Angela Davis may be best known for her arrest and incarceration on murder charges for the Marin County courthouse shoot out to free Soledad Brother George Jackson. The national “Free Angela” movement energized her followers, and after nearly 18 months in jail, Davis was acquitted of all charges.
What is often less discussed is the intellectual brilliance of the scholarship of Angela Davis and the resulting way that Davis presents in approaching racism, prison reform, feminism, and revolution.
“For me it makes no sense to talk about being black for the sake of being black. For me it makes no sense to talk about a notion of a blackness that encompasses everybody who looks a certain way.” Instead, she said the blackness she identifies with is deeply tied to the struggle for freedom and that such an approach means “we embrace those who are involved in the same struggle.”