«Hell, yes, we are subversive… and we’re going to continue to be subversive until we have subverted the whole damn system of oppresion.» A key-sentence by Angela Davis, an iconic political activist, professor, two times candidate for Vice-President.
This decisive statement, said at the University of California, led to the second dismissal of the activist by this institution - being considered inappropriate for a college professor. The previous dismissal had been annulled by a judge, who argued that someone’s party affiliation and links to the Communist Party should not be grounds for such discharge.
At just 26 years old, Davis was already the face of some of the most relevant civic movements in the United States of the 60s and 70s, such as prison abolitionism, the fight against racial segregation, gender discrimination and the social injustices resulting from capitalism.
Born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most segregated cities in the US at the time. Davis grew up in a middle-class neighborhood known as "Dynamite Hill", named due to the bombs often placed in the 1950s by KKK members, as a way to force middle-class black families to leave the neighborhood.
At home, meetings and conversations about civil rights and social segregation were customary - Angela Davis’s mother was a member of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] - which contributed to her activist character. During high school, it was customary to organize interracial study groups that, on several occasions, were interrupted by the police. After finishing high school in New York, thanks to a scholarship, Davis would move to Massachusetts to attend French Studies at Brandeis University. She then traveled to Europe to dedicate to Philosophy with the sociologist and philosopher Herbert Marcuse, at the University of Frankfurt, French Literature, at the Sorbonne in Paris; and when Marcuse was invited to the University of California, Angela Davis would also complete her Master's degree in Philosophy at the same institution, before completing a PhD, also in Philosophy, at Humboldt University in Berlin. On Herbert Marcuse, Davis would say that he was instrumental in his training as a left-wing political activist. With deeply anti-capitalist views alongside the intersectionalist feminist struggle and black liberation, Angela Davis philosophy encompasses these three themes as intrinsically linked in a causal relationship. In 1969, Davis was invited to teach at the University of California.
Over the years, the activist and university professor has always remained linked to civil movements and the Communist Party in the United States, which led to her being expelled from the University. Davis appealed against this decision in the courts and won the case, for the right to freedom of expression, and was readmitted to college, where she stayed until the end of her contract in 1970. It was also at that time, and due to her involvement with the Black Panther Party, that she was arrested for conspiracy in a crime involving several members of this group.
Holding a deep commitment to anti-capitalist along with an intersectional feminism and black liberation, the author sees a causality connection between these three problematics. In 1969, Davis was invited to teach at the University of California. She strengthened her abolitionist position regarding the North-american incarceration system after being involved in the freedom campaign for the 'Soledad Brothers', accused of killing a white guard of the Soledad Prison. One of the 'brothers' who was her partner at the time, George Jackson, died as a result of a prison riot, before even going to court. The letters written by Jackson during his incarcerated time also became a symbol of the abolitionist fight.
The impact of Davis' activism and struggle - who was twice a candidate for the US Vice-President - as well as her revolutionary ideologies, has ensured that she has a prominent position in the academic world and is above all an international symbol for struggle and revolution, for peace, rights and equity, focusing on the reform of the prison system and inequality under capitalism, continuing the fight for the liberation of women, blacks, and the LGBTQ+ community. Angela Davis legacy is indisputable.