Angela Davis to receive civil rights award after museum reverses decision
Source: The Guardian and agencies
Angela Davis to receive civil rights award after museum reverses decision
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute issued a public apology for denying the award and said there should have been more conversation
Guardian staff and agencies
Fri 25 Jan 2019 19.55 GMT
Asking the public to help rebuild trust in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the chairman of the Alabama museums board said on Friday it had reversed course after a public outcry and would give the activist Angela Davis an award that was offered then rescinded.
Davis was formerly an active member of the Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the US communist party. The institute announced in October that she would receive the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights award.
But Davis is also an outspoken supporter of a movement criticizing Israels treatment of Palestinians. Earlier this month, after a local Holocaust education group asked it to reconsider, the BCRI board withdrew the award.
In a statement issued amid widespread outcry, Davis said she had devoted much of (her) own activism to international solidarity and, specifically, to linking struggles in other parts of the world to US grass roots campaigns against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/25/alabama-civil-rights-museum-angela-davis