Civil Rights activist Angela Davis will be in Louisville on Tuesday to deliver the 10th annual Anne Braden Memorial Lecture. A long-time advocate of prison abolition, black liberation, and intersectionality, Davis is most recently the author of "Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement."
The University of Louisville's replica of Rodin's sculpture, The Thinker, was defaced the day after last week's election, with the words, "Trump #buildthatwall." Cate Fosl, director of U of L's Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, says she hopes Davis' words will help bolster a student body shaken by that vandalism, and the current political climate.
"Bringing her here, with her long history of resistance, and social movement building especially against racism, and the unfairnesses of capitalism, and for women's rights, and immigrants rights, and former prisoners rights, that makes her visit all the more compelling," Fosl says. "I think a lot of us are really eager to hear what she has to say, because it is a tough moment."
Both the institute and the lecture series started in 2007 and are named for Anne Braden, a Louisville journalist, activist, and educator who was a white ally during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Braden and her husband were charged with sedition after buying a house for a black family in a white neighborhood.
Fosl says Braden's legacy remains relevant.
"Her central message [was] that it was our responsibility as whites to unify with people of color for really true social justice in the united states and beyond," Fosl says.
She says she expects Tuesday evening's lecture to invigorate the social justice activism community on campus and in the community.
"Angela Davis has been at this since the 1960s, unyeildingly." Fosl says. "So I think that hearing from someone with that level of wisdom — not just theoretic wisdom, but real organizing, over so many decades — it's really inspirational and will help mobilize that kind of inclusive resistance that we need, collectively, here in Louisville and across the nation."
The lecture is scheduled for Tuesday evening at 6, at the Cardinal Stadium's Brown & Williamson Club. It's free and open to the public. More information can be found here.
