Art, Politics, Activism, Oakland And Angela Davis 3 Favorite 

In Oakland, artists created murals and installations to honor activist Angela Davis, celebrating her legacy in fighting for racial and gender justice. These public artworks inspire new generations to continue the struggle for social change. Using the Angela Davis Archive in Oakland as the heart of the exhibition, visitors are given the opportunity to re-imagine the construction of the image of Davis as an icon of American Black radical resistance, female empowerment and a threat to the white patriarchal status quo. That construction was most famously the result of her “Wanted” poster which featured two photos of her.

“In one photo she has shades and an ‘ethnic’ patterned top. For the FBI and many of those who saw the poster, the image was of someone who was not ‘one of us,’ someone who was anti-American, a young Black woman who had rejected American norms by adopting a style that evoked African roots and shouted Black radicalism,” Lisbet Tellefsen, exhibition curator and owner/archivist of the Angela Davis archives collection, told Forbes.com. “The other photo positions her as a criminal, it appears to be a mugshot. It wasn't, she had never been arrested, but by careful selection, cropping and retouching the FBI made her look like a criminal, someone who didn't belong in white America. Placed together the images equate activism and Blackness with criminality. Given this framing it is not surprising that many people in a period of great social upheaval were alarmed by this terroristic image.”

The FBI wanted to panic white America with its representation of Davis as a Black radical. While that was successful, it did not anticipate the other reaction.

“The FBI had not foreseen that the ‘Wanted’ poster images also had a positive effect, turning Davis into a hero for young people all over the world,” Tellefsen explains. “Many of her supporters and many in the Black community saw these as images of a radical Black woman who was bravely resisting an oppressive government. The poster was flipped on its head, Davis was seen as someone who was being victimized and hunted by a racist state, someone who needed protection and support.”

Posters, paintings, flyers, video, photographs and objects created at the time, on view in the exhibition, share Davis’ widely reproduced and disseminated image as a youthful, energized activist. All the while wearing an Afro.