[Uwhistory] Angela Davis lecture, april 17, 7pm (fwd)

[Lori Anthony]

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ANGELA DAVIS, Danz Lecture Series Feminist Writer April 17, 2007, 7pm
University of Washington, Seattle
Kane Hall, Room 130

Free ticket required, available from University Book Store starting April 
3rd.(206) 543-5900


Lecture Title: Civil Rights and Human Rights: Future Trajectories

Biography: Angela Y. Davis is known internationally for her ongoing work 
to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Over the years 
she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar and 
activist/organizer. She is a living witness to the historical struggles of 
the contemporary era.

  Davis' political activism began when she was a youngster in Birmingham, 
AL, and continued through her high school years in New York. But it was 
not until 1969 that 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.

  Davis' long-standing commitment to prisoners' rights dates back to her 
involvement in the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers, which led to her 
own arrest and imprisonment. Today, she remains an advocate of prison 
abolition and has developed a powerful critique of racism in the criminal 
justice system. In 1997, Prof. Davis helped found Critical Resistance, a 
national organization dedicated to dismantling the Prison Industrial 
Complex (PIC), a topic that is central to her current scholarship and 
activism.

  Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals and 
anthologies, and she is the author of five books, including Angela Davis: 
An Autobiography; Women, Race & Class (1989); and Blues Legacies and Black 
Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday; The 
Angela Y. Davis Reader (1999), a collection of Davis' writings that spans 
nearly three decades, was published in 1998.

  Former California Governor Ronald Reagan once vowed that Davis would 
never again teach in the University of California system. From 1994 to 
1997, she held the distinguished honor of an appointment to the University 
of California Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies. 
Today, she is a tenured professor in the History of Consciousness 
Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Sponsors: The Graduate School, The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the 
Humanities