back to 1970. Aretha Franklin offered to post bail for Angela Davis, who was jailed on trumped-up charges. And I want to read from a Jet magazine article from December 3rd, 1970. It’s headlined “Aretha Says She’ll Go Angela’s Bond If Permitted.” In it, Aretha Franklin is quoted saying, “My daddy says I don’t know what I’m doing. Well, I respect him, of course, but I’m going to stick by my beliefs. Angela Davis must go free. Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people—they’ve made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.” Those the words of Aretha Franklin.
Angela Davis talking:
Aretha was an integral part of many people’s lives, including my own, and not only because she made a public statement indicating that she would pay my bail back in 1970. But perhaps I’ll say a few words about that, to begin.
When Aretha decided to hold a press conference announcing that she would pay up to $250,000, which in today’s currency would be probably about a million-and-a-half dollars, it was really a high point in the campaign. And I believe that many people who may have been reluctant to associate themselves with me because of my communist affiliations probably joined the campaign as a result of Aretha’s statement.
When I was actually—when I actually became eligible for bail, unfortunately, Aretha was out of the country. She was in the Caribbean. And during those days, prior to the emergence of global capitalism, money did not flow so easily across national borders, and therefore, [inaudible] elsewhere, a white farmer from Central California who agreed to put up his farm.
But that was such a moving moment. It was a moment in which the campaign for my freedom achieved a really populist status among people in this country, and probably throughout the world, as well. I will be forever grateful to Aretha, because I think she played such an integral role in—of the success of the campaign.
she said she had already been jailed for disturbing the peace. And it seems as if she realized that it might be necessary to disturb the peace a bit further. But, of course, the fact that I was a member of the Communist Party at that time made many people reluctant to offer public support, because they thought they might be associated with communism, and thus might be placing their own lives in jeopardy.
I was charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy—three capital charges. And at the time when Aretha made this statement, I was actually not eligible for bail, because capital offenses were not bailable. As it turned out, the Supreme Court of California abolished, at least temporarily, the death penalty in California, which meant that for a short while I was eligible for bail. I’m one of the few people who were actually released, because within a few days the Supreme Court amended its decision by indicating that all previously capital offenses would remain non-bailable.
I had been in jail at the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village in New York. But I had, at that time, already been extradited. I was in a jail in Palo Alto. I had been—it’s a long story. I had been extradited to Marin County, and then we got a change of venue to Santa Clara County. So, when I was actually released on bail, it was from the jail in Palo Alto.
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Angela Davis
author, professor and activist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
— source democracynow.org | Aug 17, 2018