What a Lifetime of Struggle Taught Angela Davis

In this episode, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart interviews the philosopher, activist, author, and educator Angela Davis, whose writing and organizing have shaped Black liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss how Jews shaped Davis’s formative years, analyze the Jewish role in the civil rights movement, compare the campus activism of the 1960s to today’s college protests, and explore why Palestine is central to the global left.

This conversation first appeared in The Beinart Notebook on Substack.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Media Mentioned and Further Reading

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, Angela Davis

Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Angela Davis

“How the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements Split on Israel,” Michael R. Fishbach, Mondoweiss

The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon