• In her Keynote Address at the National Women's Studies Association's Annual Conference, Angela Davis talks about the fundamendal importance of "producing knowledge that makes a difference in the social world."
  

The Meaning of Freedom presents twelve searing, previously unpublished speeches by renowned African-American feminist Angela Y. Davis that focus on the interconnected themes of power, racism, feminism, class, the legacy of slavery, prisons, multiculturalism, and concludes with a talk given after the election of Barack Obama. With her characteristic historical insight and penetrating analysis, Davis outlines strategies to uproot structural racism, xenophobia, class oppression and gender inequalities, while proposing radical visions of a justice-based society free of racism, sexism and prisons.

The Meaning of Freedom contextualizes current political debates around gender, immigration, the war on drugs and globalization. From the streets of Harlem to universities across the country, Angela Y. Davis provokes new ways of thinking about equality, justice and freedom. A powerful call to action for the Obama generation.


"Davis' arguments for justice are formidable . . . The power of her historical insights and the sweetness of her dream cannot be denied."
-New York Times Book Review

"Long before 'race/gender' became the obligatory injunction it is now, Angela Davis was developing an analytical framework that brought all of these factors into play. For readers who only see Angela Davis as a public icon . . . meet the real Angela Davis: perhaps the leading public intellectual of our era."
-Robin D. G. Kelley author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

"One of America's last truly fearless public intellectuals."
-Cynthia McKinney, U.S. Democratic Congresswoman

"Angela Davis's revolutionary spirit is still strong. Still with us, thank goodness!"
-Virginian-Pilot

"There was a time in America when to call a person an 'abolitionist' was the ultimate epithet. It evoked scorn in the North and outrage in the South. Yet they were the harbingers of things to come. They were on the right side of history. Prof. Angela Y. Davis stands in that proud, radical tradition."
-Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.

"Behold the heart and mind of Angela Davis, open, relentless, and on time!"
-June Jordan

"The enormous revolution in Black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America. Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people in an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night."
-James Baldwin

"Angela Davis has stood as a courageous voice of conscience on matters of race, class, and gender in America."
-David Theo Goldberg, Arizona State University

"Angela Davis offers a cartography of engagement in oppositional social movements and unwavering commitment to justice."
-Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Women's Studies, Hamilton College