- Good morning, everyone.
I'm Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the
Dean of the Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study at Harvard.
And I am delighted
to welcome you
to day two, A Radical
Commitment, The Life and Legacy
of Angela Davis.
I want to extend a
special welcome to the 40
students from Cambridge
Rindge and Latin school.
[APPLAUSE]
Wonderful.
And I want to welcome back
our Summer of Hope students.
[APPLAUSE]
A couple of weeks ago with
this conference on the horizon,
I was reminded of the song,
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.
It was one of the anthems of
the Civil Rights movement.
And its first verse
contain the words,
"They say that freedom
is a constant struggle.
Oh, lord, we've
struggled so long.
We must be free.
We must be free."
Now, Angela Davis has invoked
this song in her writings,
as have I and other scholars
of civil and human rights
movements.
The song reflects
an important truth.
Freedom is not given.
It must be actively sought.
Freedom always
has been and still
is a dynamic struggle, whether
here in the United States
or around the world.
But the song doesn't just remind
us of that active struggle.
It also begs the question why?
Why is freedom
denied to so many?
To quote Angela
Davis herself, "There
Is simultaneously resignation
and promise in that line.
Theorists critique
an inspiration.
We must be free.
We must be free.
But are we really free?"
The point I want to
make in quoting the song
and Davis's interpretation of it
is that the history of freedom
struggles is very
much a living history.
Quests for justice continue.
Freedom struggles are
happening in our neighborhoods,
in our schools,
in our workplaces
and, yes, in our system
of crime and punishment.
Now, biography offers
one avenue to explore
the long and ongoing history
of freedom struggles.
Earlier this month at a
Radcliffe panel discussion
titled, Writing
Black Lives, I spoke
with Imani Perry
and Robert Reed Farr
about their work as biographers
of literary greats Lorraine
Hansberry and James
Baldwin, while drawing
on my own biographical work
on Constance Baker Motley,
a civil rights lawyer and judge.
Records of the lives
and works of figures
like these and of the
networks of artists, thinkers,
and activists in which
they were situated,
provide an opportunity to
learn about the struggles
that these great figures
led, and the ways
they sought to create a
truly democratic world.
Well, I'm here to
tell you this morning
that the biography, The
Living Legacy of Angela
Davis, another great
leader and intellectual,
promises a similar opportunity
to listen and to learn.
Through her life
and her life's work,
we learn about the black
liberation movement,
the women's liberation movement,
and the prison abolition
movement, among others.
We learn about organizing,
about political empowerment
and social change.
And we learn about the work
that remains to be done.
Our program today is
structured to provide
interdisciplinary perspectives
on three core themes of Davis's
life--
revolution, feminism's,
and abolition.
It promises to be
an illuminating
and a productive
set of discussions.
Now, in a moment,
I'll turn things over
to my colleague Jane Kamensky.
But first, I want to
thank the many people who
made this conference possible.
Along with Jane,
those people include
Marilyn Dunn and
Kennedy Phillips
of the Schlesinger Library.
I'm also grateful
to Becky Wasserman,
Jessica [? Vickland, ?]
and their teams and staff
across the Institute.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks, as well, to
all of our speakers,
to members of the
planning committee,
and to Elizabeth
Hinton, who served
as chair of that committee.
And, of course, I
extend my gratitude
to Hutchins Center
for-- the Hutchins
Center for African and
African-American research
and its esteemed director,
Henry Lewis Gates, Junior,
for partnering with us to
bring the Angela Davis papers
to the Radcliffe Institute.
[APPLAUSE]
Finally, allow me to
thank Angela Davis
for taking the time to attend
this remarkable conference
and for--
[APPLAUSE]
--and for entrusting her
archives to the Institute.
Thank you.
Now, I'm pleased to turn
things over to Jane Kamensky.
Jane is the Pforzheimer
Foundation Director
of the Schlesinger Library
on the History of Women
in America here at Radcliffe, as
well as that Jonathan Trumbull
Professor of American history
and Harvard's Faculty of Arts
and Sciences.
Please join me in warmly
welcoming Jane to the stage.
[APPLAUSE]
- Good morning, everyone.
I'm so glad to join Tomiko
in welcoming you back
to this second day of
Radical Commitments.
As Tomiko noted,
Radcliffe's acquisitions
of the papers of Angela
Yvonne Davis, a collaboration
between Schlesinger Library
and the Hutchins Center,
is the occasion of
this conference.
And I'm going to talk
about the archive.
Those papers landed
here by moving truck
in January of 2018, a
moment that marked in a way
the end of one story and
the beginning of another.
The first story begins,
of course, with Davis,
not only living, but keeping the
records of her remarkable life.
That was in itself
a bold choice.
A choice for the future.
I don't know if anybody else
read in The New York Times
last week the conversation
between the novelists Ann
Patchett and Elizabeth
Strout, which
contains the following exchange
which I'll quote briefly.
Patchett-- "I'd
permanently delete them.
I have no papers."
Turns to Strout, "Do
you have papers?"
Strout-- "I do have papers,
and I rip them up as soon
as I'm done with them."
Patchett-- "Well,
that's the definition
of not having papers."
Laughs.
"It's not like they're going
to the archives in Texas.
Strout-- "Oh, my god, no, no,
no, I rip them in four squares
and then I put them
in the wastebasket.
It's lovely.
I enjoy it.
I'm not going to
leave a drop, not
a clean sheet, just my work."
Patchett-- "I'm
going to die next
to the fireplace chucking."
This is to emphasize that loss,
whether by fire or shredding,
or just the war of
attrition that is life,
is the common condition of
the records of humanity.
Angela Davis safeguarded
her work against loss.
And then decided to
turn her archive over
for perpetual preservation
and public study
so that generations of future
activists, thinkers, students,
and storytellers could learn
from what she lived and did,
and could ask hard
questions about it.
Even if you're a
scholar who regularly
uses special collections
libraries like the Schlesinger,
you probably don't
know the work involved
in accessioning a large,
multimedia high-priority
collection like the
papers of Angela Davis.
I'll tell you the
merest skeleton
of the story of how
these materials got
from Davis's storage unit
home and office in California
to our vaults underneath
the library next door,
ready for delivery to
researchers starting
this very Friday, November 1.
First, three library
staff members--
Curator Dr. Kenvi Phillips
and archivists Amber Moore
and Jehan Sinclair,
spent several days
on site with Angela
and Jenny getting
the materials ready to move.
Then Jehan and Amber,
together with lead archivist
Jenny Gotwals, spent every
working day for the next 20
months organizing,
conserving, describing,
and readying those papers,
turning a rough inventory
of the contents of 156
cartons loaded into a moving
truck in the Bay Area
into a meticulous finding,
a describing to researchers,
a collection spanning
129.25 linear feet, 195 and
1/2 file boxes, five Folio
boxes, 14 Folio plus boxes,
eight oversized boxes, three
super size boxes, three super
sized folders, 120 photograph
folders, 131 sound cassettes,
16 sound tape reels, 65
video cassette, 17 sound
disks, 38 video disks, two film
reels in 16 millimeter,
7.92 megabytes
of worn digital
materials, and on and on.
Angela, I don't know if
you knew you had all that.
It's arranged in 12 series
from biographical and personal
through audio, visual.
Jehan, Amber, Kenvi
and Jenny, may I
ask you to stand up and take
recognition for this work?
[APPLAUSE]
So our gathering
today delves deeply
into Davis's life's work.
We are so very fortunate that
her life's work, including
the preservation
and transmission
of these materials, coupled with
the archival labors of Kenvi,
Amber, Jehan and Jenny
will allow other gatherings
in far off years to make
connections we have not yet
thought of and to ask questions
we have not yet dreamt of--
not yet dreamt of even
by the amazing panels
gathered with us today.
And with that, I'll
turn the podium over
to my colleague and
co-conspirator Elizabeth
Hinton, Professor of History and
of African and African-American
Studies here at Harvard, who
will frame the program for you.
Thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]
- Thank you for that
introduction, Jane.
I'd like to echo Jane and
Tomiko in welcoming everyone
to the conference those of you
in the room, and those of you
live streaming from
around the world.
The seeds of this conference,
as Jane indicated,
were born about three
years ago, shortly
before the publication
of my first book
on the history of
mass criminalization.
Jane had recently
arrived at Harvard
to direct the Schlesinger,
and I was just two years
into my position, then
on the tenure track.
Jane told me she was committed
to expanding the Schlesinger's
collections and beginning
new kinds of discussions
at this institution.
And she asked if I would
be interested in working
with her to plan a
conference at the Schlesinger
on mass incarceration,
gender, and the family.
We spent the rest of the
afternoon brainstorming
what such a conference
would look like.
And little did I know then
the library was already
in talks with Angela Davis
about acquiring her papers.
My initial discussion
with Jane blossomed
into what we have
convened today,
a conference celebrating
the Schlesinger Library's
acquisition of the
papers of Angela Y Davis,
and a day and a
half of discussions
that take Angela Davis's
life and legacy as a starting
point to imagine new directions
and scholarship and activism
and in social transformation.
Thank you, Jane, for
trusting me with this project
before many others would
have, and for all the work
you were doing in your role as
Director of The Schlesinger.
It has been a pleasure working
with you on this endeavor.
[APPLAUSE]
On that note, I'd also like
to think the Schlesinger
Library for its
ongoing commitment
to diversifying and broadening
the scope of its collections
to include often
marginalized and certainly
under appreciated women.
The acquisition of the
Angela Y Davis papers
marks an important
step towards this end.
And let me pause here to also
thank my dear colleague, Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. for helping to
make this acquisition possible.
It simply could not
happened without you.
And I would be remiss if I
didn't take this opportunity
to thank you, Skip.
You have opened up new
spaces within the Academy
and in public discourse
where the questions
at the center of this
conference could be considered.
I value your fortitude and
the incredible communities
you have built, both here
at Harvard and beyond.
And thanks, also, to Abby Wolf,
if she's here, for all the work
she does behind the scenes.
[APPLAUSE]
- In addition to Jane and
the Schlesinger and Skip
and the Hutchins
Center, the acquisition
of the papers of Angela Y
Davis, The Freed by the People
exhibit, and the Radical
Commitments Conference
have involved many more hands.
They are the product of dinners
and brainstorming sessions
across the university
and in my office hours,
and among colleagues all
over the country that
ultimately coalesced into
what we will now share.
For one, African and
African-American Studies PhD
candidates Abigail
Neighbor and Jackie Wang
received special fellowships
from Radcliffe and the Harvard
libraries to review the
papers of Angela Y Davis
during the summer of 2018.
Jackie is my graduate advisee,
author of the celebrated 2018
book, Carceral Capitalism,
a current Radcliffe Fellow
and a renowned
poet, and on her way
to the new school next year.
Jackie if you're here,
will you raise your hand.
Let's give her a
round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
- She's a rising
star in the field
and graciously stayed with
this project as a member
of the exhibit committee.
Jackie, thank you for all
your work and insight.
The foremost ideas for the
structure of the conference
and the composition
of our panels
came out of a year of
planning and discussions
among members of our
conference committee.
No single group is more
directly responsible
for the shape of this
event, and none of us
would be here without
their time and dedication.
As chair of that
committee, I would
like to recognize members
for their efforts now.
When I call your name, please
stand if you are present.
And I apologize in advance.
We have fan-- these are fancy
people with fancy titles
so I'll do my best.
Dillon Professor of American
History and Professor
of African and African-American
Studies and of Studies of Women
Gender and Sexuality,
Robin Bernstein--
Executive Director of the
Schlesinger, Marilyn Dunn--
Victor S Thomas, Professor
of History and of African
and African-American Studies,
and History Department Chair
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham--
Schlesinger Curator for Race
and Ethnicity Kenvi Phillips--
Caldwell Titcomb Professor of
African and African-American
Studies and Philosophy and Chair
of the Department of African
and African-American
Studies Tommie Shelby--
Henry J Friendly Professor
of Law Carol Steiker--
Assistant Professor of African
and African-American Studies
and of Social Studies
Brandon Terry--
and Executive Director
of Academic Ventures
at Radcliffe Rebecca Wassarman.
Please stand so we may
recognize you if you're here.
[APPLAUSE]
And although she didn't
formally serve on the committee,
we are grateful to Jessica
Vickland, Director of Events
at Radcliffe, for literally
buttressing us all.
And, Jessica, I'd imagine you're
already somewhere standing,
if you're even in this room.
But give a wave if you're here.
She's off doing
something important.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
You'll be hearing from many
of our committee members
at different points
throughout the day,
and I would just like to say
how much I've appreciated
your ideas, your line
edits, your service,
and your lasting
commitment to our vision.
Thank you.
It's incredibly
exciting to finally
be here after years
of anticipation
to behold all of
you in this space.
And I apologize on behalf
of the Conference Committee
and Radcliffe to
all those who were
unable to register who
might be watching us,
or in the overflow room.
This conference sold
out within 10 minutes--
faster than a Beyonce concert--
and we simply did not have
the space or resources
to accommodate all
interested parties.
So I'm just as excited
to all of those
who are watching in the
overflow room and on Livestream.
And for those whose
circumstances prevent us
from being here today,
who might one day
read transcripts
of the conference
in prison or another
place or time.
Of course, when the
papers of Angela Y Davis
open on November 1, the issues
that we will consider today
will take on an
everlasting significance.
The scope of the
conference was born
in many respects out of that
tremendous archival collection.
I had the great honor of being
one of the first researchers
to examine the
papers and the boxes
that Jane discussed as I
planned Freed by the People.
And, indeed, the collection
was so stimulating for me
and so rich I left a good--
virtually no box unturned.
Without question, the
papers of Angela Y Davis
is a national treasure.
Working with the collection, the
unique and rare material that
contains, the correspondence,
the photographs,
the unpublished speeches,
the records, the audio
and the video, has
profoundly influenced
my own research moving forward.
And I can't wait to
see the work that
comes out of the archive
for generations to come.
The conference committee
had a daunting task.
As a figure, Angela
Davis, one of the most
prominent philosophers,
political prisoners, feminists,
and freedom fighters in the
history of the United States
and the world, as
well as her papers,
demand years, decades of
study and consideration, panel
discussions, performances,
and round tables.
And somehow we settled
on these three themes
to ground our discussions that
map along the chronological
turns of Angela
Davis's life and force
us to confront the
contours of the most
important social movements
of the 20th century.
So let me give you a sense of
what we're in today broadly.
Yesterday, of
course, we witnessed
an earth-shattering performance
by lead musical director Terri
Lyne Carrington, and an
unforgettable conversation
with some of the women
closest to Angela personally,
politically, and professionally.
This morning, we
will have discussions
on the question of
revolution and feminism,
take a lunch break, and
pick up again this afternoon
with an important
discussion of abolition.
The conference will end
with a keynote conversation
between Angela Davis and
Neferti XM Tadiar introduced
by the women of the
Pathways Collective, a study
group of which I
am a member, that
meets inside a women's prison.
There will be opportunities
for those in the room
to engage with our panelists.
For the first three
sessions, we ask
if you would like to ask a
question that you line up
behind the microphone
in the central aisle.
We, of course,
welcome all questions.
But please ask a
genuine question
rather than only
offering a comment,
and try not to repeat a question
that has already been posed.
We are, of course, under
severe time restraints.
We ask that we foster
a community of respect
for one another and the
audience and for our presenters.
For the keynote
conversation, there
will not be an opportunity for
dialogue with the audience.
Instead, we have solicited
questions from students
and the idea is to foster a
meaningful intergenerational
conversation.
In addition to our
panelists representing
a range of generations,
in our audience
we have centurions,
like Dorothy Burnham who
we honored last night, and
activists who challenged,
Jim Crow in Angela Davis's
hometown of Birmingham
in the 1940s.
And that's
significantly advanced
the struggle for social and
economic equality ever since.
And as Dean
Brown-Nagin mentioned,
we also have local high
school students and Summer
of Hope participants, youth
who spent a week at Radcliffe
over the summer in partnership
with the Boston Public Schools,
and the Juvenile
Alternative Resolution
Program of the Suffolk County
District Attorney's Office.
Let me return to an
earlier point here.
Angela Davis is the
prism through which
we are considering questions
of revolution and feminism
and abolition.
But the conference
has always been
about something much larger.
We hope and we expect
our discussions
will be more than just about
presenting and attending
a conference.
We have convened these
discussions in order
to collectively
think about the way
to transform
malignant conditions
in our own historical moment.
And this should extend far
beyond the novel center
and the Schlesinger Library.
Now, committing
to radical change
and honoring the life and
legacy of Angela Davis
means different things
to different people.
For scholars, we hope
that after today your work
is reinvigorated and
reimagined in light
of new understandings of the
influence and significance
of Angela Davis's
political philosophy,
her own philosophical corpus,
but also the thinkers and work
that shaped her
ideas and the ideas
that she has shaped in turn.
For activists, revolutionaries,
and abolitionists,
we hope these discussions
will embolden your struggle
and empower your actions,
advancing freedom for us
all in the process.
For young people in the
audience and students,
we hope you leave us inspired
by the historic efforts
to bring forth racial and
economic justice, gender
equality, and the liberation
of oppressed people
around the world.
And finally, this conference
has special meaning
and significance for Harvard
I've now been here six years
and never before have questions
of revolution, of abolishing
the prison system, and a
liberation been considered
so prominently.
In this sense, Harvard
is today modeling
the best of what a
university can be,
probing discussions
on difficult issues
and representing
contested viewpoints.
If you are not uncomfortable
at some point today,
then we're not doing our job.
This university will
not be, can not be,
the same after
these proceedings.
And as home to the
papers of Angela Y Davis,
it will forever be changed.
I encourage all of us to ask
some serious questions today
and in the days and years
that follow about the mission
and purpose of this
institution and the communities
on this campus.
We can't be in the
space confronting
Angela Davis's life's
work and its implications
without recognizing the
struggles against racism
and oppression that are very
much alive on this campus, when
just last Thursday, an anonymous
Harvard affiliate called
the Harvard University
Police Department on a group
of Harvard College
students, most of whom
were students of color, when
they were preparing a poetry
installation in the yard as
part of a pre-approved activity
for the Romance Languages
and Literature's course,
performing [INAUDIBLE].
And instead of calmly
greeting the students
or asking to speak
to their professor,
the officer photographed
the student's IDs
and demanded proof of
their right to be there.
This was not the first time
such an intimidating encounter
happened in that class
or on this campus.
And unless we fail to change,
it will not be the last.
[APPLAUSE]
And we can't be in this space
without recognizing that just
last night during our
musical performance,
the Harvard Prison
Divestment Campaign
met with Harvard's Corporation
on shareholder responsibility
on the heels of the
release of its Harvard
to Prison Pipeline Report.
For more than a year, the
Prison Divestment Campaign
has brought to the
forefront questions
about the ways in which
this institution is
entangled in the atrocity
of mass incarceration
and has engaged
the entire campus
in thinking about the kinds
of investments Harvard's can
and should make to advance
social justice and equality,
including expanding educational
opportunities for incarcerated
and formerly
incarcerated people,
which is something that I have
been pushing since I arrived.
In this moment in the
history of the United States,
it's particularly fitting
that our gathering
is happening at Radcliffe
where Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin,
the first black woman
to serve in such
a role in the history
of this institution,
is leading the way in
redefining the purpose
and responsibility of
higher education in general,
and Harvard, in particular.
Dean Brown-Nagin has expanded
the role of Radcliffe
at Harvard and in the
greater Boston community
by partnering with
local organizations
to offer programs, such
as a Summer of Hope,
and in dedicating
resources that will
foster educational opportunities
and social transformation.
Dean Brown-Nagin's
work in this respect
has ensured that the discussions
that take place today
will continue to live on
beyond the gates of Harvard.
Thank you, Tomiko, for your
vision and for your support.
[APPLAUSE]
And just to close, the
exhibit, Angela Davis Freed
by the People is meant to
bring some of the questions
at the center of
radical commitments
outside of the Harvard community
to engage in a different kind
of dialogue.
In our resource room, we invite
you to join conversations
with incarcerated women in the
Pathways Collective and area
students.
And big thanks, again--
once again to Meg Rozell
and Kenvi Phillips
and our amazing Exhibit
Committee for all of their work
and planning and
structuring the exhibit.
Visit the gallery at the
newly renovated Schlesinger
if you had not-- if you
have not yet done so.
And if you've had
the chance to see it,
I encourage you to
return because I imagine
that after our
conversations today,
you'll come away with a new
take on many of the objects
we've included.
And you have until March.
If there's nothing
else that I've
learned from the time I've spent
in the Angela Y Davis papers,
and from the activism
and work produced
by our distinguished
participants
at this conference, it's that a
new society is always possible.
In fact, it is our
foremost responsibility
to build a different kind
of world for our children
and our children's children.
Together, using
the life and legacy
of Angela Davis
as a guide, we can
imagine a different
kind of future, one that
is never far from our grasp.
And on that note,
it's revolution time.
[APPLAUSE]
I'd like to invite to the stage
our first panel, moderated
by my brilliant friend and
colleague Brandon Terry,
Assistant Professor of African
and African-American Studies
and of Social Studies
here at Harvard.
Panelists and Brandon,
please take your seats.
[APPLAUSE]
- Now, I don't want you all to
think all we do here at Harvard
is thank each
other all the time.
But I do want you to give
another round of applause
for Elizabeth Hinton.
It's just really--
[APPLAUSE]
To be able to pull something off
like this as a junior scholar
is just remarkable,
and it is a real honor
to have her as now
my senior colleague.
She just received tenure for
those of you who don't know.
[APPLAUSE]
Now, in putting this
conference together and in
trying to name its
organizing themes,
we thought it crucial to
begin with revolution.
We did so not simply,
although this is part of it,
not simply because far too
many celebrations of the heroes
of black liberation, like
Professor Angela Davis,
evade the radical challenge
of the revolutionary ideal
in politics.
But also because revolution
is in many respects, the idea,
the preoccupation,
and the practice
through which Professor
Angela Davis became
one of the most significant
political philosophers
and activists of our age.
As Professor Gates
remarked last night,
one profoundly important
feature of this archive
is that we will get a more
comprehensive understanding
for all time of the intellectual
and political development
of this towering Afro-American
political philosopher.
One who has helped so
many of us reimagine
what is possible in the realm of
political economy, punishment,
politics, and plain
human relation.
In her graduate
research, Professor Davis
explored the philosopher
Emmanuel Kant's ambivalent mix
of trepidation and enthusiasm
toward the French Revolution.
And alongside the leading
figures of the Frankfurt School
of Critical Theory, Herbert
Marcuse, Theodor Adorno,
and even the young
Jurgen Habermas.
She pursued an answer to the
great question of 20th century
Marxism.
Why had the European
working classes
embraced fascism and reaction,
rather than the revolution
prophesied by Marx?
And to pose that question was to
ask, implicitly or explicitly,
which groups or forces
might we look to
in the present for
emancipatory possibilities?
Unfortunately, the history of
my discipline, political theory,
and philosophy is still
so partitioned by race
that it has largely
failed to appreciate
Professor Davis's arguably
the most incisive contributor
to these debates given her
analyses of the significance
of racism, sexism, hetero
sexism, and imperialism
in destroying the
solidarities and insights
necessary for radical struggle.
When Professor Davis returned
to the United States,
it was in great part to
participate in revolution,
both as a member of the Che
Lumumba Club of the Communist
Party, and as an independent
thinker and productive tension
with other revolutionary efforts
like the Black Panther Party.
Even her decision
to go to prison
rather than flee the
country was, in part,
on her account about
the desire to remain
engaged in an American
praxis of revolution.
Like the greatest political
prisoners of the modern age,
she and her supporters seized
upon the furor and hysteria
of her trial to give broader
exposure to arguments
concerning the
revolutionary possibilities
of late 20th century
movements for communism,
black liberation, feminism,
and anti-imperialism
all around the globe.
Even amidst the repression
of black radicalism
and the surge of
conservative reaction
that we still have not
shaken, Professor Davis
has held fast and
advocated for something
akin to what Martin
Luther King has
called a revolution in values.
She's forced us to rethink the
place of prisons and punishment
in our society.
But why hear it from me when we
can hear from Professor Davis
herself?
In one of her speeches
for the Soledad Brothers,
Professor Davis
proclaimed that liberation
is synonymous with revolution.
A revolution is not
just armed struggle.
It's not just a period in
which you can take over.
A revolution has a very,
very long spectrum.
Che made the very
important point
that the society
you're going to build
is already reflected in
the nature of the struggle
that you're carrying out.
And one of the most important
things in relationship to that
is the building of
collective spirit,
getting away from this
individualist orientation
towards personal salvation
and personal involvement.
One of the most
important things that
has to be done in the carrying
out of a revolutionary struggle
is to merge those two
different levels--
to merge the personal
with the political
where they're no
longer separate.
Today, I hope to talk
about the political
and the personal
aspects of revolution.
What drives people toward
revolutionary practice?
What are the personal
cost and burdens
of embarking on such struggle?
What sustains those
who try by any means
necessary to build a world
they see as more just
or more perfect?
And perhaps most
importantly for our time,
what happens in the
aftermath of revolution?
How do we wrestle
with the meaning
of revolutionary efforts
when it seems as if the hopes
and horizons that animated
revolutions of the past
have been defeated or eclipsed,
and the ideals or symbols that
once animated the greatest
sacrifice are instead lived
as the ruins of our present?
I couldn't think
of a better group
to discuss these questions with
us than the one we have today.
And so I will keep
introductions extremely brief.
Please refer to the
bios in your program
for all of their
illustrious accomplishments.
But allow me to introduce
this amazing panel
in the order they will speak.
Please welcome Trevor
Fowler, an important leader
of the anti-apartheid
movement and former city
manager of Johannesburg
and visiting professor
at the Wits School of Governance
in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Let me welcome Robyn
Spencer, Associate Professor
of History at Lehman
College and easily
one of the leading historians
of black radicalism,
and especially the history of
black women in radical politics
and the Black Panther Party.
Robin Kelley, by
all accounts, one
of the greatest black
intellectuals of our time.
I'm a fan.
He has written widely on
basically everything that
has happened to black people,
including black radicalism,
music, and US history.
And he is the
distinguished professor
and Gary B Nash Endowed
Chair of US History at UCLA.
And lastly, let me say
it is an absolute honor
to welcome Ericka Huggins,
the phenomenal activist
and educator who is not
only one of the leading
figures of the
Black Panther Party,
but also one of the
most important figures
in the history of
radical approaches
to American education
and somebody
who needs to be
recognized as such.
So please give a round of
applause for this panel.
[APPLAUSE]
I will turn it over to Trevor
and get out of the way.
- Good morning.
It's indeed an honor to be here
this morning to honor the life
and legacy of a great
friend and mentor,
and a person who not
only has shaped my life,
but also shared the struggle
for which I dedicated
my life, the
struggle for freedom,
of deepening democracy,
eradication of poverty,
the right of all
people to release
the potential of
the human spirit
to create a society which is
free from inequality, abuse
by one human being over another.
Now, generally, in
South Africa, we
start a speech with a slogan.
And the slogan is Amandla,
which means power.
Speaking as from my perspective
as a South African who
has lived in North America
and in both apartheid
and democratic South Africa,
I've added to the topic,
was the struggle for
what we in South Africa
call the National Democratic
Revolution influenced
by the black power movement
and the Civil Rights struggle?
Yes.
The answer is a definitive yes.
Let me digress for a moment and
touch on how I was influenced.
I went into exile from apartheid
South Africa as a teenager.
I saw the struggles
of the Civil Rights
struggles here, the aftermath
of the assassination
of Martin Luther King, the
rise of the Panther Party.
But it also shaped
my perspective
on being black in South Africa.
I grew up in an environment
where the regime--
partheid regime defined you by
your ethnicity and the language
you spoke.
And we lived in
separate communities
and were forced to live
in separate communities.
And were kept apart by law.
So indeed, when I
was first introduced
to the concept of black
power, I understood
what it meant to unite the
people-- the oppressed people
of South Africa.
And it was taken
up by Steve Biko
about how people
who are classified
as colored, as Indian,
and as African,
all had the similar
identity based
on their oppression
of being black.
I-- let me just say that I
joined the African National
Congress and armed struggle
when I was 19 in Lusaka, Zambia.
While there, my first
introduction to Angela Davis
was in September 1970.
The Zambia Times carried
a centerfold article
on imperialism--
US imperialism, and
the circumstances
leading to the US government's
hunt for Angela Davis.
The ANC said I should
re-- should go to Canada
and finish a degree
in civil engineering.
And I left and landed in Chicago
on the 13th of October 1970,
which coincidentally was
the same date that Angela
was arrested.
On March the 8th, 1971,
a few months later, I
spoke at a Free Angela
Davis Public Meeting,
and the other speaker
was Charlene Mitchell.
And interestingly, Charlene
Mitchell, the birthday
is the same as my
mother's birthday.
And Charlene became
my mother in the US.
Thereafter, I became intimately
involved in the campaign.
And over a period of
time, became friends
with Angela, as well as
her friends and colleagues.
In fact, I married
Shirley Williams,
who was the national organizer
of the National United
Committee to free Angela Davis.
And later became the
Southern California subeditor
of The People's World
Newspaper, the organ
of the Southern California
District of the CPUSA.
Now, talking about the
black power movement,
it has its roots
in civil rights.
But in particular, the racist
oppression and the right
of people to vote.
There are parallels
in the Civil Rights
and our struggle
against apartheid.
For example, the bus boycott
in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955
also occurred in
Johannesburg in January 1957.
The-- what we referred to during
the same period as the campaign
against unjust laws where people
submitted themselves to arrest
because they broke unjust laws,
such as sitting on a bench that
was marked only for that said
Europeans only, or whites only.
And it is that--
those roots which are similar.
And of course, the struggle
for victories and gaining
in civil rights in the
USA gave black people--
black South Africans great
pride and achievement
of black Americans.
But also hope that such gains
are possible in South Africa.
Bishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
spoke here at Harvard in 2007,
and he said, "When
I was 9 or so,
I picked up a tattered
copy of The Ebony Magazine
and read about Jackie Robinson,
a black man like us who
had broken into the
major league baseball.
I did not know baseball
from ping-pong.
But that was totally irrelevant.
What mattered was
that a black man
had made it against huge odds."
The distinguishing factor
between the struggle
for civil rights and
the black power movement
and the anti-apartheid
struggle is
the distinction between
the form and the demands
of the struggle.
The form of the
Civil Rights struggle
was a passive resistance
campaign against--
for rights already contained
in the 14th Amendment
of the US Constitution.
However, the Black
Power Movement
was about challenging
the white establishment.
The demands of the black power
movement, the Black Panther
Party, Che Lumumba
Club of the CPUSA
were for change to
the system, which
was at the root of the racist
and political repression.
Black power, first coined
by Stokely Carmichael
in '66 to express
opposition to--
for black people to
have representation.
Also, the demand that the
power structure supporting
white supremacy be
dismantled and replaced
with sovereignty of
life for black people.
The approach rejected the
notion that reformist actions,
such as civil rights
could gain, could
end inequality and racism.
The focus for more
rights by black people
and with pacifist philosophy
of Dr. Martin Luther King
was really drawn from the
struggles of Mahatma Gandhi
to gain independence
from India in 1947.
It was based on a pacifist
philosophy of satyagraha, which
was developed by Gandhi in
1906 when he lived in South
Africa from 1903 to 1913.
The passive resistance
campaign in the south
achieved some concessions.
But a comparison between
the power relations,
between India and the
USA, were different.
Because the Indian
population were
in the majority and
passive resistance
really led to their
independence, while in the USA,
black people were a minority.
The key molding factor was
the trade by the Europe
British colonialists and
European colonialists
was not only for commodities
but in people, which ended--
which was about slavery.
In India, the trade was
really about commodities.
And the slave trade ended in
the loss of millions of lives.
Despite the introduction
of anti-segregation laws,
racist and physical
and verbal abuse
continues in
various forms today.
Most notably, the enrichment of
the prison industrial complex,
as Professor Davis has
potently conceptualized.
This legacy of violence is what
shapes racism in the US today
and violence
against both young--
both young black women and men.
While Dr. Martin Luther
King's deep-seated
belief that passive resistance
would lead to a change,
the door to the root
cause of the structure
of white supremacy
was challenged.
When Angela Davis demanded an
end to capitalism, the root
cause for racism and
continued criminal violence
in the eyes of the
Reagan establishment,
it required a response
which resulted
in the killings of
many young people
in imprisonment for many years.
And the massive campaign around
the world to free Angela Davis
created a moment in US
history, a revolutionary moment
where the consequences
of which led
to the release of Angela Davis,
but also the withdrawal of US
troops from Vietnam in 1972.
This revolutionary nationalism
attracted young South African
Freedom Fighters to the struggle
for black-- of black people
in the US.
And our struggle for liberation
was really spurred on
by her ultimate release.
And the campaign for the
release of Nelson Mandela
was built on the
infrastructure that
was for the release
of Angela Davis.
So there is a tie
between Angela's release
and the release
of Nelson Mandela.
I will close by really
talking about two things--
that the key ingredient
to revolutionary change
is persistence, a commitment
to a radical future
where human beings
are not judged
by the color of their
skin, nor their gender,
nor their sexual orientation,
but their concrete action
and commitment to an
inclusive society.
A society where every person's
contribution is valued.
Every person is
able to contribute
to the development of a society
free from poverty, hunger,
unemployment, and inequality.
And let me say that
once in government, I
discovered that the struggle,
despite its the blood
and the tears and the sweat,
is a lot easier than gaining--
eliminating poverty against
the monopoly capital.
So in this radical commitment
which my mentor, friend,
and comrade in struggle has
lived and continues to live,
Angela Davis.
[APPLAUSE]
- Good morning.
This is the kind of event where
the remarks as you prepared
so diligently with the big
words and the citations
kind of goes out the window
as you kind of become just
overwhelmed by just the power.
The exhibit is so moving.
I feel like I want
everyone to go.
Just make sure
you go over there.
And so my remarks kind
of reflect some thoughts
that I've had since arriving.
I want to use my time to
reflect on the meaning
of these archives to the
black freedom movement.
It has to be said the
scholarly analyses
of the archival recover
of black women's history
have highlighted the violence,
the erasure, the silences,
all of the things that have
shielded black women's lives
from really being known.
What a gift it is to have the
treasure trove of materials
contained in the Angela Y
Davis archives available.
I have to call out
Angela Davis's practice
of self-preservation,
self-determination,
in keeping and
gathering her papers
as something that is--
should be understood
is happening on behalf of
all of the other women who
have had their history
torn to shreds,
whose histories we've had to
piece together from shadows
and outlines to salvage
them from being erased.
Thank you for attending
to your archives,
even as the world
called your name.
Thank you for the foresight,
for the commitment,
to self-making and
radical world-building,
and letting us see
the possibilities.
I mean-- I know we're
here at Harvard and all,
but let us be clear
that the history
of the black radical tradition
has been demonized, surveilled,
de-legitimatized, marginalized,
in college classrooms,
in the popular imagination,
and more direly
it has been kept out of
the K to 12 curriculum.
[APPLAUSE]
If new generations have
a hard time knowing
who Angela Davis
is, imagine how few
know about people like
George Jackson, Charlene
Mitchell, and Dorothy Burnham.
Angela's archives will point
us in beautiful new directions.
Her papers will provide
oxygen to people,
to movement and ideas that
desperately need to be aired.
They will provide
fuel, dare I say,
they may bring back the
language of revolution.
Not solely by tracing the
history of armed self-defense,
communists organizing,
and radical black
left feminism, but reminding
us about the power of love
and the imperative
of solidarity.
We desperately need
this knowledge.
People power is on display
all over the globe as I speak.
Resistance is everywhere.
Davis's papers remind us of
the Metta Global Networks
and the power of
every single one
of the hundreds of thousands
of German schoolchildren
who participated in a
roses for Angela campaign.
Revolutions need archives,
theory, and roses.
In the archives, researchers
will find not just the outward
facing political work, but
the architecture of ideas,
the evolution of
consciousness, the travels,
the relentless
repression apparatus,
and the vast evidence
of the worldwide impact
that Angela Davis has had.
They will also find the love,
the joy, the peaks and valleys
of political organizing,
the habits of mind,
the humor, the musical
culture, the networks
that sustain not
just her one life
but that has sustained movement.
The placement of these archives
are a victory for the movement,
because it has rooted
this history in a new way.
And here I should say that
matters in an anti-black world
that Angela Davis
is a black woman.
And on a positive-- and
unapologetically feminist,
blues loving, Afro wearing,
left leaning black woman.
Black women are rarely allowed
universality, unboxed breath.
But from Palestine to South
Africa to Brazil to Brooklyn
to Oakland, Angela
Davis is heralded
because of the political
analysis of her many writings
and her ongoing organizing
and educational work.
In Haiti, she has been there.
South Africa, supporting the
Palestinian struggles, as well.
That the recognized
human rights advocate
and undisputed moral compass
of these United States
is a black woman is phenomenal.
Perhaps the best thing
about the Davis archives
is that they are more
than history or a glance
at a forgotten past.
They represent the
present and the future.
The exhibit features
someone right now
considered a political
prisoner held
on solitary-- held in
solitary confinement
and who was on death row.
Someone who is the center
of an international campaign
for his freedom.
And I'm referring
to Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The Davis archives are
not a place for nostalgia.
They demand action.
Vincent Harding,
eminent scholar,
once said, "When
you know, you owe."
That is the mandate
of the Davis archives.
I hope that the archives are
incorporated into college
classrooms and assignments.
That some small
fraction of it can
be digitized and
made available online
where people all over
the world can access it.
And that school
children, young people
can be brought to the
exhibit and their teachers
can be trained on how
to bring this history
into their classrooms.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
- I have to go after
the real Robin, right?
OK.
That was beautiful.
My God.
OK.
So I have a lot to say
in a very short time.
It says five
minutes, but fix it.
12, good, thanks.
OK.
So I want to thank the
organizers who made the name,
especially Liz Hinton who was
my former student at NYU who
has just blown up and amazing.
So just thank you so much.
Just brilliant, brilliant.
First things first.
Brandon, well, I'll pay you
back for that, you know.
Because this right here is one
of the most brilliant scholars
of the 21st century, for sure.
First things first.
I hope you will
join me in standing
in solidarity with the Harvard
Graduate Student Union UAW.
[APPLAUSE]
Because-- which
has unsuccessfully
tried to negotiate
with the administration
for a fair contract.
And most urgently,
a provision that
would allow cases
of sexual harassment
and racial discrimination to be
subject to an independent union
grievance procedure.
They're fighting-- also fighting
for year-around mental health
care, paid parental leave, a
fair wage, and as most of you
know, last Friday the
Union's 4,000 student
workers, 90% of whom
voted overwhelmingly
to authorize the strike.
And if I'm here, I'm going
to be on the picket line.
And I hope I-- but I do hope
they don't have to go on strike
and the administration
will stop spending money
on high-powered union
busting law firms
and just negotiate
in good faith.
[APPLAUSE]
Every time I'm at Harvard,
I'm talking about the Union's
struggles, every time.
Cornell can attest to that.
And I know Cornell--
see, the brother Cornell.
Who's always, always
at the forefront.
It's so great to see you.
Speaking of campus troubles,
as a UCLA faculty and alum,
I must acknowledge
that this month marks
the 50th anniversary of
Angela's first lectures at UCLA
on-- in her course,
Recurring Philosophical
Themes in Black Literature,
that attracted some 2000
students at Royce Hall.
I think you were
the only professor
to ever do that in
the history of UCLA.
That same year, the UC Board
of Regents and Governor Reagan
voted to fire her.
And as everyone knows,
and as Erica, I think,
will probably talk about,
that same year in January,
Alprentice "Bunchy"
Carter and John Huggins
were fatally shot on campus,
and they were attending
a black student union
meeting to discuss
the future of Black Studies,
which was also born in 1969.
The same year, incidentally,
which last time Harvard
campus had a student
employee strike was 1969.
So this is the 50th
anniversary of a lot of things.
I first met Angela
on UCLA's campus
when she spoke at
the black graduation.
I believe it's 1985 or '86, but
the papers will tell, right?
And [? Erin ?] [? Boy, ?] who
was one of my closest friends
on campus, had organized it
and introduced me to Angela.
And as an undergraduate,
he and my sister
were leaders in the Black
Student Alliance at UCLA.
And he had recently
been accepted
into the PhD program
in history at UCLA
as a history
undergrad-- brilliant.
And tragically, he died
of a brain aneurysm
a couple of years later.
I believe he was
about 29 years old.
And incidentally,
around that same time,
I got to know Trevor Fowler,
who was the Southern California
Secretary of the ANC who
also spoke at a conference we
organized on imperialism.
So it's like a kind of
homecoming in many ways.
Now, I know that
Angela is probably
a little uncomfortable
with the focus on her
when her mantra has always
been on the collective, not
the individual.
You can't find anything she's
written that doesn't say that.
This position doesn't derive,
however, from false humility,
but from her analysis
of the dialectic
of structural oppression and
collective movements, which
is why she has always
grounded herself
in uncertain social movements,
unlike most professors.
I thought last night's
panel-- yeah, it's true.
[LAUGHTER]
Look, I'm just-- I'm just--
look, I'm just
telling the truth.
I thought last night's
panel with Fanya Davis,
with Margaret Burnham
and Bettina Aptheker
and Skip made this
point brilliantly,
underscoring her groundings
as an internationalist.
The year I met
Angela, I was working
on my dissertation on
the Communist Party
in Alabama, which became
this little book, which
included the
Southern Negro Youth
Congress and its leaders,
Dorothy and Louis
Burnham, Esther and
James Jackson, Augustine
and Ed Strong and, of course,
Angela's mother Sally Davis.
The first thing
I said to Angela,
I said like, I'm
studying your mother.
She's involved in the
Southern Negro Youth Congress.
And in doing that work on the
Congress Party in Alabama,
I came to understand how
a place like Birmingham
could nurture revolutionary
internationalists.
It made perfect sense.
You know, it made perfect sense.
But what I want to talk to
specifically with my time
is talk about her
Palestine work.
In part, because her profound
thinking about Palestine
is a global struggle
that intersects
with feminist abolitionist,
anti-racist, anti-colonial
and anti-militarist
movements has significantly
shaped a new
generation of activists
who have shattered the
cone of silence surrounding
Israel's occupation
and apartheid policies.
For example--
[APPLAUSE]
--earlier this year
when the board of--
the Board of the [INAUDIBLE]
Civil Rights Institute
withdrew its decision to give
her the Fred Shuttlesworth
Human Rights Award, mainly for
her Palestine solidarity work,
it was mass pressure
that forced the Board
to come to their senses and
to reverse the decision.
Ironically, the controversy
further elevated
the question of Palestine,
the Birmingham Committee
for Truth and
Reconciliation, which
had been leading
local demonstrations
in the streets of Birmingham,
organized a homecoming event
for Angela on the
16th of February,
that not only drew 3,000
people plus, but featured
a conversation about Palestine,
which would have never happened
had they not made that mistake.
But again, Angela seized the
moment to take advantage of it.
I hope you don't mind me
saying, Angela, audience,
I mean, because I
know her and I feel
like if I say
Professor Davis, it's
going to be a
little bit awkward.
Although, I will always
say Professor Gates.
He said, no coffee, Skip.
I'm just joking.
So I thought it was interesting
that the Institute's
official statement never
explain why it rescinded
the award, only that was
a matter of public record,
that her past statements were
inconsistent with, quote,
"The criteria on which
the award is based."
When it comes to speaking
out for Palestine
or Palestinian justice,
Angela's racked up
an impressive public record.
She was part of that Historic
Feminist College Delegation
to Palestine in 2011
organized by Rabab Abdulhadi,
and my friend and colleague
Barbara Ransby, that
included Gina dent, and
Chandra Mohanty and Beverly
Guy-Sheftall, Tom Miller
Madison who I see over there,
and a bunch of others.
And Beverly, oh, hey.
How you doing?
They're all here.
And I have to say just
very quickly that was
the most important delegation.
That was a delegation that was
a turning point, because people
left that delegation
and wrote and spoke
and really transformed
our thinking about it.
Every delegation after
that followed that pattern.
But she also has a
very long history
of solidarity with
Palestine which
goes directly out of her
dedicated in principle
internationalism.
When she was awarded
the Lenin Prize--
Lenin Peace Prize in Moscow
on May Day 1956, she said,
quote, "I accept
this award on behalf
of those who seek an end to
apartheid in South Africa,
to Pinochet's fascism in
Chile, and to the continued
violation of the sacred rights
of the Palestinian people."
That's 1976.
Fortunately, the Soviets had
no issues with her statement.
What can I say?
The Institute's
vacillation wasn't just
a reaction to Zionist
pressure, but a consequence
of an old yet all
too common Cold
War liberal interpretations
of rights history.
This model cannot account
for Angela Davis as a central
figure in the black freedom
movement throughout her life,
because her conception of
civil and human rights knows no
boundaries.
She had fought for and
written about black liberation
and Black Lives, abolition,
democracy, and socialism,
indigenous struggles
for sovereignty,
feminist struggles for
freedom and autonomy,
and end to the caging
of human beings.
And of course, the
struggles of all
oppressed peoples for
self-determination,
including Palestinians.
Absent a broader
international framework,
Angela Davis is written into
history, literally, only
after 1967 when she
moves back to the US.
But as we learned last
night from the panel,
she was always connected to
global struggles for freedom
in Birmingham, in New York,
at Brandeis University where
she encountered incisive
critiques of anti-Semitism,
Jewish critiques of Zionism,
Herbert Marcuse and Malcolm X.
When she's attended the Eighth
World Festival for Youth
and Students in Helsinki
in the summer of 1962,
where she met young
revolutionaries
from Cuba and everywhere
else around the globe.
In Paris, where she witnessed
French racism against North
Africans and met
Algerians and Vietnamese
struggling for
liberation, in Germany,
where she participated in
anti-war demonstrations
and anti-protesting
demonstrations,
in London where
she briefly worked
with Stokely Carmichael
and Malcolm X
supporting black
power in the UK.
All of this before 1967.
All this before
arrived in California.
Angela's borderless
activism and scholarship
represent the highest expression
of transnational solidarity,
forged in radical politics,
through critical inquiry
via international travel,
and under the pressure
of state-sanctioned confinement.
For much of the world,
her imprisonment
was a symbol of resistance
and global solidarity.
As an incarcerated
political prisoner,
she became the center of an
international movement whose
supporters pegged their own
freedom to hers, concluding
that to free Angela and
all political prisoners
was a blow to the acts of
state violence and racism
around the world.
And this includes
Palestinians locked up
in Israeli prisons
who had reached out
to Angela in solidarity.
Her insistence on linking
Palestine to the long black
freedom movement and to
abolition became crystal clear
to me, and I'm concluding here,
in March of 2018 when as part
of the teaching
Palestine delegation,
we visited the Abu Jihad Museum
for the prisoners movement
in Nablus and saw the exhibit
George Jackson in the Center
of Palestine, which is curated
by the brilliant black studies
scholar Greg Thomas and Mohammed
[INAUDIBLE] of [? Al-quds ?]
University.
The Exhibit revisits
that critical moment
in the early 1970s when black
Palestinian solidarity was
an expression of revolutionary
global insurgency.
And what struck me most was
seeing the George Jackson
exhibit surrounded
by hundreds of images
of Palestinian prisoners,
alongside their writings
and artwork.
I came away from the encounter
with a deeper comprehension
of Angela's insight.
That is, it is not the
condition of captivity
that is the basis of solidarity,
but the critique of captivity
from a place of confinement,
the shared dreams of liberation,
the mobilizing and planning
to fulfill that dream.
So here in the small
underfunded museum
in Nablus, a city renowned
for its fierce resistance
to occupation, we encountered
the after lives of that post
1967 moment in
imprisoned men and women
who left behind a
record of looking ahead
in order to produce a
radically different future.
What brought Palestinian
and black activists together
in that moment was
not just a recognition
of parallel oppressions
and humiliations, violence
and carcerality
under occupation,
but a shared vision
of liberation.
So in the end, while
Angela is certainly
correct about the
importance of collectivities
over individuals,
I think she will
agree that there are
extraordinary activists
and extraordinary thinkers that
offer leadership, direction,
and insight movements need.
And Angela Davis is indeed one
of those extraordinary thinkers
and leaders, one
whom I am honored
to call comrade, a teacher,
a leader, and a friend.
Viva Palestinian.
[APPLAUSE]
- Thank you, all of you.
Thank you.
And thank you to everyone who
made the conference possible.
And thank you most of all
to Angela for being born.
[APPLAUSE]
One of my favorite quotes,
and it stays in my heart,
is this one.
"At the risk of
seeming ridiculous,
the true revolutionary is guided
by great feelings of love."
And who said it?
So I pondered a long
time about what do I
say about this precious human
being, Angela Davis, my friend?
I met her when I was 18.
What do I say about someone
who's always been in my life
at every juncture and
every joy and sorrow
almost, she's been there?
Maybe not physically,
but in my heart.
And sometimes she would show up.
I'll tell you more.
You know, the simplest
things are the ones
you remember about a person--
the way they smile, the
way they walk, the way they
look when they
feel joy or sorrow.
And over the decades
of knowing a person,
I always look for
an essential quality
that stands out, a way
of being that touches
the lives of people around them.
Angela is generous.
She is kind.
She is resilient and gentle.
So I have a few stories
to illustrate this,
because there's only
so much time today.
But we have all the time
beyond this conference
to keep what we are
learning here alive, right?
In 1968, Don Huggins,
Angela Davis, and I
were walking down a street
in South Central Los Angeles.
I was 18, as I said,
and Don was 22.
And we'd just met Angela.
And we loved her.
Don Huggins, by the
way, was my husband.
And he was one of the two young
men killed on the UCLA campus
January 17, 1969.
He was both a student and a
member of the Black Panther
Party, as I was, at the time.
So we're walking
down a street, and I
don't know if you
remember this, but you
had on a beautiful jacket.
And there was a woman living
on the street as we walked by--
you may not know South
Central Los Angeles
but you know Roxbury.
You know southeast DC.
You know where we live.
And the woman said,
hey, I like that jacket.
That's a nice jacket.
And Angela stopped to thank
her, took the jacket off,
and gave it to her.
Generosity of spirit.
There was nothing contrived.
There was no thought about it.
It was just a giving heart.
And some of us can't
even look a person
in the eye who's houseless,
who's living on the street.
We're afraid that they
will want something.
They do want something.
Love.
That endeared me to Angela.
I knew she'd be my
friend when I saw that.
Second story, on
that day in 1969
when my husband John
Huggins was killed,
my baby daughter,
who's all grown up now,
was three weeks old.
And rather than something
else, the police
decided to arrest 14
of us and charge us
with malicious mischief.
And I was sent to Civil Grand
Women's Correctional Facility
in Los Angeles.
Of course, we knew those
charges would be dropped.
However, I can't explain to you
what I was feeling at the time.
But you might be
able to imagine.
And if you do, it's true.
But my brother-in-law
at the time
came and brought my baby
daughter back to me,
posted bail, and I walked
out into the early morning
hours of the next day.
I was feeling alone.
And I looked out
in the dark as I'm
walking to leave that prison the
first time I was incarcerated,
and there is Angela standing in
the dark with my friend Fanny.
Just standing there,
the two of them.
No words needed to be said.
No hug needed to be given.
It was everything.
Great feelings of love.
And that was a kindness I
thought to myself on the train
to New Haven, Connecticut,
which is where I was heading
to be with John's family--
remember all this, Ruthie?
Yeah.
I thought this is what we
must be, kind to each other.
In the face of horror,
assassination, murder,
all kinds of abuses, we
must maintain kindness.
And I looked at my
baby and thought,
this is what I want for her.
Story three, my baby
daughter grew to womanhood
and went away to
Wesleyan University.
And we would talk on
the phone sometimes.
And one day she called
to chat and she said,
guess what, mommy?
Angela spoke here
at the University.
I said, she did?
Did you get to say hello?
She said, Yeah, I did.
And I was with all
my BGSU friends--
I think that's who they were--
and they're all young radicals.
And Angela was there, and
I think that at a distance
my and Angela saw each other
and waved in acknowledgment.
Now, all the BGSU
students are like, you--
what?
You know Angela Davis?
And she said, Yeah,
I grew up around her,
and she really loves animals.
And-- great.
And they're looking at my like--
and she said, she's really kind.
One day I was at
her house and she
was playing with her two dogs.
Angela can sing
her dogs to sleep.
And the students, I don't
know mine, they're worthy of--
their minds-- the tops
of their heads blew off.
Because we think icon.
We think separate from us.
We think pedestal.
And when you pedestal lives,
you can knock a person down.
But when there is a human
being in front of you,
it causes you to think
like between a student
last night in the
panel who said,
I recognize what you
can do with a life.
But always ground
it in love, Angela.
That story is just so
precious because it unboxesall
these ideas of who we are.
We're just folks, right, Fanya?
We just stand up because the
alternative is so horrific.
That quality, singing the
dogs to sleep, gentleness.
Four, after all of the charges
against Angela were dropped,
I was already out of
prison that second time.
We communicated by letter
and that really helped me.
As a matter of fact, this
was in one of my stories
but because the
State of New York
released Angela from
solitary confinement,
our lawyers went to the
State of Connecticut
and I was released from
solitary confinement.
So there are just
so many parallels.
But we met after
she was released
at a house in San Jose.
And what did we talk about?
We talked about all the people
we left behind in prison.
How there is no victory
in penalizing people.
There is no good
reason to have prisons.
And we talked about what
we might be able to do.
And Angela has done it.
I could list so many things
but Critical Resistance
pops right to the top.
Five, when I wanted
to become vegetarian
and all the members of
the Black Panther Party
thought I had lost my mind,
sister, what's wrong with you?
For some reason, I went
to wherever you lived
and I said, well, what do you
think about being a vegetarian?
And we-- she gave
me tips and so on.
But what I got was not only
her really amazing honesty,
but her openness
to whatever it is
another wants to do to
take care of themselves.
And I do.
And that is partly
because you encouraged me.
Honesty, openness.
So that's all a long time ago.
Now, I'm vegan.
And both of us meditate,
did you know that?
And practice yoga,
did you know that?
If we're going to be in
it for the long haul,
we must take care of ourselves.
It is imperative.
There is no choice.
We cannot not heal.
And I want to say in closing
that the trauma we both,
and many of us in
this room, experienced
at the hands of
forces like COINTELPRO
it is important that we make it
a priority to heal our hearts,
to clear our minds, so that
we can walk in the world
with the purpose of our
lives we were given at birth.
So throughout all these
years, we've remained friends.
And it's a friendship
based in struggle.
It's a friendship based
in uplifting humanity.
There isn't a box that
needs to be opened
to release people
from it that Angela
hasn't helped in turning over.
And I would say that it goes
beyond the identity spoken
about before.
Every area where a human
being is incarcerated,
within or without, Angela
wants the end to that.
How do I know it?
She never said it
like that to me.
But I know it.
I know it.
So thank you, Angela,
for everything
that you are and
will continue to do.
I'm sure there's more
that will unfold.
And I hope that people
that come to Harvard
and use the collections will
see that your life did not
stop after a trial,
after you have continued
and will continue to live
a life that is a guiding
light for many, including me.
[APPLAUSE]
- As promised, that was
just an incredible rich set
of contributions.
And we've got a
lot on the table.
We've got these questions of
internationalism on the table.
We also have, I think,
Erica Huggins's challenge
is so poignant.
For those of us who would
try to teach and write
the history of black
radicalism, how often
do we use the words generous,
kind, resilient, gentle,
when we talk about that moment,
when we talk about its legacy?
So I wanted to ask-- just
following up on when Erica
Huggins' remarks, how
should we think about--
you all have either
participated in such struggles
or know so closely
that the textured lives
of individuals,
how should we think
about what drives
people to participate
in revolutionary
movements, right?
Many people suffer oppression,
but many people do not
answer the call to revolution.
How do we understand
that impulse?
And how do we understand
what sustains people
throughout the course of the
really enormous horrors that
are visited among people who
try to stand up and fight
in the way that you fought,
Erica Huggins, and you fought,
Trevor?
And how do we work through that?
Anybody can speak.
- OK.
Some things that come to mind.
One thing that I have found
looking at people who've
been involved in radical
movements, who have been
surveilled, harassed,
incarcerated, brutalized,
physically beaten, faced
atrocious conditions,
is that, sure, they-- they're
not unafraid, right, as they
go through those moments.
But they feel a sense
of collective support.
And I think that
is so important,
because for many people,
we remain unorganized.
We're not part of
organizations, in other words.
We're outraged, but we're not
part of any organization that
may be collectively
moving forward
in a way-- we don't have
that sense of comradeship
that there's someone else to
rely on that if we step back,
someone will step up.
If we're weak, someone
will be strong.
Instead of feeling
like we're the only one
and it's on us to do it.
So it seemed to me that some
of the motivating factor are is
this sense of collectivity,
this commitment to cause,
this sense that they're--
the alternative is worse,
that inaction is worse.
And I feel like there needs
to be more of that today.
We tolerate a lot.
When you think about
people who are marching--
millions of people marching
and organizing to make change.
So those are the things I would
point to, just the courage,
the simple courage.
Moving through fear and
not be immobilized by it.
The sense that there's somewhere
to lay your burden, not just
yourself.
Those things are important.
Certainly, big ideas matter.
Political commitments matter.
But I think these
are the things that
allow people to keep going
in the face of the resistance
that's going to come
to your resistance.
- Can I just add to that?
Collectivity is
extremely important.
And I think this is a point
Angela has always been making,
and I totally agree.
I want to underscore that point.
And struggle's not an
event but a process.
And by not being an
event, by being a process,
having written about
the Communist Party,
for example, where people were
committed to that movement
for a very long time, even
when at the lowest point.
Part of it has to do,
I think, with being
part of a process of
being able to envision
winning something
as opposed to being
in a position of self-defense.
When Erica talked about
invoked Che Guevara
in this idea of great
feelings of love,
create feelings of
love and comradeship
with other comrades of the
people in your movement.
You're caring for
them and you're
caring about the future
of people you don't know.
And that sense of caring
is a positive element.
And sometimes you think of
radical social movements
as kind of self-defense, like
you're defending against your--
you're so oppressed you
have no choice to move.
But I think that great
feelings of love,
being part of a collective,
and recognizing that struggle
is a process rather
than an event
are like three really
important dimensions.
- I would say that one of
the key driving factors
is when you're young and
you're a revolutionary,
it's the idealism--
idealism of the society
that you'd want to see.
And I recall an
incident in 1992.
My son, who joined me,
who was born in the US
and joined me in South Africa.
And it was during the height
of violence in-- certainly,
in the province that I was in.
We were losing 60 people a week.
And he then said to me
some years later, you
know, dad, whenever
you leave, I wasn't
sure you were coming back.
And I said to him, oh, son, I
don't think that's the case.
I mean, I would be coming back.
It's just the TV.
And it was only years later
did I come to understand
that what he said was true.
Actually, when I went to an area
which was extremely violent,
the possibility was I wouldn't
come back because bullets
were flying by our heads.
And-- but you don't
think about that.
You think about what
the future looks like.
And for us under
apartheid, the past
was so horrific that the future
really looked very bright.
And I think that's what
drives many people is
that vision of this future.
- Can I just follow
that up with a question?
So one of the most fascinating
moments of recent history
is the attempt after
the end of apartheid
to pursue truth
and reconciliation.
And there a lot of--
a lot of support for it,
a lot of criticisms of it.
And when Erica Huggins was
talking about COINTELPRO,
the Counterintelligence
Program of the FBI,
and the ways in which our
government systematically
violated the rights,
murdered American citizens.
I mean, there's no
controversy about that.
That's what happened.
We've never had a reckoning
with that immense abuse
of state power.
And so I was wondering if
you two, in particular,
could speak to, is that
something that this society
needs to call for, a kind
of truth and reconciliation
about the repression
of black radicalism
and the radical movements
of the '60s and '70s?
- Well, first, is the--
we would need to call
for a conversation
about American chattel slavery.
We can't talk about it.
As a matter of fact, I don't
know if you know this, Brandon,
but there are high
school textbooks
being written that
say that Africans
came as migrant workers.
- Right.
- A presentation of a
high school friend of mine
said his teacher said that
Africans came as settlers.
So we need a conversation about
the impact today of slavery.
We can't go back and live there.
I'm not concerned about
living in that era
as much as I am to look
to analyze what it has
to do with the conditions now.
Our-- many of our-- and we--
I don't know another
way to say it.
Growing up in Washington
DC I had this feeling
I had to get out of there
because the White House is
like the big house and the
rest of it was the plantation.
And that was my young mind
trying to analyze something.
But what I'm saying
is that the poverty
is the intentional
result of all of that.
So then here we come,
these young black people
at that time, and there
are young black people now.
I mean, when I talk
to Patrice Colors,
she wrote a book, When
They Call Us a terr--
When They Call You a Terrorist.
Why is this continuing?
It's systemic.
It's not a mistake.
It's intended.
And so we would need
to look at the history.
Not to wallow in it.
- Yeah.
You know, there's one other
parallel between South Africa
and the US.
And that is that
South Africa is one
of the most violent
societies in the world.
The US is probably the second.
- Yes.
- And I think it has
its roots in slavery.
And in South Africa,
it has its roots
in the apartheid violence.
So we had a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission,
which addressed really those
individuals who were victims.
But in fact, in South
Africa, it wasn't just
the people who were imprisoned.
It was the society as a whole.
- That's right.
- So in the period that I was
talking about in '92, children
in Soweto walk to school or took
a train and would pass a black
person laying on the street with
a newspaper over their head.
Was killed by violence
by the police.
And we really didn't do
a societal inspection
or introspection
on what that meant.
And so the violence that
exists in our society today
is because people
grew up with violence.
They saw it daily.
- Yes.
- And so it becomes
common cause.
And we have one of the highest
murder rates in the world,
because it is common cause.
And it's-- and this question
about how you repress people is
not just through violence,
but also through other means,
such as drugs, et cetera.
As in our big cities,
drugs is a huge problem.
In Cape Town, 12 people
get killed a weekend
through violence.
In a city population
of about 2 million,
2 and 1/2 million,
12 people a weekend.
That's every weekend.
70 people a month.
It's just horrific.
But it's something that
we have to really address
this kind of violence
which has its roots
in the violence of the
society that preceded it.
- So let me-- before I
open up to questions,
let me just ask one last thing
following up on this points
to the Robins.
So this-- the population
that Trevor is talking about,
right, the areas where there's
the most extreme violence
and where there
have been enduring
forms of concentrated
addiction, homelessness.
These are in many
ways the populations
that the black radical
movement in the 1960s and '70s
tried to organize, right,
under the idea of the Lumpen
Proletarian.
That was one of the
great innovations
and their form of Marxist theory
was to say, well, actually,
these people are the vanguard.
These people can
contribute mightily
to revolutionary struggle.
And I'm just curious
as to what do
you think is left of that idea?
What can we learn from
that effort today,
particularly in a world
where students just
have no access to the
idea that that was once
the guiding light of a
whole generation of activist
and intellectuals?
- OK.
Thank you for that question.
I want to first start by
saying that in response
to the previous
conversation that there
is an effort by black
grassroots feminists,
there's an organization called,
Black Women's Blueprint.
And they've created a
Truth and Reconciliation
Commission around rapes
and state violence
in South Africa today.
Rapes and state violence
all over the news,
especially related to
some of the incidents
around the death of some and
the rape of college students
on campuses, as part of that.
So I want to say that
that effort and that model
has been held up in
some parts of the US led
by black feminists.
I think that there's
a lot of talk-- people
are very interested in the
working class, black working
classes, I would say.
In a way that marginalizes
those very people
from those conversations.
All right.
People are always trying to
talk for this group of people
or claim they came from it
at one point in their past,
this amorphous mass.
But it is very important to
understand that black power was
rooted in those areas-- black
intelligence, black organizing,
all of that came out
of those conditions.
And when we think
about leadership,
that's where we
should be looking.
Instead, I think people
assume that there's
kind of a massive unorganized
or sort of clay there
that is waiting for people
who have degrees to go down
and to speak to them.
But the reality is
that when we think
about how to flip where we
see the political vision
and leadership
coming from, that is
when the movement will change.
That is when the
organizing will change.
There is a sense of not looking
in the mirror, I would say.
That it's never us.
It's not the us, right?
It's-- if it's us, it's
us to speak for them.
Why don't we go and become
students and learn and listen
and contribute and
do what we're told,
as versus trying to
put leadership on?
So that's how I always
think about those areas.
There's so many
organizations and groups
that come out of those
areas that nobody really
talks about it.
- Right.
Exactly.
In fact, this is the problem.
The problem is it-- does it--
we should make a distinction
between the theory
of the Lumpen and what
actually happened.
Because what happened
was the majority
of people who live
in urban areas
even in that period
were working class
who were not necessarily--
they weren't hustlers.
They might have been
hustling to survive,
because they were underpaid.
But many of them were
actually wage laborers.
They were actually part
of organizations-- church
organizations, labor unions.
It was a very
organized community.
To be a student
in the late 1960s,
'70s is to be connected
to those communities.
UCLA shifted to a quarter
system to basically try
to make it difficult
for working class
black students to organize.
That's why we went from
semester to quarter system.
And it works.
Not entirely.
I'm just kidding.
But the fact is is that we
have to rethink that history.
One of the organizations
I've written about, we're
trying to get the book
reprinted out through Verso
is, the group of
black feminists who
are rooted mainly like in
New Rochelle, New York,
places like that, who put
together the book lessons
from the damned in 1973.
These are black
feminists, many of whom
were working in social
work, who were grounded
in the community who basically
put together a book of writings
about revolution and the
possibility of transformation
from people from ages 12 to 80.
And this was a working
class, grassroots initiative.
That's what the revolution
movements look like.
They don't look like
the way we see on TV.
And so I think that I just
want to just support everything
that Robin said, which
is, we need to do the work
and rethink that history.
And I think that Angela's papers
would actually help us do that.
- It's fantastic.
So let's-- we're going to take
questions from the audience.
There's a microphone
right here in the middle.
Please remember that questions
end in a question mark.
We want to keep them very
tight so that we can hear
from lots and lots of people.
You will rob students
of their one chance
to ask these people a
question if you go on and on.
And I'd love to have my
dear brother, Cornel West,
ask the first question.
- This is such a blessing to
have such a towering figure.
Well, this is Angela here.
And thinking of
Elizabeth and the others.
My question is this, how
is it that Angela Davis is
unique and singular in
being a towering and great
public intellectual who
came from the Academy
but was never for a moment
in her life the darling
of the liberal establishment?
That when you think of
the voice of James Ball
and of Mary Baraka, you
think of [INAUDIBLE],,
they all had moments
in their lives
where they were pushed forward
by a liberal or neoliberal
establishment, and
then they went radical
because they were still free.
Now, Malcolm X was
never a firm [INAUDIBLE]
liberal establishment.
But he's not a product
of the Academy.
But Angela Davis was able
to have an organic relation
with those, slash, don't
call everyday people,
go through the
Academy as a freedom
fighter and a magnificent
scholar and intellectual
and never have that stamp.
And it seems to me that
that is distinctive.
And I want to know
why that is the case?
Was it her charisma?
Was it how she dealt
with her liberate--
her celebrity status,
always rendering
it a form of service rather
than a moment of spectacle?
Was it the love?
Could have been the love she got
in Sunday school, I don't know.
Maybe-- she might have
had that before she
got to the Communist
Party and Brent Brandeis
could've been her mama.
Part of it's a question
to Angela herself,
you know what I mean?
But this question for
me is a crucial one
if we're really
going to understand
the role of progressive
intellectuals
in the Academy that require
some liberal filtering
to give them a stamp before
they then go off and be free.
And most of them have
challenges in that regard.
And it's understandable.
And that's not just the
white liberal establishment.
It is also Angela's
courage to be
critical of the worst tendencies
of the black bourgeoisie.
- Yeah, that's right.
- That's courage.
And yet here she stands
dignified, brilliant,
steel-bearing witness, and still
got that love and kindness.
- All right.
[APPLAUSE]
- Do you all want to
respond or take the next?
- We'll take the--
let's take the next.
- Hi.
My name is Chiral March.
I'm a sophomore at Harvard.
And one question that
I had for all of you
is that at this
institution, a lot of--
well, as a member
of this institution,
we're being trained
to be elites.
And a lot of the time, a
lot of Harvard students
feel as if they have
to go back and be
saviors for the working
class black community.
So my question for you
all is, how should--
how should I use my privilege
as a Harvard student, how
should we all use our privilege
as prospective intellectuals,
to be able to contribute to
the black freedom struggle?
And how should we
do that adequately?
- All right.
South Carolina, right?
- Yes.
- There we go.
Straight out of South Carolina.
- What are you studying?
- African-American studies
and Women and Gender Studies.
[APPLAUSE]
- I'm sure you have some
things to say about that.
- Yes.
OK.
I think that's a deep
question that's so important.
One of the things I'll
say is that the book
that the other Robyn was
talking about about lessons
from the damned, those working
class people in New Rochelle
and Mt.
Vernon were mentored by a
member of the black elite, who
worked with them, who
worked alongside of them,
and then left them alone
to do the collective work
that they had to do.
When you find yourself in
institutions like these,
and I'll say as someone who
went to Columbia University who
came from a background
that didn't necessarily
pave that path, you have
to imagine that, one,
that you belong here.
- That's right.
- And, two, that whatever
you can get, you can use.
You can use, that
you're here gaining
the tools that are needed.
And through the service
to your community,
not help but service, because
of the knowledge that you'll
gain around the balance
of power and the reality
of institutional
inequities, you will
come to see the work that
you do in those communities
as service, right.
And, I mean, that's
what I would say.
And also join an
organization or two.
Join an organization
or two that's
rooted in your community
that is not necessarily super
political.
And then join an organization
that mirrors your politics.
And then push in both spaces.
Push hard for increased
radicalization.
I mean, that is
what I would say.
I'm proud that you're here.
[APPLAUSE]
- Thanks.
- Hi.
My name is Disraeli Laura and I
am a sophomore in high school.
And I'm part of the--
I was part of the Summer
of Hope Kids this summer.
And my question is, how
do we mandate schools
to teach the history we
of students of color need
to know in order for us not
to continue to perpetuate
the violence and trauma we see?
And mostly like, in state school
and like in community schools,
like in Mattapan
and Dorchester, how
do we as students get
to know and understand
how we're living in a
world of such violence?
And, yeah.
- Thank you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
- Go ahead.
- OK.
There's so many
response how to mandate
schools to teach that history.
That's a struggle-- that's a
long-term struggle going back
even before there was such
a thing as what Carter G
Woodson called Negro
History Week, which
became a month, which
became what it is.
So I have to say my
own personal opinion
is that we have to keep fighting
to change the curriculum.
But I guess I'm not as
optimistic about our capacity
to change the curriculum
without changing institution.
So the charter-- so part of
it's about changing schools,
transforming schools.
If we can't do that, I think
it's imperative on all of us
to fig-- to create
institutions that are outside
of the traditional
public school system
can actually provide that
curriculum for students.
I mean, we've talked
about history.
I mean, there's so
many initiatives,
like I was just writing
about the commune adversity
based in Chicago.
Lisa Mullins, for
example, is someone
involved in that
where you basically
had students who created a
school for the community.
And the Black Panther
Party had schools.
Erica Huggins, one of
the great educators,
has always been committed to
community-based education.
In other words, create curricula
and create institutions
that could actually
do that work,
because it's very hard work.
And that's not to say
don't stop fighting
to create these mandates.
You could do both those
things at the same time.
And can I-- no one answered
Cornell's question.
So can I just--
because this is a very
important question,
and this actually may be linked
to the two questions before.
I know other people who are
much smarter than me have more
to say about this,
but I think one guess,
and I think Angela should
probably answer this.
One guess in terms of--
two guesses, two answers.
One just has to do with
what I was saying before
and what was said last night
that Angela threw herself
in social movements in a
way where she has never
been disconnected ever.
That's so unusual.
I mean, you're one
of the exceptions,
Cornell, which never been
disconnected, always committed.
Committed to actual struggle.
Even if the ship looks
like it's sinking,
it's like holding
on to that, not
for the purpose
of glorification,
not for the purposes of
getting something on a CV,
but because these things matter.
That's different.
But at the same time,
I think part of it
has to do with gender.
There are not many women who
actually could have that,
can make that claim to sort
of have a moment in the sun
and then sort of like back away.
Everyone you
mentioned, of course,
were male intellectuals.
And I think that that
has a lot to do with it.
Because when we start
making the list of all the
committed revolutionary
black women
who have been doing this
work for a long time,
we've never had that place.
Angela's one of many.
I think we begin
to see this happen.
And I think that's a
badge of honor, something
we should be proud of.
But it also means--
and the last thing
I'll just say about this,
which has to do with, I guess,
the other two questions.
I can't speak for Angela,
she can speak for herself.
But I think that when you do
this work, you pay a price.
And it's a very difficult price.
When the sister had asked the
question about, what can I do?
When you make that decision
to leap into a struggle,
you have to be prepared
to pay a price.
And I'm amazed by
how many people
pay that price, especially
black women, pay that price.
It's a huge price.
And they keep doing it.
And we have to create better
institutional supports,
collect new collectivities
to make sure
that the price is not great
to reduce the costs to support
each other.
To support you in the
work that you're doing.
And I think we're at the Academy
are in a position to do that
and we don't do a
very good job at it.
We do a good job of creating
the more formal institutions
and getting new books
in our curriculum
and doing this research,
but not providing
the kind of social and
psychic and emotional space.
And this is what
students struggles
in 2015 today have
been demanding that,
that kind of psychic
and social space
that we need to survive to be
able to come back over and over
again.
Not in isolation,
but in collective.
So-- but I just have-- just
[INAUDIBLE] we're in a room
full of people, full of--
I cannot begin to--
I see Ruthie, I see
Barbara, I see everywhere--
Farah-- all these people who've
been doing this work for ever,
and they provide
that kind of model.
So if luckily nothing
will happen to us today
because if we did
we lose basically
like 90% of the
greatest intellectuals.
So I'm just saying that
we're surrounded by women
who have modeled this so--
and, of course, everyone
on this panel so--
- Perhaps I could
just add one thing.
Frederick Douglass said
that power, once challenged,
is no longer power.
And I think Angela lives by
that model, to challenge power.
Because if you challenge
it, it is no longer power.
And I think that if you live
by that motto, you can--
we can gain victory of freedom
and justice for all people.
- I did want to pick up one
last point that I thought
was in Professor
Spencer's comments
about the cost of struggle.
And one of the things she said
that I wanted to highlight
was just that the
cost of compliance
can be worse sometimes.
And I think we don't do a great
job of telling our students
honestly about the
cost of compliance,
about the cost of acquiescence.
[APPLAUSE]
I've been extraordinarily lucky
to be mentored by people much
older, and they tell you
the stories about people
who went along until
they found themselves
all alone on an
island and wished
they had a community of
struggle to protect them.
Wish that they had stood up and
done something that they really
felt valued and committed to.
So when I look at the
legacy of somebody
like Professor Davis, that's
really inspiring to me
because she seems to be
someone who learned that
from her parents, always
knew it intuitively,
that that's the right
side to stand on,
that those costs would be worse.
And I also just
want to say echoing
Erica Huggins' brilliant
career is that we have become
so obsessed with credentials
now that we sometimes
think you can't know anything
unless somebody gives you
a stamp for it.
And you should be
wary of the idea
that people are
going to give you
the history of black
radicalism through institutions
which it criticizes, right?
In fact, it would be
antithetical to the analysis
contained within.
- Yes.
- So when you read the
autobiography and you see that
Angela Davis is in solitary and
she's thinking about Claudia
Jones, the legendary black
communist intellectual--
feminist intellectual, they
are not going to give Claudia
Jones, not at my school where
I remember getting in trouble
for saying that the Civil
War was about slavery.
I got in trouble
in the fifth grade.
I'll never forget it.
And it was about sectionalism.
I was like, well, what's that?
What does that mean?
Slavery?
I learned something.
So you got to have that
initiative, too, and take
inspiration--
Erica Huggins was 18.
This is all 18.
Martin Luther King
at the beginning
of the Montgomery
bus boycott, 25.
These are very,
very young people
who are taking a
risk and initiative,
and they're preserving
these traditions.
You have much more resources.
Now, we have this archive,
but that work still
needs to be done.
We can't hand it off.
With that said, we
will wrap up the panel.
And, please, give everybody
a round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
We just have a short 15 minute
break, but don't go anywhere.
The next panel is
just as phenomenal.
It's on feminisms.
Please don't go anywhere.
Thanks.
