My Mother and Angela Davis Made Me A Revolutionary

My mother made me a revolutionary. She did this by, among other things, having a copy of The Autobiography of Angela Davis on our bookshelf at home. Just having a book lying around was enough to set the course of my life.

I remember the day I discovered it wedged in between all of the Georgette Heyer romance novels that my mother adored reading. (I briefly went through a period where I was reading romance novels as well.) I was enamoured with the black woman with the afro on the cover, but had never opened it before. Then one day when I was around twelve or thirteen I decided to. My world changed. As I read I realized that a black woman could be a powerful force. A black woman could be a Black Panther and a philosopher and a college professor and also be on the America's Most Wanted List. A black woman could fight for her rights, and the rights of others, with strength and dignity. A black woman could SPEAK. I don't know why I didn't know it before. I was fascinated by Angela Davis' narrative about her time at the House of D and the way she was treated while awaiting trial for a crime she didn't commit. I just didn't KNOW the statistics of black people in correctional facilities until Angela Davis told me; I didn't know that slavery had taken on this new insidious form. How could I not have known? I'd never been associated with anyone who had been in prison. Incarcerated people were the invisible; Angela Davis made them visible to me and from that point on I really couldn't pretend that they weren't there.

Sometime around thirteen I learned the term 'political prisoner' and it's a term that resonates for me still now. To be imprisoned for one's beliefs and for acting one's beliefs, but to keep believing and acting on them anyway. To be brave enough to be who you are. To be brave enough to fight for what you know is right. To suffer for the greater good. To speak out against oppression and suffering. That's something.

Later while I was Yale as a undergrad Angela Davis came to speak and I was reminded of how much she moved me when I was just becoming a teenager. There she was, this FORCE - this WOMAN - who spoke with an eloquence and a strength and warm that filled me with a sense of purpose. She hardly seemed real and yet there she was. Her words rocked me to my core. Words and the ability to speak them is some powerful stuff. Words can really change lives.

After I graduated college I became involved with Rehabilation Through the Arts...and so it began, this journey I'm on...