Angela Y. Davis

If They Come in the Morning ... (Radical Thinkers) 
By  Angela Y. Davis


This collection of essays, letters, poems and notes from 1972 is a fascinating historical record from a period prior to the modern wave of mass incarceration in the USA. It is unavoidably dated in its style and many specifics have changed, but they have changed only for the worse and this writing has lost none of its topical relevance in the intervening 55 years.

The core theme is the corrupt use of the criminal justice system to incarcerate and control Black Americans. This is recognised as a flagrant updating of the system of chattel slavery whose abolition is still resented by White supremacists. Black Americans have always searched for ways to defend themselves and assert their human rights and the sources in this collection used the language of Marxism to interpret this as a revolutionary struggle rooted in class interests. In response, the US state and specifically J Edgar Hoover’s FBI employed its criminal justice system to target and silence political activists, in blatant contradiction of the constitution and the law. As a result, the country has had many thousands of political prisoners without properly acknowledging them.

Angela Davis points out that since the days of slavery and the Underground Road, resistance to Black oppression has been illegal by definition. She identifies in her first essay current categories of political prisoner that are hidden in plain view throughout the American justice system. They include Black political activists who have been criminalised or framed and Black prisoners who have learned to be politically aware and active within the prison system. More widely they include huge numbers of Black convicts who know very well they ought not to be in the prison system at all, not least because some 85% have been coerced or intimidated into pleading guilty without a trial or proper defence.

"Nat Turner [1831] and John Brown[1859] were political prisoners in their time. The acts for which they were charged and subsequently hanged, were the practical extensions of their profound commitment to the abolition of slavery." [p31] 

“The battle for the liquidation of slavery had no legitimate existence in the eyes of the government and therefore the special quality of deeds carried out in the interests of freedom was deliberately ignored. There were no political prisoners, there were only criminals; just as the movement out of which these deeds flowed was largely considered criminal.”[p32]

"A deep-seated ambivalence has always characterized the official response to the political prisoner. Charged and tried for a criminal act, his guilt is always political in nature. This ambivalence is perhaps best captured by Judge Webster Thayer’s comment upon sentencing Bartolo-meo Vanzetti to 15 years for an attempted payroll robbery: “This man, although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless morally culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions.” (The very same judge incidentally, sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to death for a robbery and murder of which they were manifestly innocent.)"  [p30]

”In a revealing contradiction, the court resisted the description of the New York Panther 21 trial as ‘political,’ yet the prosecutor entered as evidence of criminal intent, literature which represented, so he purported, the political ideology of the Black Panther Party." [p33]

According to Louis S. Nelson, warden of San Quentin Prison, “… if the prisons of California become known as ‘schools for violent revolution,’ the Adult Authority would be remiss in their duty not to keep the inmates longer” (S.F. Chronicle, May 2, 1971)."[p40]

”The vicious circle linking poverty, police, courts and prison is an integral element of ghetto existence. Unlike the mass of whites, the path which leads to jails and prisons is deeply rooted in the imposed patterns of Black existence. For this very reason, an almost instinctive affinity binds the mass of Black people to the political prisoners.” [p42]

“The vast majority of Blacks harbour a deep hatred of the police and are not deluded by official proclamations of justice through the courts.” [p42]

The material in this book is sometimes aggressive and angry but often it is miserably sad. It bears witness to great suffering yet it includes uplifting tales of courage in adversity. The Marxist rhetoric can sound messianic and it seems that many activists truly hoped for revolutionary change but, with the benefit of hindsight, we already know that much of this energy was destined to run into the sand and that the prison situation in the USA was about to become much worse.

So what can we do? Maybe we can start by celebrating the courage and energy of the generation contributing to this important book. Then start to get angry. What else?

“The Black Liberation Movement is presently at a critical juncture. Fascist methods of repression threaten to physically decapitate and obliterate the movement. More subtle, yet not less dangerous ideological tendencies from within threaten to isolate the Black movement and diminish its revolutionary impact..."[p43]

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