Superficially, Angela Davis is remembered as the Black Panther member with the perfect Afro. She became a pop culture reference when the world banded together in 1970 in a campaign to release her from her unlawful imprisonment — FREE ANGELA. But she is so much more than this. Many of the controversial issues that now dominate American and international politics — prison system abolition, anti-capitalism, police brutality, white supremacy, Palestinian rights — have dominated her activism for the last five decades. She even ran as vice president on the Communist ticket at both the 1980 and 1984 United States presidential elections. The distinguished professor emerita backed up her activist work with books on topics like intersectionality, the prison system, and police brutality.

Angela Davis became an international icon almost 50 years ago, but Brazilians only gained access to her translated written work in the last few years. Her visit to Brazil this past October seemed as if she was coming to bask in the glory put upon her by Black Brazilian women. But nothing like that transpired. Instead, Davis used the visit to pay homage to the Black Brazilian women with whom she has collaborated over the last 30 years and to encourage a new generation of Black women activists. Her visit comes at a precarious time in Brazil—and the world—when a new government under Jair Bolsonaro seems determined to leave Blacks behind. So Angela Davis brought a glimpse of hope.

“When we collectively rise up, we bring changes to the world,” Davis said in a speech in Rio de Janeiro, referring to her committed belief that when Black women are free, everyone will be free — as Black women never work solely on their own behalf, but carry their entire communities forward.

Angela Davis has always connected with movements across the world. Her first contact with Brazil was through someone quite like herself — Lélia Gonzalez. Gonzalez became an intellectual at a time when Blacks didn’t even dream of finishing high school, and the top employment for Black women was still domestic service — as it had been since the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil. She created a Black Brazilian feminist theory in the 1970s when neither the Black nor the feminist movements had recognized the specific issues that affected Black Brazilian women. As an anthropologist, she fixed “Blackness” at the center of newly politicized ideas about culture.

“She helped to bring about the idea that Brazilian culture is Black culture,” says Raquel Barreto, a historian who wrote the preface to Angela Davis’ Portuguese autobiography. “It’s not a mixed Brazil or a Brazil in which the first contributions came from Europeans.”

Gonzalez and Davis met in 1989 at an academic conference in Baltimore. Davis and Gonzalez, both francophiles who were fluent in French, became acquainted with each other and Davis still carries her memory. “It’s so strange to me that you all seek me as ‘the name’ of Black feminism. Why do you all want this? You all have Lélia Gonzalez, who wrote about intersectionality long before the term was even born,” said Davis during a São Paulo conference on democracy.

“As Davis was strengthening her relationship with Black Brazilian activists and intellectuals, Brazil was entering a new age of social and racial inclusion in higher education. In the mid-2000s, Brazilian universities started to incorporate affirmative action policies to include more Black and poor students.”

When Davis made her first visit to Brazil in 1997, it was to celebrate Gonzalez’s life — the 59-year-old had died of a heart attack in 1994 — and work with Afro-Brazilian women in São Luis, Maranhão. During that meeting, she met other Black Brazilian women with whom she would collaborate for the next 25 years. Davis met Luiza Bairros, who was Brazil’s Special Secretary of Racial Equality between 2011 and 2014 — widely considered Brazil’s greatest era of racial advancement. She met Sueli Carneiro, a philosopher who founded Geledés — Black Women’s Institute, one of the first organizations to be solely dedicated to the issues of Black women in Brazil.

Angela Davis and Lélia Gonzalez. Photo: Personal Archives

Black women makeup the largest demographic group in Brazil but represent the bottom of Brazil’s economic and social pyramid. In 2018, Black women earned, on average, 56% of what White men earned in Brazil — the lowest of any demographic group, not including indigenous people. Until the mid-2010s, the top form of employment for Black women was domestic service. From 2010 until 2018, the murder rate of Black women increased by 15.4% but decreased by 6% for non-Black women. And the suffering of Black women is compounded by the ramifications of a society in which a young Black person is killed every 23 minutes (Violence Map, Latin-American College of Social Sciences — Flacso).

Through the connections that she made at that meeting, Davis returned to Brazil five more times, mainly visiting Bahia. On a 2008 visit to see her friend Luiza Bairros in Salvador, Bahia, she saw a Black man being beaten by police because he had attempted to steal a CD player out of a car. “Why had he turned to stealing,” Davis asked. “Had he been given the opportunity to earn a decent living or to find decent housing? Or to study at a university? Did he know that he deserved the respect of all of his compatriots, even the police.”

As Davis was strengthening her relationship with Black Brazilian activists and intellectuals, Brazil was entering a new age of social and racial inclusion in higher education. In the mid-2000s, Brazilian universities started to incorporate affirmative action policies to include more Black and poor students. From 2000 until 2018, the percentage of Blacks concluding higher education almost quintupled from 2.2% to 9.7%, according to the Brazilian Institute of Statistics and Geography. These young Black students often entered college without even recognizing their Blackness, but left transformed and educated about what it means to be Black in Brazil.

Recognizing this transformation, Davis returned multiple times to teach a class on intersectional feminism at the Recôncavo Federal University of Bahia — home of the Angela Davis collective student group.

One Black woman who became enamored with Davis’ work was Marielle Franco, a queer politician from Rio de Janeiro. She grew up in the Maré favela community and earned a scholarship to Brazil’s most elite university. After her friend died from a stray bullet in a shootout between police and drug traffickers, the sociologist decided to pursue human rights work through politics.

In October of 2016, fresh off of being the first queer Black woman to be elected to Rio de Janeiro’s city council, Franco moderated a panel discussion for the Rio de Janeiro launch of Davis’ Women, Race & Class book. On that weekday night, hundreds of Black women packed a bookstore in a high-end Rio neighborhood. Women, Race and Class was the first of a series of Davis’ books that publisher Boitempo would translate into Portuguese and release over the next three years.

“Not everyone can speak English. Not everyone can purchase an English book online,” says Karina Viera, a bookseller, and specialist in books written by Afro-Brazilians. “So we’re talking about access. When the publisher decided to publish Black women intellectuals, it was giving people access to that content.”

On March 14, 2018, Marielle Franco organized an anti-racism panel called “Jovens Negras Movendo as Estruturas.” The panel’s name referenced a famous Angela Davis quote: “Quando a mulher negra se movimenta, toda a estrutura da sociedade se movimenta com ela,” or “When we collectively rise up, we bring changes to the world.”

Angela Davis. Photo: Jamille Pinheiro Dias

The event, held at Casa das Pretas (The Black Women’s House) — attracted dozens of Rio’s most active young Black women — activists, writers, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and musicians. After two hours of talking about Black heritage, racism, economic independence, feminism, and education, the women left the event empowered and excited about the future. When Franco was on her way home that night a car pulled up alongside hers, and an assassin unloaded nine shots into her vehicle. Four of them hit Franco in the head, killing her and her driver immediately.

Since that fateful night in 2018, Marielle Franco has gone on to become a martyr for Black women in Brazil. Her legacy inspired dozens of Black women to run for statewide office in Brazil in 2018. Rio de Janeiro elected three Black women state representatives, and São Paulo sent Brazil’s first Black trans woman to the state congress — Erica Malunguinho.

The physical distance between Brazil and the United States did not prevent Davis from honoring Franco and joining a movement that demanded answers for her murder. Just one month after Franco’s murder, Davis was photographed at a Stanford University event holding a poster of Marielle Franco’s image and the words: Marielle Presente—Marielle Is Still With Us.