The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study recently announced that it has acquired Angela Davis’ personal archive. While Smithsonian Folkways stewards some of her recorded work, we are thrilled to learn that her personal archive will soon be accessible to the public.

Born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Davis rose to prominence around the world as a social and political activist, scholar, author, and speaker. While jailed and awaiting trial in New York for the Soledad Brothers case (1971), Angela Davis Speaks was recorded and released on Folkways Records to communicate with the public. Her work also appears on the African American aural history compilation Every Tone a Testimony and Ruby Dee’s What if I am a Woman?, Vol. 2: Black Women's Speeches.