Activist, educator, thought-leader, and scholar Dr. Angela Davis visited Taft as part of our Black History Month celebration. In addition to a Morning Meeting talk in Bingham, Dr. Davis led a question and answer session attended by a standing-room-only, overflow crowd in the Black Box Theater. She also met with the student leaders of Taft’s affinity groups in the library, and had lunch with community members. To prepare for her visit, Taft students read some of Dr. Davis’s literary works in their English classes, and submitted questions in advance for the Q & A.⁠

Through her activism and scholarship over many decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world. Her work as an educator—both at the university level and in the larger public sphere—has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice. Dr. Davis has taught at a range of colleges and universities over the years, including UCLA, Stanford, Vassar, and Claremont Colleges. Most recently, she spent 15 years at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness—an interdisciplinary PhD program—and of Feminist Studies.⁠

Dr. Davis's political activism began when she was a child in Birmingham, Alabama, and continued through her high school years in New York. In 1969, she came to national attention after being removed from her teaching position in the Philosophy Department at UCLA as a result of her social activism and her membership in the Communist Party, USA. In 1970 she was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List on false charges, and was the subject of an intense police search that drove her underground and culminated in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. During her sixteen-month incarceration, a massive international "Free Angela Davis" campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.⁠

Dr. Davis is the author of ten books, innumerable articles, and has lectured across the globe.

Watch her full Morning Meeting talk below.