SALEM — Civil Rights Activist Angela Davis will deliver the keynote address at Salem State’s 31st Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Celebration next week.
The virtual address will take place Friday, Jan. 22, and will wrap up several days of events organized around this year’s theme: Keep On, Keeping On: From Struggle Comes Strength.
Events proceeding Davis’ address will include a virtual freedom march and candlelight vigil, and a virtual Inauguration Day watch event recognizing the first Black, first South Asian, and first woman vice president of the United States.
All events are open to the general public and media. However, recording of the keynote address is not permitted.
The Inauguration Day event will be Wednesday, beginning at 11:30 a.m. The vigil will be that evening at 5:30 p.m. and the convocation and keynote address will be at 1 p.m. on Friday.
Through her activism and scholarship over many decades, Davis, 76, has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world. Her work as an educator – both at the university level and in the larger public sphere – has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice.
Davis is the author of 10 books and has lectured throughout the United States and in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America.
In recent years, a persistent theme of Davis’ work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early 1970s as a person who spent 18 months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.”
Davis has conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her recent books include “Abolition Democracy“ and “Are Prisons Obsolete?“ about the abolition of the prison-industrial complex, a new edition of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” and a collection of essays entitled “The Meaning of Freedom.”
Her most recent book of essays, called “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement,” was published in February 2016.
To register online, go to https://www.salemstate.edu/news/31st-annual-rev-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-celebration-week-jan-11-2021.
