Angela Davis discusses gender violence, historical erasure of women's activism

Political activist, scholar and writer Angela Davis said that violence is an indication of the impossibility of imagining livable futures in a lecture Thursday.

Davis described several harrowing experiences of gender and sexual violence in the United States, including both instances that she has witnessed firsthand and others that were experienced by victims for which she has worked to defend and raise awareness.

"I ... remember, as a child, a late night walk on our front door by a woman who was fleeing a man, who I later found out had raped her," she said.

Recalling whispered conversations in elementary school about children who were the victims of sexual assault, Davis said she found it strange that these children were perceived as partly responsible for the sexual assaults.

Davis noted that she also picked up a woman from the side of the road who had been raped in another situation.

"A police [officer] had come by, and she thought that she was going to get help from the police officer, but he had also sexually assaulted her and left her there," she said.

A Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Davis was closely affiliated with the Black Panther Party through her participation in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. She has also worked as a prominent prison reform activist with Critical Resistance, an organization which she helped found.

One of the many examples of Davis’s work to advocate for the rights of sexual assault victims featured Joan Little, an African-American woman from North Carolina who was initially charged with the murder of a prison guard while she was in jail.

"We built this campaign at a time when, in the mainstream 70's movement, there was a growing consciousness about the need to challenge sexual assault," she said.

The officer had attempted to force Little to submit to rape, which prompted Little to stab him to death with the screwdriver that he threatened her with, according to Davis. This prompted Davis and her colleagues to kick off a campaign in support of Joan Little, arguing that she killed the officer out of self-defense.

Ultimately, Little became the first woman to be acquitted of murder on the justification that she had killed in order to prevent sexual assault.

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Davis said that this legal success was a turning point, a major sign of recognition for the anti-rape and anti-violence movements. Up until that point, these movements had not received an adequate level of respect, noted Davis.

Regarding the African-American civil rights movement, Davis also noted how historical records have almost always underestimated or erased the role that women play.

For instance, Davis said, Rosa Parks has only recently been acknowledged for her major role as an investigator of sexual assault cases and not only as an African-American civil rights activist.

"Why is it so difficult to posit black women and women of color as exemplary?" Davis asked.

Davis also discussed the influential work of Rosa Parks in bringing justice for an African-American woman named Recy Taylor, who was kidnapped and gang raped by white men in 1944. In response, Davis noted how Parks organized “the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor,” which quickly gathered support across the United States from African-American organizations, labor unions and women’s’ rights groups.

Davis said Parks’s actions are one example of historical accounts that have failed to accurately keep women in the spotlight — especially with issues relating to anti-rape and anti-violence.

“What is very interesting to think about is that it was a campaign for sexual assault that made it possible for what we call the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ to emerge," she said.

Despite these setbacks, Davis noted how proud she was of the leaders of the modern Black Rights Matter movement and how hopeful she is for the future. According to Davis, this movement has reignited a valuable social dialogue concerning mass incarceration rates in the United States, especially those of African-American men and women.

Davis also jokingly remarked that she would hopes "old folks like her" would stop having to give young activists advice, letting them create their own unique paths as they pursue social justice movements. The ability to carve one’s own way and to bounce back from mistakes is why young people are always at the forefront of movements such as Black Lives Matter, Davis said.

"Abolition encourages us to think beyond retribution, beyond vengeance, beyond the carceral, toward ways of possibly eventually depositing gender violence into the dustbin of history," she said.

The lecture was delivered as a keynote speech for the "Gender, Violence and Anti-Violence Conference" in front of a packed audience in the McCosh 50 lecture hall. The conference will continue until April 2, and will feature a host of speakers.

The conference was organized and sponsored by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and was co-sponsored by the following groups: Princeton Public Lectures Edge Lecture Fund, the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University’s Women’s Center, the Program in Law and Public Affairs, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies.