Angela Davis: “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation” (1971)
In 1971 the civil rights activist Angela Davis was a prisoner in the Marin County (California) jail. There she wrote “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation,” published that year in a collection she edited, If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance. The essay marks Davis’s early commitment to prison reform and the liberation of black prisoners. She was in jail at the time because of the death of California Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, who was shot with a gun registered in Davis’s name during a botched effort to free a prisoner from a California courtroom. Davis’s incarceration drew international attention, and she was eventually acquitted of all charges, but her life was forever marked by this incident. Not only did it influence her career as an activist, it also informed and directed her efforts for prison reform. Davis, a prolific writer and lecturer, focused throughout her life on issues of social inequality. Outlining the sociopolitical...
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where four girls died in a bombing carried out by the Ku Klux Klan (Library of Congress)
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