Angela Y. Davis

Angela Y. Davis is widely recognized as the iconic figure of the Black Pride movement of the 1970s. Some know her as a former vice-presidential candidate for the Communist Party, while others recognize her as a significant feminist academic who has authored some of the most groundbreaking and enduring texts of feminist thought over the past twenty-five years. Additionally, a new generation of students, activists, and cultural workers became acquainted with her in 1997 when Professor Davis co-founded Critical Resistance, a nationwide organization dedicated to dismantling the prison-industrial complex, a central theme in her current academic work and political activism. Throughout her life, Davis has been an unwavering advocate, consistently focusing on opposing prisons, incarceration, and racialized punishment. Angela Davis teaches History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her works are the books "Are Prisons Obsolete?" and "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday." Her upcoming book, to be published by Columbia University Press, will be titled "Prisons and History."