# Angela Y. Davis - Quotes: 54 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis ## Books - [Are Prisons Obsolete?](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/are-prisons-obsolete.md) — 29 quotes - [Freedom Is A Constant Struggle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle.md) — 13 quotes - [If They Come in the Morning...](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/if-they-come-in-the-morning.md) — 12 quotes ## Recently added quotes > When I think about the violence of my own youth in , where bombs were planted repeatedly and houses were destroyed and churches were destroyed and lives were destroyed and we have yet to refer to those acts as the acts of terrorists. You know terrorism which is represented as external, as outside, is very much a domestic phenomenon. Terrorism very much shaped the history of the United States of America. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/when-i-think.md) > In the aftermath of the war, we find one of the most hidden eras of US history; and that is the period of radical reconstruction. It certainly remains the most radical era in the entire history of the United States of America. And this is an era that is rarely acknowledged in historical texts. ... There were progressive laws passed challenging male supremacy. This is an era that is rarely acknowledged. During that era of course we had the creation of what we now call historically black colleges and universities and there was economic development. This period didn’t last very long. From the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, we might take 1865 as that day until 1877 when a radical reconstruction was overturned—and not only was it overturned but it was erased from the historical record—and so in the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s. One hundred years later. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/in-the-aftermath.md) > All around the world people are saying that we want to struggle to continue as global communities, to create a world free of xenophonbia and racism, a world from which poverty has been expunged, and the availability of food is not subject to the demands of capitalist profit. I would say a world where a corporation like Monsanto would be deemed criminal. Where homophobia and transphobia can truly be called historical relics along with the punishment of incarceration and institutions of confinement for disabled people; and where everyone learns how to respect the environment and all of the creatures, human and non-human alike, with whom we cohabit our worlds. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/all-around-the.md) > Acknowledging continuities between nineteenth century anti-slavery struggles, twentieth century civil rights struggles, twenty-first century abolitionist struggles—and when I say abolitionist struggles I’m referring to the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant mode of punishment, the abolition of the prison industrial complex—acknowledging these continuities requires a challenge to the closures that isolate the freedom movement of the twentieth century from the century preceding and the century following. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/acknowledging-continuities-between.md) > In many ways, she (Fannie Lou Hamer) paved the way for Barack Obama. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/in-many-ways.md) > Islamophobic violence is nurtured by histories of anti-black racist violence. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/islamophobic-violence-is-nurtured.md) > The Klu Klux Klan and the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during the mid-twentieth century freedom movement was produced not during slavery but rather in an attempt to manage free black people who would have been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/the-klu-klux.md) > There is something for which Lincoln should be applauded, I believe. And it is that he was shrewd enough to know that the only hope of winning the Civil War resided in creating the opportunity to fight for their own freedom, and that was the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/there-is-something.md) > Regimes of racial segregation were not disestablished because of the work of leaders and presidents and legislators but rather because of the fact that ordinary people adopted a critical stance in the way in which they perceived their relationship to reality. Social realities that may have appeared inalterable, impenetrable, came to be viewed as malleable and transformable; and people learned how to imagine what it might mean to live in a world that was not so exclusively governed by the principle of white supremacy. This collective consciousness emerged within the context of social struggles. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/regimes-of-racial.md) > I also think it's important for us to think forward and to imagine future history in a way that is not restrained by our own lifetimes. Oftentimes people say, well, if it takes that long, I'll be dead. So what? Everybody dies, right? And if people who were involved in the struggle against slavery-I'm thinking about people like Frederick Douglass, or Ida B. Wells in the struggle against lynching if they had that very narrow individualistic sense of their own contributions, where would we be today? And so we have to learn how to imagine the future in terms that are not restricted to our own lifetimes. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/i-also-think.md) > There is this freedom movement and then there is an attempt to narrow the freedom movement so that it fits into a much smaller frame, the frame of civil rights. Not that civil rights is not immensely important, but freedom is more expansive that civil rights. And as that movement grew and developed it was inspired by and in turn inspired liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia. It was not only a question of acquiring the formal rights to fully participate in society, but rather it was also about substantive rights—it was about jobs, free education, free health care, affordable housing, and also about ending the racist police occupation of black communities. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/there-is-this.md) > every person in this country, from high school to the postgraduate level, should read W. E. B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America. In the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s. And I'm making this point because what happens when 2060 rolls around? Will people still be addressing these same issues? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/angela-y-davis/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle/every-person-in-this.md)