African history: key periods and developments

Angela Davis is one of the most well-known and recognizable figures from the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras. As both a card-carrying member of the Communist party and the Black Panthers, she was no stranger to controversy, and her outspoken and fierce attitude earned her as many detractors as it did followers in her early days of activism. Over time, she has gained more respect, and her position as a university professor has helped to solidify this. Much of her career and life as an activist, however, is still something of an enigma. The clarity with which she describes her beginnings in activism is a true testament to her intelligence. Given how confusing a time this was, and the many internal conflicts Davis went through in her struggle to carve out an identity for herself that was not stigmatized by her race or gender, it is remarkable that she was able to make any rational sense of this period in her life. The fact that her account is so lucid and revelatory just makes it that much more amazing.

Davis begins this explanation by providing some important details about the circumstances of her childhood. Living in a neighborhood that was not just predominantly but completely populated by African-Americans, Davis does not remember ever interacting with a white person aside from the Jewish grocer who owned the store in their neighborhood, and she "lived on the border separating Black from white and could not cross the street o which our house was located" (Davis 319). These formative experiences created a racial identity for Davis that consisted largely of perceiving herself as an "other," and as something that needed to be changed (as evidenced by her use of a hot comb to straighten her "nappy" hair). Davis grew up with a mentality of living in an enclosed and almost prison-like atmosphere, with real physical boundaries, solely because of the color of her skin and condition of her hair.

Davis cites Malcolm X as responsible for creating a shift in her sense of identity and empowerment. Interestingly, she states that it is because Malcolm X's speech was so offensive -- "offensive, both because he offended the white people in attendance and because he was ideologically offensive" -- that she was able to view her race as simply a part of her identity, and not necessarily the limiting and defining characteristic that white society had made her feel it was (Davis 319). She does not fully explain how Malcolm X's offensive language cetaed this shift in her, but some conjecture is certainly warranted. It is very likely that this is the first time Davis had ever witnessed someone speaking about white people in any sort of offensive way when they were within earshot. The eloquence and intelligence that Malcolm X consistently exhibited on top of the offensiveness of his statements doubtless obviously made a strong impression on Angela Davis, perhaps opening her eyes to the true power of the word.

Witnessing a black man like Malcolm X could speak in the open and unafraid way to and about white people about race was the eye opening experience for Davis in learning to assert her own race. The offensiveness of the language she heard meant that it was okay -- or at least seemed so -- for black people to talk to whites in the same manner they would talk to other African-Americans. Of course, the change in Davis was not immediate, and at first she felt that her newfound appreciation of her race was something that needed to be practiced only in secret, and her description makes it sound almost like a set of rituals she performed: "It was a secret thing -- like a collective, fictive playmate. This thing distanced me from the white people around me while simultaneously rendering controllable the distance I had always felt from them"(Davis 319).

Over time -- in fairly short order, in fact -- Davis got over this sense of secretiveness, and soon many of her actions were matters of national news. She reflects that this celebrity has made it difficult at times both for her to arrive at and explain the truth of her own role in the movement, and the motives and constructs that allowed for the movement to happen in the manner it did: "I know that almost inevitably my image is associated with a certain representation of Black nationalism that privileges those particular nationalisms with which some of us were locked in constant battle" (Davis 322). Davis (somewhat) clarifies this statement in explaining that the "nationalism" with which many typify the Civil Rights struggle -- especially the Black Panthers -- was perhaps radical but did not aim at isolation, and she cites several instances where cooperation with other marginalized groups was encouraged by supposedly "nationalistic" figures, including associations with the gay liberation movement (Davis 323).

Davis also notes the ill effects that this misperception of the nationalism assumed to be a part of some portions of the Civil Rights movement in modern society. One area of special interest to Davis is the music and culture of hip-hop, which originated as another way to assert independence and separation from white society but which also carries with many negative views. As Davis puts it, hip-hop culture "sometimes advocates a nationalism with such misogynistic overtones that it militates against the very revolutionary practice it appears to promote" (Davis 324). Or, to put this in simpler terms, the marginalization of women that occurs in much of hip-hop culture serves the oppressors far more than the oppressed, and creates a disharmony in a situation where the only goal really worth attaining is unity and solidarity.