Revolutionary scholar and longtime activist Angela Davis delivered a powerful reflection on freedom, struggle, and collective liberation during a lecture at Tougaloo College.
She said Black history must be understood not only through trauma, but also through beauty, creativity, and joy forged in resistance.
Davis’ remarks opened a new lecture series hosted by Mississippi for a Just World (@ms4justworld) and were highlighted in a social media post shared by Black Joy (@readblackjoy). The event drew students, faculty, and community members eager to engage with Davis’ enduring scholarship on race, justice, and global liberation movements.
Speaking to the audience, Davis challenged long-standing narratives that frame slavery and oppression solely through violence and suffering. Referencing Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison, Davis argued that such portrayals risk erasing the cultural and emotional resilience that sustained Black communities over centuries.
“For a long time we had this very bad habit of only representing slavery as trauma, as violence,” Davis said. “And forgetting, as Toni Morrison pointed out, that there’s something else there.”
Davis acknowledged the undeniable horrors of slavery and racial oppression, but stressed that what makes the Black freedom struggle remarkable is the ability to create beauty in the midst of suffering.
“The most remarkable thing about the Black freedom struggle is that in the midst of all of that… Black people learned how to create beauty,” she told the audience.
The scholar framed freedom not as a fixed achievement, but as an ongoing practice that requires collective effort across movements and borders. She urged listeners to view liberation as interconnected—linking struggles against racism, economic injustice, gender oppression, and global inequality.
The lecture resonated strongly with Tougaloo College’s historic legacy as a hub of civil rights activism, particularly during the 1960s. Attendees described the event as both intellectually grounding and emotionally affirming, highlighting Davis’ continued relevance more than five decades after she emerged as a leading voice in Black radical thought.
Organizers said the lecture series aims to spark sustained conversations about justice, freedom, and solidarity, particularly among younger generations navigating modern struggles rooted in long histories of resistance.
As clips of Davis’ remarks circulated online, many viewers echoed the central message shared by Black Joy: that even amid a centuries-long fight for freedom, Black communities have continually transformed struggle into joy, culture, and hope.
