Angela Davis

Angela Davis is a prominent civil rights figure and American political activist, professor and author. She drew national attention in 1969 after she was fired from job at UCLA due to her social activism and her active membership with the Communist Party. The following year, she was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List on false charges. She was acquitted two years later after the international “Free Angela Davis” campaign. Eventually, she went on to found Critical Resistance, an organization working to dismantle the prison industrial complex. Today, she is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

When Black Feminist Movements Receive Sustained and Abundant Resources, the World Wins

As the world approaches a critical juncture with over half its population heading to the polls by the end of 2024, philanthropy faces a pivotal moment.

While conservative foundations intensify funding to restrict rights, progressive donors often stall. Black feminist movements, working at the forefront of transformative change, receive a shockingly small fraction of philanthropic funds—between 0.1 to 0.35 percent. There is an urgent need for philanthropy to support these efforts in the face of growing global challenges and anti-rights organizing.

(This essay is part of a Women & Democracy package focused on who’s funding the women and LGBTQ people on the frontlines of democracy. We’re manifesting a new era for philanthropy—one that centers feminism. The need is real: Funding for women and girls amounts to less than 2 percent of all philanthropic giving; for women of color, it’s less than 1 percent. Explore the “Feminist Philanthropy Is Essential to Democracy” collection.)

Angela Davis’s Legacy of Collective Solidarity

“The masculinist mode of representing history makes it so that, too often, credit is not given where it’s due.” These words—among an impassioned treasure-trove of others—were delivered by longtime political activist, radical queer feminist, writer and scholar Angela Davis this past Monday night. On the 43rd anniversary of her release from prison following her acquittal […]

Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth

I am the woman: Dark, repaired, healed Listening to you. … —Alice Walker, from her poem “Remember?” For more than four decades, Alice Walker has used the written word to make visible that which has been made invisible as a result of exploitation and marginalization. Equally as important, she is a humanitarian and social-change agent […]

Top 100 Feminist Non-Fiction Countdown: 40-31

As we get closer to the top, here are career-defining works from the likes of Angela Y. Davis, Kate Bornstein, Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof, Patricia Hill Collins, Susie Orbach and Mary Pipher. If you’ve heard of these folks, it’s probably because of the books below. If you haven’t, you have some great reading ahead! […]

What Would an Intersectional Women’s History Month Look Like?

Women’s History Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the legacy of global women. Yet, year after year, the faces of Women’s History Month are the same: slideshows and commemorative stamps of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. These women all provided groundbreaking work for women’s rights, […]

Can’t Stop the Women of Hip-Hop

My awakening to Black feminist thought came in 1989 when Queen Latifah, with British rapper Monie Love, rapped about “Ladies First” and opened the music video for this powerful track with a pantheon of fierce Black feminist icons: Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Frances E. W. Harper. Coincidentally, in the realm of the academy, Patricia Hill Collins […]

Empowered and Sexy

Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality and Popular Culture by Tulane University professor Shayne Lee (Hamilton  Books, 2010) revolutionizes the politics of black female respectability. Instead of writing about how hypersexualized representations hurt black women, Lee celebrates black female pop culture icons who purposefully hype uninhibited sexual agency. He defends Karinne Steffans, Tyra Banks, Alexyss Tylor […]