In a 2007 television interview, activist and academic Dr. Angela Davis stated that Herbert Marcuse had taught her that it was possible to be "an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary." Marcuse didn't mention anything about the possibility for the revolutionary of being also an icon, but this is what Angela Davis has become throughout the decades.
Immortalised on a wall in Throop Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn (that also features Bob Marley, Haile Selassie and Martin Luther King Jr.), with her Afro circling her head like a halo or a crown, Davis has fought throughout her life for Black liberation, the rights of women and queer and transgender people. She has therefore turned into a symbol of resistance, intelligence and rebellion, remembered also in songs (the Rolling Stones' "Sweet Black Angel" and John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Angela"). In some ways Davis has become a sort of pop culture icon like the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dubbed in recent years Notorius RGB and also turned into a fashionable icon of resistance.
A powerful image of Black femalehood, Davis appeared in Prada's S/S 18 collection: the latter featured illustrations by various artists, among the others there was also Trina Robbins' poster of Angela Davis stating "Sister, you are welcome in this house".
At the time Miuccia Prada did mention all the artists who contributed to the collection, but she didn't say anything about Angela Davis appearing on her designs, something that didn't seem fair (but in September 2017 Trina Robbins got in touch with Irenebrination via email to explain that the reason Miuccia Prada didn't use Angela Davis' name was simply because she had not gotten permission from Ms Davis, but from her, and maybe she was also afraid to ask for permission, lest it be refused).
The tables have turned now, though, as Davis has just collaborated with Los Angeles-based Renowned LA, releasing a T-shirt and a hoodie. The garments (selling respectively at $35 and $75) are part of a capsule collection entitled "Heroes of Blackness" with prints of power symbols within the Black community and badges with figures of the Black Panthers. According to Renowned's founder John Dean, the collection was a way to honour George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the many Black victims of police brutality, racial injustice and violence (a tag on the garments from this collections lists those who have died at the hands of police). The two Angela Davis garments feature images of political leaders and logos, the word "Dismantle" embroidered in red and the slogans "Fist Up" and "We Not Asking No More". Davis' life can't certainly be summarised in a garment, but this isn't the aim of this mini-collection that is more about empowerment.
Davis studied at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., under the philosopher Herbert Marcuse. After studying in Europe in the mid-'60s, she returned to the United States in 1967, and started supporting Communism. At the end of 1969, Davis, who was an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, was fired for her membership in the Communist Party. The termination was ruled to be illegal by a court, but Davis was fired again nine months later for her "inflammatory rhetoric" in public speeches.
In August 1970 Davis was prosecuted for conspiracy when the firearms used in the armed take-over of a Marin County, California, courtroom (four persons were killed during it) by Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of George Jackson (one of the Soledad Brothers; charged with the murder of a white prison guard in January 1970), were claimed to have been registered in her name.
Charged with three capital offenses, including murder, Davis fled California hiding in friends' homes and moving at night. Trina Robbins' poster stating "Sister, you are welcome in this house" had a story behind it: you could put it into your window and, if Angela Davis running away from law had seen the poster, she could walk in the door and be able to hide from the police.
Davis was eventually captured in October 1970, appeared at the Marin County Superior Court in January and declared her innocence, while people began organizing a movement to free her. She was released on bail in 1972 and declared not guilty in June of the same year.
Davis appears also in art: in Renato Guttuso's painting "The Funerals of Togliatti" (1972), she is among other communist figures in one corner including Guttuso himself, Elio Vittorini, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Davis, continued to support the ideas of the Communist party, forming the democratic socialist group Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism in 1991. An honorary co-chair of the January 21, 2017 Women's March on Washington, that took place the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, Davis she took part in the Juneteenth march in Oakland, California, in June 2020.
Davis' T-shirts for Renowned LA will be available for pre-order through December 18, and a portion of the proceeds will go to Underground Grit, a California-based organization centered on prison reform and decriminalization for incarcerated people and youth, and Dream Defenders, a group created to end police and prisons (and in particular privately owned prisons; Davis is a member of the board of Dream Defenders).
Some felt this collaboration was a bit strange for an anti-capitalist, but Davis doesn't see the designs as mere garments. In a feature published in October 2020 on The New York Times's T Magazine, Davis related her encounter a few years ago with a young woman in a foster-care program who was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of the activist. Davis became curious about it and asked her what did it mean to her. "Whenever I wear this, I feel like I can accomplish anything. It makes me feel empowered," the young woman answered.
So take the designs by Renowned LA as a celebration not just of Angela Davis, but of all those people who act in their lives to bring tangible changes to the world (think for example about Rosa Parks who ignited the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955). And while a T-shirt can't help raising a better generation, it can still inspire and bring empowerment and strength. John Dean firmly believes in this as one of the tags on Renowned LA shirts lists the instructions on how to best support the Black Lives Matter movement through our daily behaviours. One of them encourages us "to take action and don't give up", this, after all "is a lifelong battle for equality."
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