On Feb. 3, 2025, Angela Y. Davis delivered the MLK Commemoration Lecture in Bailey Hall. The talk aims to provide a “critical examination of King’s legacy and contemporary issues”, according to Cornell. The purpose of the MLK lecture is as follows:
“The annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration at Cornell aspires to be a cross-campus and community partnership that makes accessible the life and legacy of Dr. King for contemporary times. The King commemoration brings together Cornellians, Ithaca College, and Ithaca community colleagues to plan and participate in this event. The Commemoration seeks to bridge the gap between memory and history: the memory of an earlier generation that participated in or lived during the black freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, and the history of a faraway time for persons born after this period.”
Each year, the MLK talk is held in Sage Chapel, but this year the event sold out by December 15 and was moved to Bailey Hall. It was not clear how tickets for the additional seats were distributed.
Dr. King was known as an advocate for non-violence and his goal was an integrated, color-blind society. In contrast, Davis was a contemporary of Dr. King. But, Davis was associated with the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, which advocated a racially separate society and revolution. Davis was on the FBI’s list of the top ten most wanted at one point. Davis’s talk was entitled “The Intersectional Struggle for Liberation Today.” Instead of justifying her views to the audience from first principles, her talk was more of a “greatest hits” reprise of some of her most extreme political beliefs. Davis believes that the government has failed minority populations, as evidenced by the higher COVID mortality rates and the fact that service jobs held by minorities were designated as “essential” while affluent white people were allowed to isolate.
Davis advocates for the abolition of all prisons and the redistribution of wealth. She is troubled that billionaires are playing a prominent role in controlling the government and the media.
During her prepared remarks, Davis brought up the U.S. role in the Gaza war, which drew loud audience applause. Davis led the audience in a couple of responsive chants of “Free, free Palestine.”
Davis said, “If one person goes and protests the fact of [others] being suspended, nothing is going to happen. But if 5,000 people do it, you’ve got to believe me, they will listen to you.”
Davis said, “Given our current political environment, I think it is important to collectively meditate on the renewed need to stand up for social justice here in this country and throughout the world, and Dr. King assists us in that process.”
Davis said, “We are not here to pay tribute to a single individual, whose contributions can be attributed to his own individualized talent, intelligence, and insights.” Rather, Davis claims that humans “develop a deep collective imagination of what is possible.” Davis claims “the struggle for freedom” is a “collective practice” rather than the work of any one person. As history keeps unfolding, Davis’s understanding of Dr. King has transformed.
Davis asserts that the “Civil Rights Movement” of the 1950s and 1960s was really about “freedom”.
Davis came of age at a time when her political cohort came to realize that “calls for integration and assimilation were not enough.” She came to believe that “the structural roots of racism” were linked to “heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, capitalist exploitation.”
Although Davis supported making Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday, Davis was worried “that too much attention on him, might prevent people from recognizing the collective forces that drive social movements, particularly black women and queer people.” Her only favorable mention of Dr. King was the fact that his birthday coincided with President Trump’s inauguration. Davis claims that observing King’s Birthday gives the audience the opportunity to “come together at a time when fascists have captured high office.”
Dr. King and other black ministers were both important Civil Rights Leaders but also important impediments to other more militant young black activists.
Davis discussed the ongoing efforts of the Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU-UE) to demand a “union ship” that would force all Cornell Graduate Students to join the union. Davis said, “I hear this talk about open shop, which kind a replicates the right to work laws [of] southern states. You don’t want to be associated with southern-style white supremacy, do you? Okay.” In fact, 26 states – a majority – enacted right-to-work laws, including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Advocates of graduate students’ rights have argued that Davis was wrong to equate Cornell’s refusal to force all graduate students to join a union with “southern-style white supremacy.” However, members of the audience were not provided the opportunity to challenge her on such claims.
Davis then engaged in a question-and-answer session moderated by Karys Everett, Member-at-Large of the Student Assembly.
Everett told the audience that she had been instructed not to discuss certain subjects, such as Gaza and Palestine, unless Davis had raised them first. Everett noted that Prof. Russell Rickford was in the audience and asked the group to acknowledge his presence as a courageous faculty member. There was no opportunity for audience members who disagreed with Davis to pose questions.
Davis spoke critically of the Expressive Activity Policy as an infringement of students’ free speech rights.
Everett asked Davis how she could be confident that their cause would prevail in the end. In response, Davis noted that the concept of justice has changed over the decades that she has been politically active. When she started, there were no black feminist philosophers, and revolutionaries were heterocentric and male-dominated. Because of her work, young people today can take many social advancements for granted and focus on an updated definition of justice.
Everett noted her great respect for Davis, and at one point, they hugged on stage.
As the event concluded, a large portion of the audience chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” The ending had all of the hallmarks of a pro-Palestine rally.
A committee selects the MLK Commemoration Speaker each year. The speakers for the last two years were Kimberlé Crenshaw ‘81 in 2024 and Stanford Law Professor Richard Ford in 2023.
