Celebrate MLK Day with OSU and Angela Davis
Looking for a meaningful way to celebrate MLK Day in Oregon?
Oregon State University's 39th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration on January 18th, 2021 will kick off a week of events focused on helping the Oregon State community learn about and reflect on the life and legacy of Dr. King and collaboratively envision ways to carry his work forward. (You can view the schedule of events at the end of this article.)
The celebration is OSU’s longest-running annual event focused on social justice and transformative change.
The three goals outlined for the celebration are:
Learn about and reflect on the life and legacy of Dr. King and collaboratively envision ways to carry forward his work;
Participate in an impactful, inclusive and engaging celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. King; and
Collaboratively learn about and reflect on the legacy of Dr. King in a way that is relevant in today's context.
OSU’s celebration of Dr. King will feature legendary civil rights leader, and political activist, Angela Davis, as the keynote speaker. Davis’ will answer questions and speak to current and past movements and one can guess that after a year of increased political tensions between racial justice groups and law enforcement that it will be one worth hearing. Davis has long called for the US to address racial bias in the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex.
Source. Pictured Angela Davis
About Angela Davis
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
Early Years
Davis was born in racially segregated Birmingham, Alabama during the 1940s and ’50s. While Davis was living there Birmingham came to be known as “Bombingham” due to the numerous terror campaigns run by the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) in the city from 1947 to 1965. The campaign involved numerous bombings of African American homes and churches. Black families that attempted to move to the west side of Center Street in Birmingham had their doors burned, their homes shot at and bombed by the KKK. Causing the neighborhood where Davis grew up to become nicknamed “Dynamite Hill”.
Growing up seeing frequent fires, gun violence, and bombings carried out by the Klu Klux Clan, Davis came to understand quickly that the justice system was set up to criminalize people of color at every turn and to protect white people at all costs, even those white people who were bombing African American homes. In 1965 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover identified Robert Chambliss aka “Dynamite” Bob , Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash and Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. as suspects in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing but the investigation was closed in 1968 and no charges were filed. (Chambliss wasn’t convicted until 1977 and Blanton and Cherry weren’t tried, convicted, and incarcerated until 2001 and 2002, respectively.) KKK violence lurked on every street corner at every turn but it wasn’t just the KKK that Davis was up against for her own survival. The police and federal government also played a key role in the violence that unfolded in Birmingham. The law and law enforcement, despite preaching that separate was equal, would bring no justice to black and brown bodies as their lives were taken from them. Any attempts at desegregation were met with threats of violence and in high school when Davis organized an interracial study group. The study group faced harassment and was broken up by police.
Davis grew up with a love of learning. Her mother worked as an elementary school teacher and was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When her mother went to New York University to get her degree, Davis also came to New York City and found there hope for a more integrated future. Both mother and daughter fought hard to become college-educated in an environment where women-especially women of color were not encouraged to do so. Davis received numerous scholarships and received high praise from her teachers. She studied philosophy, Marxism, communism, and fought against the racial and gender divide.
“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.”
FBI’s Most Wanted
The same FBI which notoriously went after Dr.King calling him “the most dangerous Negro” and under the leadership of its director J. Edgar Hoover, made active attempts to dismantle King's work and influence in the 1960’s also made Davis a target.
In the late 1960s, Davis joined several groups seeking racial justice, including the Black Panthers and Che-Lumumba Club, an all-black branch of the Communist party. In 1970 Davis spent two months on the run from the FBI after being put on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List”. After two months the FBI caught up to her and arrested her in New York City for connection to a shootout that had happened in a California court. According to Davis biography on FemBio “On behalf of three prisoners at Soledad prison, who had tried to organize a Marxist group among fellow prisoners and were often abused by the prison officials, Davis began to organize protests, raise funds for their defense, and speak publicly calling for their release. She had received threats by phone and mail, and so she purchased guns for her protection. The guns were used by the brother of one of the “Soledad brothers” in a court-room rescue attempt in 1970. In the shoot-out, a judge and others were killed, and Davis was implicated by the guns.”
Although Davis had not participated in the crime, according to California laws, “all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense or not, are principals in the crime”. President Richard Nixon congratulated the FBI on the “capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis.”
Source. Pictured: Free Angela and all Political Prisoners Documentary Poster
Davis’ arrest sparked nationwide protests, inspired a song by John Lennon and Yoko Ono and a 2012 documentary chronicling Davis’s life of the young college professor and how her social activism implicated her in a botched kidnapping attempt that ended with a shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI’s most-wanted list. In total Davis spent 18 months in jail from October 1970 until June 4th, 1972. She faced the death penalty and lived to tell the tale and became a strong voice advocating for the end of the death penalty which is a punishment disproportionately inflicted upon people of color. The ACLU has supported those findings and also stated in the past that “A systemic racial bias in the application of the death penalty exists at both the state and federal level. A moratorium on the death penalty is needed to address this miscarriage of justice.”
“I could be in prison, I could have been sentenced to spend the rest of my life behind bars. And it was only because of the organising that unfolded all over the world that my life was saved. So, in a sense, my continued work is based on the awareness that I would not be here had enough people not done the same kind of work for me. And I’ll continue to do this until the day I die.”
Career and Recent Years
Davis was acquitted of all charges and upon being freed, she resumed her role as an educator and social activist. A nationally and internationally acclaimed lecturer, Davis teaching career has taken her all over, a few of the school’s she’s taught at include San Francisco State University, Mills College, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Vassar, Claremont Colleges, Stanford University, and the University of California where she is now a Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Professor of Feminist Studies.
“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”
Davis is credited with helping forge the modern 21st-century prison abolitionist movement. Davis is the founding member of Critical Resistance, an organization that aims to dismantle the prison industrial complex. Critical Resistance has said,
“Through its reach and impact, the prison industrial complex helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic, and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the prison industrial complex, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for “tough on crime” politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US. PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.”
Davis has urged the nation to move away from the privatization of prisons and rethink rehabilitation programs. Her work has drawn attention to public concerns about the disproportionate number of people of color housed in the American prison system and how it reveals the racism embedded within the justice system. Internationally she is also affiliated with Sisters Inside, an Australian abolitionist organization that advocates for the collective human rights of women and girls in prison.
““Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.”
Davis came out as a lesbian in OUT magazine in the 1998’s. But has been private about her relationships. She is currently partnered to Gina Dent
Davis is the author of many books including If They Come in the Morning (1971), Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race, and Class (1980), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1989), Women, Culture and Politics (1989), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Abolition Democracy (2005), and The Meaning of Freedom (2012). Her most recent book Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (2016) is a collection of essays, interviews, and speeches in which Davis brings her perspective of decades of civil rights advocacy to present day movements such as Black Lives Matter and prison reform.
Davis was an honorary co-chair of the January 21, 2017, Women's March on Washington, which occurred the day after President Donald Trump's inauguration.
In 2020 Time magazine listed Davis as 1971’s "Woman of the Year" and praised her dedication to bettering the lives of those locked in the struggle for equality in America, saying that “For decades, she has unflinchingly defended black women, black prisoners, the black poor—and all women, all prisoners, all poor people—when few Americans would. She has defended America from the clutches of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism, poverty, and incarceration when few Americans would.”
Register to hear Davis speak on MLK Day here.
OSU’s 39th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Schedule of Events:
All events are free and open to all!
Learn more and register by clicking on the link after each description below.
To see a full schedule of the week’s events click here.
Monday, January 18, 2021
9:30-10:30 Plenary Speaker - Angela Davis, American political activist
Legendary civil rights and political activist, Angela Davis, will speak. This is in partnership with OSU Extension Open Campus program. Learn more and register here.
11:00-12:00 Change Like Never Before: from the Civil Rights Era to BLM
Join retired high school teacher, Evelyn Charity in this follow up to Angela Davis’s address. Explore the history of racism in our state and region and where we go from here.Register here.
1:00-2:00 Immigration Reform: Our Work in 2021
Local immigration lawyer, MariRuth Petzing, will lead a discussion about immigration policies and reform in 2021. What can we do? Learn more and register here.
3:00-4:00 A Country Politically Divided: Where do we go from here?
Pamela Larsen, artist and teacher, will introduce us to the national group, “Braver Angels”. It strives to bridge divides through constructive, non-polarizing discussions. Learn more and register here.
5:00-6:00 Real Testimonies - Broken Dreams What is your dream?
What are you willing to fight for? Join Graciela Gómez and June Harper for this bilingual listening and discussion session. Hear real stories from members of our community and consider what role you can play in mending broken dreams. Register here.
7:00-8:00 Weaving the Beloved Community: An Evening of Music and Celebration
We are challenged by unprecedented times but Dr. King reminds us that we are tied together in a common destiny. Join us as we remind each other of the dream of Dr. King and gain strength together for the year ahead and the work we are called to do. Learn more and register here.
Somos Uno is committed to making this event accessible to all.
Simultaneous Spanish interpretation offered of Real Testimonies session and evening celebration
For information before the event, contact Ann Harris (541) 806-2525
For technology help during the event, contact Laura Robinson (206) 465-1379
The event is sponsored by Oregon State University, the Office of Institutional Diversity, the OSU Foundation and the OSU Alumni Association.
To see a full schedule of the week’s events click here.
You can watch the 2021 Virtual March for Racial Justice here or below.
This short documentary covers important moments in the long struggle of Black students for racial justice at OSU and beyond. Produced by students and staff at OSU.
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