Angela Davis, UC Berkeley professor, formerly on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, and one of the most polarizing woman of the early 70s for her work with the Black Panthers and the Communist Party USA, will draw on both her own experiences and extensive research to discuss the criminalization of those communities most affected by poverty and racial discrimination in a lecture titled “From Jim Crow to Guantanamo : Prisons, Democracy and Empire” .The evening, which honors the memory of the late Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio, will also see the presentation of the Tenth Mario Savio Young Activist Award.

The event is sponsored by the UC Berkeley Library, the Goldman School of Public Policy, the Graduate School of Journalism, the Free Speech Movement Cafe, and the Graduate Assembly.

About Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American communist organizer, professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Davis’s main association, however, was her membership in the Communist Party USA. She first achieved nationwide notoriety when she was linked to the murder of Judge Harold Haley during an attempted Black Panther prison break; she fled underground, and was the subject of an intense manhunt. She was eventually captured, arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. She is currently Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California and Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She works for racial and gender equality and for prison abolition. Davis is a founder of the anti-prison grassroots organization Critical Resistance.