Happy Birthday, Angela Y. Davis

Born January 26, 1944, Birmingham, AL

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).

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Angela Y. Davis in 1974, Bernard Gotfryd.

“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.”

Angela Y. Davis at Oregon State University, 2019, photographer unknown.

“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.”

Angela Davis’s An Autobiography (Random House, 1974) chronicles the author’s life to 1972 and reflects on the people and events that influenced her activism supporting the global liberation of the oppressed. In Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (Random House, 1999), Davis considers the blues singers Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday and how their music reflects Black women’s lives. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (Haymarket Books, 2016) collects a number of Davis’s essays, interviews, and speeches.

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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.