Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

Activist, author, professor, and scholar Angela Davis is best known for her activism throughout the 1960s and 1970s and her ongoing work and commitment in supporting freedom struggles throughout the world. According to activist Frank Barat, the editor of this collection, Davis “is an embodiment of resistance” and “her ongoing work and presence [is] reflected in and inspiring to many of the collective liberation movements we see today” (xii). She has written several works about prison abolition, feminism, and Black liberation and often speaks about issues surrounding race, gender, and class. Her other popular books include Women, Race, and Class and Are Prisons Obsolete?. Additionally, Davis is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz in its History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies departments.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944, Davis grew up during the era of segregation with an active Ku Klux Klan. She witnessed racist attacks, and “bombs were planted repeatedly” by the Klan and other domestic terrorist groups targeting Black families in her neighborhood during her youth (75). So frequent were such bomb attacks that her neighborhood is known to have been commonly referred to as “Dynamite Hill.” She began her political activism at an early age, including participating in protests against segregation as a Girl Scout.