Before she was branded as a symbol of a revolution, Angela Davis was a well-known scholar.
Why is she relevant to what's going on today?
Angela Davis is an author, speaker, and retired college professor but is most famously known as a fearless revolutionary during the Black Power Movement. She believes in all the good stuff — racial and gender equality and justice for all.
In 1970, she dropped knowledge on a reporter after he asked if violence is necessary for a revolution. Here's a mash-up of my modern-day questions paired with her 1970s answers:
Are you surprised that people reacted to the Mike Brown and Eric Garner verdicts by rioting?
This seems to have really struck a cord with black people. Why are they so mad?
Has racial tension always haunted black communities?
But do you support violence, in light of everything that's going on with the Mike Brown and Eric Garner verdicts recently?
It's chilling how what Davis said over 40 years ago is still very relevant to race relations today. Back then, her thoughts were suppressed by lots of folks, including former President Ronald Reagan, who tried to ban her from teaching. It's great that we can share them today. Check out her words in their entirety in the video below.
Side note: Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, part of the Jim Crow South, which was essentially a war zone during the Civil Rights era. While it's no longer common for bombs to drop in neighborhoods or overt hate messages to be broadcast, there are still many covert tactics that are used to intimidate and instill fear within black communities.
This exceptional clip is an excerpt from "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975." It includes archival interviews of civil rights leaders from the Black Power Movement, including Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis. You can watch the film in its entirety on Netflix. To learn more about Angela Davis, follow her on Facebook.
from Upworthy http://ift.tt/1wL6rte
via IFTTThttp://ift.tt/1q99Sro
0 comments:
Post a Comment