Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates the eightieth birthday of political philosopher, educator, activist, and author Angela Y. Davis. She has received international recognition for her political activism, including induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and inclusion on Time Magazine’s 2020 list of the top 100 most influential people in the world. Davis received an American Book Award in 1998 for Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (Pantheon Books, 1998).
Subscribe to our newsletter for news about upcoming online conversations with Best American Essays contributors about essayists.
“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.”
“Our histories never unfold in isolation. We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories without knowing the other stories. And often we discover that those other stories are actually our own stories.”

First published nonfiction book:
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, Third Press, 1971; reissued by Verso, 2016.
Select nonfiction bibliography:
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, Haymarket Books, 2016.
Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Pantheon Books, 1998.
Women, Culture, and Politics, Random House, 1989.
Women, Race, and Class, Random House, 1981.
Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Random House, 1974; reissued by Haymarket Books, 2023.
See also:
Visit the archived papers of Angela Y. Davis, 1937-2017 (inclusive), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.
Watch The Irresistible Conversation: Angela Y. Davis with Nikky Finney, USC College of Arts and Sciences, 2022.
Watch In Conversation with Angela Y. Davis, SMU Human Rights Program, 2021.
Watch an Interview with Angela Y. Davis, Black Journal WNET TV, 1972.
Read “Angela Y. Davis in Conversation with Lucius Outlaw Jr.: A Critical Conversation on Contemporary Crises,” The Phoenix, 2024
Read “Ladies Sing the Blues,” a New York Times review of Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 1997. Includes a link to the first chapter of the book.
Read the transcript of an interview with Angela Y. Davis, FrontLine, 1997.
Fabulous list of resources. Thank you. Angela Davis was my heroine when I was a teenager in a small town in Essex, England in the seventies. Her reach was considerable.