Posted on 02/13/2013 8:21:06 PM PST by bigtoona
Civil rights activist Angela Davis has courted controversy all her life – including a stint on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list – but there was a definite sense of admiration when she spoke Wednesday at Charlotte’s Booth Playhouse.
The intent of Davis’ lecture, organized by the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts & Culture, was to give a select group of Mecklenburg County middle and high school students a chance to hear about the impact activists can have on the world when they get organized.
But a few dozen adults managed to slip in, too, and for them it was a chance to spend 60 minutes with a hero of the civil rights movement, one who wasn’t afraid to have ties in the 1960s to the Black Panthers or the Communist Party.
Gloria Kelley of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees was among the first to show up.
“I was raised in that era, and it was a time when Angela Davis would stand up for things when no one else would,” said Kelley.
“To hear her brings back the idea of true pride in a race of people, and that sense of family that we seem to have lost now within black neighborhoods.”
Davis, who is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, showed no signs Wednesday that the years have mellowed her views.
She told the crowd that everyone should be a feminist. She wants the nation to change its approach to justice, which she said was focused on vengeance for crimes. And she called for prisons to be abolished as the chief form of punishment.
She ‘rocked the boat’
Davis has herself been a prisoner. She was held in connection with a high-profile courtroom incident in 1970, when a judge was murdered in Marin County, Calif. She was not there at the time, but the guns used were registered in her name, she said.
Davis was eventually acquitted of involvement, after 16 months in jail.
Among the more humorous points of her lecture was a recollection of the moment she learned of being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
“I was in Florida, watching an episode of The F.B.I. (TV show) with (actor) Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and he comes up with this big poster of me,” she recalled, laughing. “And he describes me as armed and dangerous and not to attempt to capture me if you see me. Contact local law enforcement.”
Hattie Hedgepeth, 72, was among those who came to hear the lecture. She noted there was a time Davis was not held in high esteem by much of the nation.
“She was a radical who rocked the boat and that went against the grain of ‘civilized America,’ ” Hedgepeth said, as she surveyed the crowd.
“That’s what makes this (lecture) so amazing. We have children – in the South – who have come here to see her speak. It’s something I never in my mind imagined. What a huge turnaround for this country.”
Sitting beside her was Dee Jones, 60, a retired domestic violence advocate. For her, Davis brought back a flood of memories, including names of other activists like H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael.
“I hope these children learn that they can make a better world,” Jones said, “and I hope they go home and teach their parents.”
Then with a grin, she raised one fist and smiled.
“Black power.”
So the school district buses kids to hear a lefty terrorist, but if they thought about sending them to hear any conservative this would be about mass firings and resignation pressures.
“She noted there was a time Davis was not held in high esteem by much of the nation.”
She still isn’t, Hattie: She’s `Jane Fonda Lite’. You can get back on your rocker now.
Still trying to sell crazy.
You are much too lenient.
They should be lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of a pock marked brick wall, wearing a blindfold and having what's left of a smouldering cigarette dangling from their lips.
That, after all, is what communist revolutionaries have in mind for us ...
I remember when angela davis ‘defected’ to cuba. castro put her in the sugar cane fields chopping sugar cane.
After three months she came back saying that she was ‘disillsioned’.
He knows these people...he was one of them until they killed his secretary.
"Down is up, up is down....." (Al Gore speech, 1992)
She is now 69 years old.
Leni
Her “afro” hair was so big she could hide a gun in it.
right is wrong and wrong is right...
look at Micheal Jackson... a pedophile....revered by the media and the sheeple...
its just too much anymore...
on a side note, maybe Angela could talk to these kids about the enormous amount of violence that blacks perpetrate on other races and especially women of all races...start there Angie and be honest about it....
 Angela Davis back in the day |
Davis was eventually acquitted of involvement, after 16 months in jail.
She was an accomplice to murder. Some of her Black Panther friends took a judge hostage, taped the barrel of a shotgun to his head, and marched him out of the courthouse in an attempt to free a prisoner. I don't remember exactly what happened, but the shotgun went off at some point and killed the judge. The guns were registered to Angela Davis. Before and after the incident, she was a teacher at UCLA.
Absolutely disgusting that she was released from prison, and that a state school would pay the salary of a murderer.
The fact Davis has fans is nothing new. Her avowed hardcore communist ideology got her a teaching job at UC Berkeley in the late ‘60s. She had quite the following in California back then.
Jack the Ripper and Charles Manson also have “fans.”
Big deal - read a newspaper any day of the week in any city in the United States and it will tell you one thing for certain: there is an army of mental defectives roaming around all over the place.
Heck, they’re running the White House and congress, for crying out loud.
She joined the CP,USA in 1973 and has been Comrade Angela ever since. Sang the praises of the Soviet Union until long after it went to the ash heap of history, where she belongs.
Only Angela has lifetime tenure instead, can’t get enough of them filthy capitalist dollars!
The Democratic Party is now the operational arm of the CPUSA
It’s funny how blacks can have pride in their race, but if whites are proud , they are racists.
Certainly she has fans, so does Dorner and Mumia abu Jamal.
I remember attending the Milwaukee Irish Fest a few years ago and watching a speech given by Tom Hayden at the cultural site. Hayden spoke about his Irish ancestry and joked about being beaten by the police during his radical days. I thought to myself they didn't beat him hard enough.
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