“Free Angela and All Political Prisoners’ by Shola Lynch”
by Nicolas Rapold
“Shola Lynch’s documentary about Angela Davis, the activist and beacon of counterculture radicalism, is a snappily edited, archivally wallpapered recollection of fearless behavior in the face of an antsy establishment. But it’s equally significant as a pointed act of retelling.”
I watched the documentary “Mountains that take wing” featuring an interview between Angela Davis and Yuri Kochiyama for my Asian American Lit class. It is interesting to see how these two women’s political lives intersect. It is important to learn about women in the Black Power Movement because they had a substantial impact, but their stories were not in the forefront.
Davis talks about how she became politically active when she was 11. In her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, the church where Davis attended interracial discussions was burned down. At an early age, Davis learned that activism was a form of survival.
The Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 when Davis was only 22 years old. A year after the party’s founding, Stokely Carmichael inspired Davis to join the Black Panthers and support Black Power(33:00). In addition, Davis joined SNCC in Los Angeles. I learned from the “Black Power Mixtapes” and “Mountains that take wing” about the intersectionality of activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Both of these documentaries showed how the Civil Rights Movement inspired many other movements and laid the groundwork for gay rights, women’s rights, and other movements for the rights of people of color. Davis is amazing because she advocated against the Vietnam War, capitalism, and racist institutions such as the prison industrial complex in American society. In the documentary, she talks about women of color forming groups like the Third World Women’s Alliance and the National Black Feminist Organization (54:00).
I’m excited to read more about women in the Black Power movement and how they face sexism and marginalization within the movement. Here is the link to the documentary: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/mountains-that-take-wing-angela-davis-and-yuri-kochiyama-trailer/