,
there's a way in which
you're-- and it's also there's
gender in there in case you
didn't notice that.
[LAUGHTER]
You tend to be quiet and so on.
So when I got to Berkeley, and
I was immersed in the politics
and so forth.
And I'll just tell you
one little story there.
After we had conducted taking
over, we took over a police car
to prevent someone
from being arrested.
And they gave speeches from
the top of the police car
and so on.
And then after
that, the president
of the university, whose
name was Clark Kerr
said that 49% of the
protesters were communists
or communist sympathizers.
And see, I grew up in
the McCarthy period.
So I'm thinking to myself,
well, step back, just step back,
just get out of
the way because I
don't want to jeopardize
this movement, which
was this huge mass movement
now of thousands of people.
And Mario Savio,
who is a dear friend
and was also the recognized
leader of the movement,
slapped his knee at this
meeting, and he said,
I know what to do.
We're gonna throw the real
communist we have right back
at them.
[LAUGHTER]
To my complete astonishment.
And so that's what
happened was--
so the next day, we held
a rally in Sproul Hall.
If you don't know Berkeley,
it doesn't matter.
But we held this rally.
And he says, talk.
We didn't even have
microphones then or anything.
This was the old soapbox thing,
and so I spoke at every rally.
And I became this I don't know.
And so but I--
[LAUGHTER]
I developed my own
voice is the point
I'm trying to make cause
I had to think for myself.
And I had to figure
out what I thought
it was appropriate in terms
of our tactics and actions
and so on.
- Well, thank god
you went to Berkeley.
For the three of you,
and we have five minutes.
And I'm getting kick
here from Elizabeth,
who's a very tough person.
We have five minutes.
[LAUGHTER]
I want to ask--
I'd like to ask each
of you two questions,
but I want to ask
this one first.
What are the lessons
from Angela Davis's life
and political
philosophy that you
think are important to
social movements today?
And since we are
in a university,
to students and
younger generations?
Who would like to go first?
Bettina?
- I'll go first.
- I said the professors.
[LAUGHTER]
- Well, I think
what I would say is
that Angela has maintained
intellectual north star.
And she has also moved.
And so she has written about
lots of different things.
As we started off this program
with her musical contributions.
And so she has made a mark in
many, many different areas.
So I mean, I think that her
intellectual and political
commitment and her ability and
insistence that those two can
drive a life, can be a purpose,
can fill a decade and 50 is
really the lesson
for today, that you
need to be grounded and be
comfortable and in the street.
And you also need
to be in the books.
And you got to do both.
You can't do one,
you got to do both.
- I like the in the
streets, in the books.
[APPLAUSE]
- So--
- Bettina?
- Yeah, I've taught at UC
Santa Cruz for about 40 years.
And Angela, for quite
a number of years,
was a colleague in
about 25 of those years.
And Gina Dent is
my colleague now.
And what I wanted
to say about it
is that I've taught
Angela's work
in classes over these decades.
When I first
started, the students
knew who she was is
go back 40 years.
Now, only the black students
have an inkling of who she is,
and they're not 100% sure.
And the white students
probably have almost no--
because it's not taught,
and they don't know.
I'm talking about
undergraduates now.
And I assign essays
that she's written,
and I talk about her case.
I show the film Free Angela.
We did that, but my
point is I'm just
going to tell one little story,
and I think it'll capture it.
So they really respond
to the writing.
They respond to who she is,
they respond to the story.
They see that
there's possibilities
that they hadn't thought
about it personally.
But one of the things
that happened was I
think Angela, once you
came to one of my classes.
You've done that more
than once, and you
were at one of my classes.
And you spoke, and
one of the students
asked you why you were in jail.
I don't know if
you remember this,
but they asked you
why you were in jail.
And she stayed so kind
about it, and you told them.
You told them very briefly
what the story was.
And then there was more
conversation and so forth.
And then you left.
The class was more
or less ending.
And one of the students came
up to me afterwards and said--
and this was a white
student, said to me,
I never thought about
the fact that you
could do so much with a life.
- Wow.
- And I think that
captures a lot of what
happens for young
people that we're
around all the time as they
read and learn and so on.
- Fania?
- Beautiful.
So for me, Angela
in her evolution
as a human being, as a political
activist, as an academic
now understands in
a big way that it's
important to take care of body,
mind, spirit for longevity.
So she does yoga,
she does Pilates,
she meditates, she eats vegan.
So I mean, that sort of learning
to take care of ourselves
and to keep ourselves healthy
and strong is important for us
to do the work that we do
and to do it for a long time.
And I think another
lesson is the power
of that amazing movement.
I mean, in preparing for this,
it struck me all over again
that movement to
free Angela Davis
was just so vast and so
powerful and so total
that it gives us hope,
especially in these times.
- Yes, because the
outcome in that trial
was greeted like a miracle
throughout this country.
And it was one of
the great moments
in the history of
freedom, I think,
in the United States of
America with absolutely
without a doubt.
- Absolutely, and just
a very short anecdote.
I think Angela,
Margaret, and I were
speaking at maybe the 30th
anniversary or something
like that of your acquittal.
And we were each sharing
our perspectives,
and I said something
like, I never
had any doubt that my
sister would be free,
I never had any doubt.
And afterward, Angela
and Margaret just kind of
shooed me out.
What are you talking about?
We were scared.
[LAUGHTER]
know you were scared.
You're just revising history.
[LAUGHTER]
And I said no.
And then I reminded
them, I said you
were in the courtroom every day
when those hundreds of exhibits
were coming in, all
of the guns, all
of the gory pictures of
the bodies with the judge,
with the--
and you were hearing
all of the witnesses,
the so-called eyewitnesses,
but where was I?
I was out in the streets.
I was at demonstrations
of tens of thousands,
of hundreds of thousands
all over the world.
I was not allowed
actually in the courtroom
because I was a
potential witness.
And so we were sequestered.
But yeah, so the
power of movement
is what I get from her life.
- Ladies and gentlemen,
let's thank our panelists
for honoring the legacy of
Angela Davis's life and work.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank our panelists.
Thank our presenters for
an absolutely unforgettable
evening.
We will see those of you
who are registered tomorrow
morning, bright and
early, same place.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
