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• 1 media/ms157 box 50 folder 13_0022.jpg 2020-11-19T20:52:48-08:00 Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker 94 plain 1037579 2020-12-17T17:28:39-08:00 Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, scholar, author, and speaker, as well as Distinguished Professor Emerita at UC Santa Cruz. Bettina Aptheker is an activist, UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Professor, and author.
  
  In August of 1970, Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson's 17-year-old brother, took a courtroom at Marin County courthouse hostage in an effort to free the Soledad Brothers. Angela was implicated in this case based on being the registered owner of the firearms Jonathan used in addition to her political background as an outspoken communist. This became a nationwide spectacle with Angela making FBI's most wanted list as a fugitive. A month long chase ensued, then she was arrested in New York City.
  
  With the media attention that Angela received surrounding this case, it became clear that she was embodying the contradictions of our society to a point of critical mass.  While expressions of solidarity echoed around the globe from Marxist scholars, activists, students, and celebrities alike, Newsweek ran the photo of her arrest in chains on their cover.
  
  James Baldwin famously pointed out how Americans are somehow still not tired of seeing captive Black bodies in an open letter to Angela:

  "One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on Black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses. And so, Newsweek civilized defenders of the indefensible, attempts to drown you in crocodile tears ('it remained to be seen what sort of personal liberation she had achieved') and puts you on its cover, chained."

  
  
  
  The materials from events surrounding the trial serve as a powerful case study, both in how the carceral state arises in response to Black radicalism, as well as how the media produces and maintains a congruency of meaning structures, bringing into crisp focus what the entire system together might exist to serve and protect: property relations. These materials also serve as a place to reflect upon the historical precedent for today's mass movements, which respond to the same roots of racism and injustice. For your further perusal, I've included a digitized 1972 publication by the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis (NUCFAD) that includes photographs and Angela's opening defense statement, correspondence serving as artifacts of the solidarities locally and worldwide, and two media publications, the Newsweek article and an issue of The Black Scholar that serve to show how the images, information, and narratives were differently mediated by different publications.
  
  In a foreword to The Morning Breaks, Bettina Aptheker describes how, while working on the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, her house became "an informal headquarters for Angela and her attorneys, friends, and family". She also had special access to meet with Angela while she was held at Women's Detention Center as one of her five legal investigators for the defense (The Morning Breaks, xv). Because of their close relationship and her role on the defense, Aptheker's collection contains a multitude of materials amassed over the course of not only the Trial of Angela Davis, but also a lifelong commitment to feminism, activism, and the liberation of the oppressed.
  
  
• 1 media/ms157 box 51 folder 4_0001.jpg 2020-11-29T16:55:29-08:00 International Solidarities 71 Excerpts from Bettina Aptheker Papers, Correspondence toc 2020-12-16T01:31:03-08:00 Represented in the Bettina Aptheker Papers is how scholars around the world wrote in support of Angela. Here are some excerpts from the collection:
  
  
  
  
  In addition to the statement and signatures, there is also a letter addressed to Bettina updating her on the publishing of the statement and signatures in newspapers, technical difficulties in Italy, and even the possibility of a statement of support from Picasso:
  
  
  
  Together, these materials represent just a sampling of how struggles against oppressive formations of the state were linked together beyond the construction of nation-states and borders, even before our current ease of global communication.
  
  
  Continue your exploration: