When we talk and reminisce on history, we always tend to look and praise the “Big Men” who created laws and fought for our rights; but we always tend to forget the women, who also did the same for years, all while being at a disadvantage. 

These heroes still don’t get enough recognition.

Why is that? Why is it that women in history are cast away in the shadows? Were they not “as important” as their male counterparts? Were they simply forgotten by the passage of time? Or were they manually erased by it?

Perhaps it’s the latter, they want us to think we live a perfect life under patriarchal capitalism. But it’s time to remember that this very system is the reason of so much of our misery not only as women but as people. 

Angela Davis knew better: she was a woman whose name still rings and calls for hope, justice, and equality for all. This woman changed our world today, she stood up not only for women, but also people of colour that were subject to police violence, patriarchal oppression, war, incarnation and the death penalty. In short, she stood for human rights.

She lived through the worst periods of segregation and racism in America, and even worse for her, she was a woman, a woman who refused to stay silent, which led her to become one of the most wanted “criminals” in the United States of America, the so-called land of “Freedom”.

But even then, she continued her battle nonetheless: she learned and taught philosophy at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1969, even after many opposed and wanted her to be fired from her position. She stood tall and fought and fought till standing up for rights and the less fortunate became “too political”.

Eventually jobless and in hiding, she was finally caught by the FBI, who were congratulated by President Richard Nixon on “the capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis”. The whole world was against her, yet she still fought.

She was jailed for 18 months in solitary confinement because the guards claimed that her “ideas were dangerous,” but we all know they were because they could move people, because it made people realize what type of government they were living under, because she was right.

You can kill a woman, but not her ideas, not what she represents. While Davis was in jail, she became a symbol of resistance for people who aren’t as stupid as the government wanted them to be.

Activists all over the world, but mostly in the USA, started the “Free Angela” campaign and argued that she was a political prisoner and unfairly targeted because of her political beliefs. Angela’s face was everywhere; she represented the resistance, and she became an image, a symbol for social justice, for women and for people of colour. For the revolution.

Davis’ voice never died; her passion for equality and justice just grew stronger after prison and founded several organizations like The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. They tried to break her, but she kept fighting for rights that are still not fully given. She still helps and raises awareness with her thought-provoking books like “Women, Race and Class” which provide a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from the past to the present. This book also highlights how the racist and classist prejudices of feminist leaders hinder collective goals and how many feminists who supported Black women still chose to exploit white supremacist fears for political advantage rather than embrace an intersectional path to liberation.

And finally, as Angela Davis once said, “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night,” a constant reminder that your silence will never protect you. The class in power will oppress a small group in the beginning, and we might think that this is no threat to us, but it is. Nothing ever makes us certain that we won’t be next. This is why solidarity is important to resist oppression. 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It is time to act and speak up and stop being afraid, for they will come for all of us.