#BlackSpring in “BALTIMORE" from the forthcoming Nina Simone tribute album

From Michael Brown to Assata Shakur, the racist state of America persists

Angela Davis, The Guardian

Although racist state violence has been a consistent theme in the history of people of African descent in North America, it has become especially noteworthy during the administration of the first African-American president, whose very election was widely interpreted as heralding the advent of a new, postracial era.

"My Political Life Has Been Informed by the Struggle in South Africa" - Angela Davis

Johannesburg Workshop on Theory & Criticism

Ainehi Edoro:  60 intellectuals. One bus. 47 hours of road time. And the theme: "The Archives of the Non-Racial." What is your sense of what this intellectual project is about?

Angela Davis: The project is informed by place and space. This was the attraction for me---our movement from Johannesburg to Swaziland to the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape. I have visited South Africa on three other occasions, but this is the first that I’ve been able to acquire a real sense of space. Of course, it also has to do with the kinds of conversations that have been happening around the question of race and political struggle. I was primarily interested in this project because most of my political life, which is most of my life, has been informed by the struggle in South Africa.

Robin D.G. Kelley and Angela Davis: Freedom Dreams, Freedom Now!

Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn’t Wait on Obama

An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis

November 19, 1970

Dear Sister:

One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But, no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses. And so, Newsweek, civilized defender of the indefensible, attempts to drown you in a sea of crocodile tears (“it remained to be seen what sort of personal liberation she had achieved”) and puts you on its cover, chained.

You look exceedingly alone—as alone, say, as the Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or as any one of our ancestors, chained together in the name of Jesus, headed for a Christian land.

The Prison: A Sign of Democracy?

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Angela Davis Discusses the Prison Industrial Complex

Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex

by Angela Davis, History is a Weapon

Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

Angela Davis: An Autobiography

First published in 1974, when Angela Davis was 28, this is as fine a memoir of the 60s and 70s as you'll find. More than that, its a journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama to one of the most significant political trials of the 20th century; from political activity in a New York high school to the Soledad brothers; from the faculty of the Philosophy Dept. at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. A powerful and commanding story told with warmth, brilliance, humor, and conviction. And with a new introduction by the author. 

Women, Race and Class

Angela Davis, 1981, Marxists Internet Archive

The countless chores collectively known as “housework” – cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, making beds, sweeping, shopping etc. – apparently consume some three to four thousand hours of the average housewife’s year.^[1] As startling as this statistic may be, ir does not even account for the constant and unquantifiable attention mothers must give to their children. Just as a woman’s maternal duties are always taken for granted, her never-ending toil as a housewife rarely occasions expressions of appreciation within her family. Housework, after all, is virtually invisible: “No one notices it until it isn’t done – we notice the unmade bed, not the scrubbed and polished floor."^[2] Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative – these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.