Thread by @ajplus

Last month, scandal erupted when @bhamcivilrights revoked a civil rights award for scholar/activist Angela Davis – due to her support for Palestinian independence. But after global outcry, the org reversed the decision.

@JenLouiseWilson with a thread for #BlackHistoryMonth:

In 1970, Angela Davis was accused of buying guns later used in a fatal courthouse shooting. At the time, she was a member of the Che-Lumumba group, an all-black chapter of the Communist Party USA.

Activists around the world believed the charges and trial were politically motivated. They launched a massive international campaign to raise money for Angela Davis’s legal defense. People in over 67 countries founded groups devoted to freeing her.

In Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), a three-day vigil involving over 2,000 women was held outside of the American embassy as a show of solidarity with Davis.

Public campaigns to free Angela Davis were especially prominent in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries, where Davis was seen as a victim of anti-communism.

Time magazine reported that "Angelamania" had taken over East Berlin. The communist youth movement there organized a stamp collecting campaign, "A Million Roses for Angela," so that German citizens could send Davis letters in jail. ajplus.co/99y9u

Soviet schoolchildren wrote personalized letters of support to Davis as part of a statewide campaign.

The letters filled over 200 boxes. ajplus.co/n35me

After her acquittal and release in 1972, Davis thanked her international supporters with visits to Cuba, East Germany and the Soviet Union. In Moscow, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

In January 2019, as activists around the world began to call for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to reinstate the award, Davis acknowledged the irony:

"My own freedom was secured – and indeed my life was saved – by a vast international movement."

To this day, Davis remains committed to fighting injustice on a global scale. She has spoken out in support of Dalits in India and political prisoners in the Basque Country.

In a recent speech in Chicago, she told the crowd: "We need to not think of ourselves as so ensconced in domestic struggles that we fail to recognize how important international solidarity is."

ajplus.co/7qlec

A selection of Angela Davis books:

• "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism" (1999)
• "Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture and Empire" (2005)
• "The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues" (2012)
• "Freedom Is a Constant Struggle" (2015)