“Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis, in care of the Silent Majority”
Activist and philosophy professor Angela Davis (b. 1944) was arrested in 1970 for her alleged role in attempting to secure the freedom of three incarcerated men known as the Soledad Brothers. Numerous public figures expressed support for her release and acquittal as part of the “Free Angela & All Political Prisoners” movement—including the essayist, novelist, and leading cultural critic James Baldwin. In this handwritten draft of an open letter, he expresses solidarity with the burgeoning Black Power movement in pursuit of racial justice. The movement’s activists boldly defined the over-policing of Black bodies as political, and all incarcerated Blacks as political prisoners.
: James Baldwin Papers, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg …
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