Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Important People

Frank Barat

A noted French human rights activist, advocate for Palestinian rights, and author, Frank Barat conducted the interviews of Angela Y. Davis that comprise the first three sections of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.

Barack Obama

The 44th President of the United States and the first Black president, Obama was elected by substantial margins in both 2008 and 2012. To many, Obama’s electoral success led to the belief that the nation’s long struggle with racial prejudice had ended and that his taking office was the beginning of a new post-racial era for the nation. However, Davis argues that since his time in office coincided with a marked increase in police killings of Black people, calling racism over was wildly premature. Obama can also be seen as an example of a tendency by people to celebrate individuals and believe that they can be the main agents of change. Davis rejects this idea and instead promotes collective actions and achievements.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown was an 18-year-old Black man killed by a police officer in August 2013 in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s death and the massive protests surrounding it are a recurring topic throughout Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, including in Section Two, where Davis links Brown’s killing to the militarizing of police forces. Davis ties the conditions of Black people living in places like Ferguson to the precarious situation of Palestinians living under militarized conditions in Gaza.

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Crenshaw is an American civil rights activist whose work informed the development of the concept of intersectionality—modes of analysis and practices that insist on considering how multiple identity categories, like race, class, and gender, work together—which is an important idea in Davis’s discussions in Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. (See intersectionality in Key Terms.)

Assata Shakur

Assata Shakur is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army accused of terrorism who fled to Cuba for political asylum in 1984. This occurred after Shakur escaped from prison in 1979 in New Jersey, where she was serving a life sentence after being convicted of murder for her role in a 1973 shootout in which a New Jersey state trooper was killed. Added to the FBI Most Wanted List in 2013, there is currently a $2 million bounty on Shakur. Davis—who was herself charged with first-degree murder and placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List in 1970—concludes that the FBI’s motivation for these steps has as much to do with discouraging Black activists as it does with finding and prosecuting Shakur. (See About Angela Y. Davis.)

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Davis references the famous civil rights activist throughout Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, including King’s famous assertion that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” from his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” For both Davis and King, no one can be truly free until everyone is free. However, Davis’s respect for King does not exclude him from her ongoing reminders in the book that collective actions to advance the cause of freedom are far more important than those of any individual. Davis suggests that the best way to honor the work of previous activists is to continue their fights.

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