50 pages • 1 hour read
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
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Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6 Summary: “Bridges”
Jury selection for her trial causes Davis to recall an early encounter with authority at Brandeis. She and a friend were punished for hitchhiking to see New England’s fall foliage and deemed “moral criminals”:
I thought back on that little mock trial that had unfolded more than a decade ago. I felt the same sense of unreality, the feeling that the same sort of game was being played, the contestants with the dangerously obsolete ideas having an unfair advantage (306-07).
There is only one Black woman in the jury pool, and she is eliminated.
The prosecution shifts tactics as the trial begins because the movement to free Davis has successfully promoted the notion that she is a political prisoner. The prosecutor now argues that Davis’s crime was motivated by her love for George and uses their correspondence as evidence. Davis, as co-counsel, makes the opening remarks at her trial. She accuses the state of sexism in claiming that her crime was one of passion. This argument resonates with the women jurors. The prosecution also tries to use Black witnesses against Davis. Otelia Young, Davis’s former neighbor, is called to testify about her contact with Jonathan Jackson, but her statements give no indication that Davis was conspiring with Jackson, as the prosecution hoped. This strategy leaves the jurors confused as to why the prosecutor bothered to question her. A white male witness for the prosecution, Alden Fleming, who owns a service station near the Marin County Courthouse, claims he saw Davis and Jonathan Jackson there the day before the uprising. However, Davis’s defense successfully shows he cannot distinguish between different Black people or accurately identify them, highlighting his racism and unreliability.
Meanwhile, Davis’s team debates whether to put forth a defense against the prosecution’s claim that “passion” drove Davis. Davis initially wants to mount a “full-blown” defense to highlight the political persecution the government has subjected her to. Others suggest the defense has already laid bare the state’s oppressive nature. Ultimately, they agree to a compromise: “A short line of witnesses with testimony that was succinct both in the factual and the political points” (336).
Closing arguments conclude, and Davis and her supporters wait for a verdict as the jury deliberates. Some go to lunch at a nearby restaurant with a German journalist who wishes to interview Davis. However, authorities soon interrupt the lunch. A hijacked plane has landed at the San Francisco airport, and the authorities say that the four hijackers have demanded Davis be brought to them or they will blow up the plane, which is still packed with travelers. The story, however, is completely incorrect:
It had absolutely nothing to do with me […] My name, in fact, had never once been mentioned by the hijackers. There weren’t even four hijackers. All these embellishments were tacked onto the story while it moved from the radio control tower through the FBI to us. We couldn’t help speculating that the FBI had tried to draw me into a hijacking in order to disrupt the jury deliberations (339-40).
The jury reaches a verdict on June 4, 1972. Davis is overwhelmed by anxiety as she and her supporters wait at the courthouse for the news. She is acquitted of all three charges: conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. Jurors congratulate Davis as they leave the courtroom. A crowd outside the courthouse greets her. She thanks them and encourages them to continue fighting for the release of political prisoners. She departs with friends to bask in her freedom as she steels herself to continue the struggle.
Part 6 Analysis
Communal support continues to sustain Davis as her ordeal as a political prisoner comes to its conclusion. However, the state attempts to turn a particularly meaningful connection against her by using Davis’s letters to George Jackson as evidence that her “passion” for Jackson drove her to take part in the Marin County Courthouse uprising, even though she wasn’t present at the event. Their argument relies on a misogynistic stereotype that discounts Davis’s intellect, and it backfires. The second-wave feminist movement is in its early stages when Davis’s trial takes place, and the women jurors recognize the sexism in the prosecution’s line of reasoning. Davis likewise draws attention to the obvious misogyny of this approach in her opening remarks:
As I spoke about the male supremacist character of Harris’s case, heads nodded and receptive expressions broke out on some of the female faces. They too had known the experience of being accused because they were women of acting irrationally and according to emotions rather than logic (318).
Systemic racism also runs rampant during Davis’s trial. No Black jurors serve, and a primary witness for the prosecution expresses obviously racist views on the stand. However, just as the prosecution’s sexism works against their case, so too does their racism backfire when the witness shows himself to be unreliable. The systemic racism that so often works to ensure convictions of Black people, like the Soledad Brothers, fails, and Davis credits the Black liberation movement—her community—with defeating it. Community solidarity has cultivated a united campaign to highlight the state’s racism and political persecution while also fostering intense public pressure that prevents the court from exercising as much bias as it otherwise might have. Nevertheless, Davis insists that her case is not an isolated one.
In the years since her release and her autobiography’s publication, Davis has remained true to her commitment, articulated at the end of Part 6, to advocate for political prisoners and victims of state violence, and her advocacy has expanded to include a transnational approach, which she began to cultivate as early as her undergraduate years at Brandeis University. This transnationalism emphasizes the collectivity of liberation movements. In 2016 Davis published a collection of essays and interviews titled Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. This book is about the interconnectedness of state-sponsored violence around the globe and the importance of collective, communal action in response.
Davis correspondingly continues to criticize American hyper-individualism, which treats the murders of Black Americans such as Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Arbury, Stephon Clark, Philando Castile, George Floyd, and hundreds of others as singular tragedies. Instead, their deaths exist on the same continuum as Davis’s struggle against systemic racism and state violence. As she acknowledges in her second preface, the personal and political cannot be separated. The final chapter especially illustrates the relationship between personal and political struggle. Her personal anxiety and subsequent relief are palpable, yet she reminds the audience that her individual experiences exist within the context of a larger social movement for Black Liberation and Freedom, and this struggle must continue after her not-so-singular ordeal closes.
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By Angela Y. Davis
