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Angela Davis Stresses Activism at Howard

By Brittany Hutson and staff reports
Black College Wire

She received a standing ovation before she even touched the podium. Her smile graced the audience as she thanked everyone for their gracious welcome. A filled-to-capacity audience at Cramton auditorium eagerly anticipated activist and feminist Angela Davis, who shared her views on racism, the prison system and activism in the 21st century.

Kimery Williams/The Hilltop Educator/activist Angela Davis speaking at Howard

Davis' Feb. 6 lecture lasted more than an hour as she passionately discussed a variety of issues. Besides offering her views about the elections, she focused heavily on the prison system and its detrimental effects on society, racism, establishing an activist mentality and the need to be active to benefit the community, instead of solely benefiting the individual.

"I'm honored to be in her presence," said Calvin Hadley, a senior political science and African-American studies double major. "I think we are a little worse off as a community than in Angela Davis' time. We are not unified on many issues, and I don't think a lot of us have the same ideas or end goals of what our actual progress should be."

Davis challenged the audience to think about what activism is. She claimed that, "often times people assume that it's a sense of progressive and radical movement that somehow descends upon our communities."

She noted how people do not give credit to the mass organizers who have brought about change within the country, but instead tend to name individuals, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and offer him a majority of the credit about the Montgomery bus boycott movement.

One point Davis stressed was that she felt it was important to recognize that voting alone would not change the lives of "the vast majority of people who are racially oppressed, who are still subjected to horrendous conditions of impoverishment, who lack health care and education."

Davis spoke passionately about the abolition of the prison system. She is currently completing a book on prisons in American history. A large portion of her lecture related to capital punishment and how black people are its target.

"The prison system is the best example of racism," she said.

Davis offered an idea for a current activist issue -- challenge the disenfranchisement of others. She brought forth the idea of why people in prison are denied the right to vote.

"Is it hard to imagine a person in prison with the ability to vote?" she asked. "Why is that bizarre in this country? It's almost as bizarre as the white folks who thought of black voting during slavery, bizarre."

More than three decades ago, Davis had firsthand experience with the criminal justice system. On August 7, 1970, during an abortive escape and kidnap attempt from the Marin County (Calif) Hall of Justice, a trial judge and three people were killed. Although she not at the crime scene, police claimed that the guns used had been registered in her name. She became the subject of an FBI manhunt, and was later acquitted of the charges in a highly publicized trial.

Davis is a founder of the anti-prison organization Critical Resistance.She also is professor and Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

One of the major goals of activism today is learning how to identify racism, according to Davis. "How do we identify racism at a time when we are urged to think of ourselves as primarily individuals and not in communities," she said. "This is a major challenge to activist organizing in the 21st century. We have forgotten how to imagine ourselves as members of a larger collective."

She mentioned the effect of capitalism on the minds of people today. Although she acknowledged that it is OK to want nice things, she warned not at the expense of "our brothers and sisters."

Junior biology major Aysia Mayo described Davis' lecture as "empowering" and "life changing."

"I have been somewhat conscious of black issues in the last couple of years but this really made me want to go out and do something about it. She's an awesome speaker and is so intelligent," Mayo said.

"If anyone gets a chance to hear anything from her, they need to listen," Mayo added. "It will change their perspective on how they view everyday life."

Senior history major Alonzo Parks, a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. Alpha chapter member, which co-chaired the event, said he hoped that students took away from the lecture the idea that "activism just doesn't end with being politically active. It really starts in the community, it starts back home..."

Brittany Hutson writes for The Hilltop, Howard University’s student newspaper, which originally published a version of this story.

Posted Jan. 31, 2008