Today’s OF spotlight falls on black feminist activist and high-profile public intellectual Angela Davis (b. Jan 26, 1944), here seen sporting the most iconic ‘fro ever…
In the quote below she is scratching some of the raw surfaces of the mythologized imagery of slavery and the Middle Passage:
“We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.” — A.D.
