Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

LGBT HISTORY MONTH Angela Davis, revolutionary
By Victoria A. Brownworth
2021-10-24

This article shared 2184 times since Sun Oct 24, 2021
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email


"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time," said Angela Davis, 78, the country's most famous living revolutionary. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most incendiary of the racist Jim Crow Southern cities, in a neighborhood nicknamed "Dynamite Hill" because of attacks on Black people by their white neighbors. Davis would rise to become an international beacon of anti-racist and feminist radicalism over decades, expanding her vision to include LGBTQ civil rights, Palestinian rights and her life's work against this country's carceral system.

A radical political activist and theorist, Davis gained fame in the 1960s and 1970s as a leader in the civil rights, Black power, and Black and feminist liberation movements. Pivoting off the Serenity prayer, Davis' most famous quote is the one that threads through all her activism: "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept."

Davis continues to do that work now, 60 years after enrolling at Brandeis University as one of only three Black students. After graduating from Brandeis, Davis studied with Frankfurt school philosopher Herbert Marcuse in Berlin. In a 2007 television interview, Davis said, "Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar and a revolutionary."

Davis was and is all those things. In 1969, while a professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and already a world-renowned activist, Davis was fired for being a Communist and for her "inflammatory language." Davis was also a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panthers at that time and identified as a radical feminist. Her firing was both urged and lauded by then Gov. Ronald Reagan, despite national support for her. UCLA's Board of Regents was censured by the American Association of University Professors for firing Davis.

The following year, Davis was listed among the FBI's Ten Most Wanted—the first Black woman to be on the FBI's fugitives list, which Director J. Edgar Hoover personally chose. The listing and subsequent manhunt came after guns Davis had purchased were used in an August 1970 shooting at the Marin County courthouse in California related to the Soledad Brothers, whom she supported as political prisoners.

The manhunt for Davis was massive, but it took several months to track her down, eventually resulting in her arrest in New York City. When Davis was apprehended, President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis."

But Davis was no terrorist and was acquitted of all charges after a 16-month prison stay without trial. An all-white jury deliberated for only 13 hours before finding her not guilty on June 4, 1972.

Davis' arrest and imprisonment were focal points for other activists and heightened her political profile and activism. Black writers formed a committee called the Black People in Defense of Angela Davis which grew to hundreds of chapters in nearly 70 countries. John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote a song, "Angela," in support.

Davis' incarceration—much of which was in solitary confinement—was a pivot for her own work on prison abolition, a central focus of her political activism over decades. But Davis' work has also been informed by her feminism and her time in Europe studying in Germany and working with activists there. She also visited Eastern Bloc countries in the 1970s and studied in East Germany.

Davis came out formally as a lesbian in 1997 in an interview with Out magazine. Her life partner is fellow professor and scholar Gina Dent, with whom she has collaborated on several projects.

A lifelong Communist, in 1980 and 1984 Davis was the Communist Party's candidate for vice president. She subsequently split from the Communist Party and in recent years supported Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for president, noting that it was essential to vote against the Republican Party leadership and oust them from the White House.

On prisons, Davis' writing is succinct as she links a series of social issues to America's carceral system which fosters racism and in which LGBTQ people are disproportionately imprisoned. She argues, "Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. 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."

In a 2020 interview, New York Times reporter Nelson George wrote of Davis, "Before the world knew what intersectionality was, the scholar, writer and activist was living it, arguing not just for Black liberation, but for the rights of women and queer and transgender people as well."

George also detailed Davis' focus on prisons, prisoners and abolition. A co-founder of Critical Resistance, an organization dedicated to abolishing the prison system, Davis has also written extensively about abolition and prisoners rights. In her 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete?, Davis argues for "decarceration" and "for the transformation of the society as a whole."

In that book Davis writes, "The most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor."

It is a revolutionary concept.

Davis has adapted her argument to describe "the abolitionist imagination" and "the mentality needed to see beyond how law enforcement works versus how it is currently."

Collaborating with Dent, Erica R. Meiners and Beth E. Ritchie, Davis wrote Abolition. Feminism. Now., which comes out in January 2022, courtesy of Haymarket Books.

In her interview with George, Davis talked about the protests in the summer of 2020 and made another causal link between police violence—which also spurred gay and trans people at Stonewall: "The abolitionist imagination delinks us from that which is. It allows us to imagine other ways of addressing issues of safety and security. Most of us have assumed in the past that when it comes to public safety, the police are the ones who are in charge. When it comes to issues of harm in the community, prisons are the answer. But what if we imagined different modes of addressing harm, different modes of addressing security and safety?"

Over the decades since her formal coming out, Davis has worked with and supported LGBTQ activists and activism. She frequently references the perils of "hetero-patriarchy" and lauds the work of the queer and lesbian women who founded Black Lives Matter in 2013.

In a 2004 in an interview on C-SPAN, Davis spoke about the civil-rights movement and parallels to the LGBTQ-rights movement. She said that the Black movement "created a terrain" for both second-wave feminism and LGBTQ-rights movements.

Archivist Lisbet Tellefsen, a longtime friend of Davis', asked her if she preferred to be labeled as queer or lesbian while working on a project highlighting the activist's life: "Angela Davis: OUTspoken at the GLBT Historical Society Museum." Tellefsen said in an interview with KQED, "She's like, 'I don't mind it.' I'd prefer anti-racist, anti-capitalist."

While Davis demurs from speaking directly about her own experience as a lesbian, she is often in concert with Dent in interviews and lectures. And other Black lesbian and queer women are determined that Davis be recognized as gay, as several pieces during Pride 2020 proclaimed. One of these had the in-your-face title: "Angela Davis Is a Dyke and Don't You Forget It," and argues that there is an investment in de-gaying Davis for that hetero-patriarchy Davis herself calls out.

In 2019, Davis was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and in 2020, she was listed as the 1971 "Woman of the Year" in Time magazine's "100 Women of the Year" edition, which covered the 100 years that began with women's suffrage in 1920. Davis was also included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

In Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, Davis gives a template for activism and recording our own stories. She writes, "Our histories never unfold in isolation. We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories without knowing the other stories. And often we discover that those other stories are actually our own stories."


This article shared 2184 times since Sun Oct 24, 2021
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

Almost 8% of U.S. residents identify as LGBTQ+
2024-03-16
The proportion of U.S. adults identifying as LGBTQ+ continues to increase. LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to grow, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as LGBTQ+, according to the newest Gallup poll results that ...


Gay News

Chicago History Museum announces "Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s - 70s exhibition
2024-03-14
--From a press release - CHICAGO (March 14, 2024) — The Chicago History Museum is thrilled to announce its upcoming exhibition, "Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s—70s." Set to open on Saturday, May 18, 2024, this exhibition is ...


Gay News

Women's History Month doesn't do enough to lift up Black lesbians
2024-03-12
Fifty years ago, in 1974, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) was founded in Boston by several lesbian and feminist women of African descent. As a sisterhood, they understood that their acts of protest were shouldered by ...


Gay News

No 'explanations' needed: Affinity remains a haven for Chicago's Black queer community
2024-03-12
Back in 2007, Anna DeShawn came out while she was studying for her undergraduate degree. At around the same time, she searched online for "Black lesbians in Chicago." Her search led her to Affinity Community Services, ...


Gay News

SAVOR Eldridge Williams talks new concepts, Beyonce, making history
2024-03-08
One restaurant would be enough for most people to handle. However, this year Eldridge Williams is opening two new concepts—including one that will be the first Black-owned country-and-western bar in the Midwest. Williams, an ally of ...


Gay News

Affinity Community Services' Latonya Maley announces departure
2024-03-06
Latonya Maley, executive director of Affinity Community Services, announced March 6 that she would be stepping down from her post. The announcement came from a statement with Affinity board members. Maley said that, "It has been ...


Gay News

LPAC celebrates historic wins for LGBTQ+ candidates in Super Tuesday primaries
2024-03-06
From a press release: Washington, DC—Today, LPAC,the nation's leading organization dedicated to electing LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary candidates to public office, proudly announces the outstanding victories of 67% of endorsed candidates ...


Gay News

SAVOR Let's Talk Womxn's 'More Than March'; Adobo Grill's tequila dinner
2024-03-06
I was fortunate enough to be invited to a culinary event that celebrates the achievement of women—and, fittingly, it happened during Women's History Month. On March 1, Let's Talk Womxn Chicago held its annual "More Than ...


Gay News

THEATER 'R & J' puts a female, queer spin on Shakespeare
2024-03-05
Romeo and Juliet is the theatrical gift that keeps on giving. It's been reworked for the masses numerous times, whether in direct adaptations or musicals such as West Side Story. Shakespeare's plotline points have even inspired ...


Gay News

Without compromise: Holly Baggett explores lives of iconoclasts Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap
2024-03-04
Jane Heap (1883-1964) and Margaret Anderson (1886-1973), each of them a native Midwesterner, woman of letters and iconoclast, had a profound influence on literary culture in both America and Europe in the early 20th Century. Heap ...


Gay News

Anti-LGBTQ+ Republican McConnell to step down from leading U.S. Senate
2024-02-29
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) will step down from Senate leadership in November, having served in that capacity longer than any senator in history, The Advocate noted. McConnell has been a senator since 1985 and has ...


Gay News

There she goes again: Author Alison Cochrun discusses writing journey
2024-02-27
By Carrie Maxwell When Alison Cochrun began writing her first queer romance novel in 2019, she had no idea it would change the course of her entire life. Cochrun, who spent 11 years as a high ...


Gay News

ELECTIONS 2024 Raymond Lopez talks congressional run, Chuy Garcia, migrant crisis
2024-02-26
Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez has been a member of City Council since 2015, representing the 15th Ward and making history as one of the city's first LGBTQ+ Latine alderman. Now, he is setting his sights on ...


Gay News

Samuel Savoir-Faire Williams's violin stylings help COH mark Black History Month
2024-02-23
As part of its celebration of Black History Month, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., presented a solo jazz performance by violinist Samuel Savoir-Faire Williams on Feb. 21. The two-hour long performance presented a showcase ...


Gay News

Brittney Griner's jersey retired at Baylor University
2024-02-20
On Feb. 18, Baylor University retired Brittney Griner's #42 jersey. Griner—a two-time AP national player of the year, two-time Olympic gold medalist and the NCAA women's career blocks leader (with 748)—attended a Bears home game ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.