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After 50 years on the front lines of the fight for equality and freedom, Angela Davis remains one of the world’s most important voices for justice. Hilton Als sits down with the influential legendary activist at a celebration in support of Marcus Books, the nation’s oldest Black-Owned bookstore.
The iconic activist and philosopher Angela Davis has been a major influence in global politics for more than 50 years. Davis first gained fame in the 1960s and 70s through her work within second-wave feminism and Marxist advocacy, specifically fighting against the firing of Communist professors at University of California. More recently, she has fought for prison abolition and spoken out in support of anti-imperialist movements, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. Davis has been a controversial figure for her entire career, but recently institutions like UCLA, Pomona College, and The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, who opposed Davis in the past, have invited her back to lecture and receive awards. She takes the City Arts stage to discuss a lifetime of activism and her new book, Abolition, Politics, Practices, Promises (Vol I).
A staff writer at The New Yorker since 1994, cultural critic Hilton Als writes about everything from queer identities in Barbados to the life of Richard Pryor. His best-selling collection of essays, White Girls, was published in 2013, and he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2017. Since then, he has become a more visible public intellectual, drawing more readers through his “insightful and deep-thinking approach [which] gives him access to the emotionally resonant and profound” (Dazed).
Photo by kk ottesen