Revisiting an Angela Davis quote

A super-sleuth tracks the origins of a consistently mis-cited quote

In March 2024, I wrote the piece embedded below about a quote widely attributed to the great Angela Davis.

The quote is as follows:

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world.

And you have to do it all the time.

At the time, when I scoured the cited sources - in Ph.D dissertations, graduate theses, Harvard papers and feminist publications - none of the sources contained the exact quote. In my piece, I concluded the quote was misattributed despite it being something the great Angela Davis would say. I also bemoaned the lack of editing and source checking.

Today, I can share the quote is genuine all thanks to a super-sleuth!

The super-sleuth

Out of the blue, I receive an email from Sam Claxton. He tells me he works as a youth worker for Oxfordshire Youth, a charity located in Oxford, England.

He writes:

As part of my work supporting young people, I host digital skills/homework assistance sessions which support young people without access to the devices they need in Oxfordshire. In my work, I am committed to making our learning space as inclusive, inspirational, and politically aware as possible. To this end, I have produced several posters to go up in my classroom featuring inspirational people from various backgrounds with information about them and quotes which I find to be inspirational.

Angela Davis has always been an inspiration of mine ever since I became politically conscious. As such, she was one of the first activists I wanted to feature in my classroom.

As he began searching for a good quote from Davis, he found the quote in question. And as it was important to him as a responsible educator, he wanted to verify the quote. Fantastic!

Sam went down some of the same rabbit holes I did and then went even further. I am still not sure how he managed and I’m deeply impressed. I’m also delighted there’s someone else who wants to know the quotes they use are correct and in the right context.

Bingo!

Sam uncovers the source. He writes

It turns out that the full quote was originally recorded by the philosophy professor Dr. Johnathan Flowers at California State University whilst they were studying for their PhD in Philosophy at Southern Illinois University. You can see from the original post here, along with the accompanying posts here and here that Dr Flowers attended the lecture in February 2014 and posted the full version of the quote which was also recorded by James Anderson on their article [which he linked in a prior email]. I've reached out to Dr Flowers just to double check their attendance and ask if they have any recordings or notes from the speech.

It would seem that for over 10 years people have mistakenly cited this quote as coming from James Anderson's video and article despite the fact that the original origin of the quote came from a random tumblr post which was posted around the same time!

Dr Flowers responds to Sam’s message:

Hi Sam,

I do remember Angela Davis giving the full quote during the Q&A as part of her lecture. Unfortunately, I do not have a recording of that portion of the Q&A so I cannot be of any help there.

That said, my memory of it (and some notes that I’ve dug up) indicate that the quote came in response to a question I submitted about how we, as students, might start to change the conditions that she was talking about in her lecture.

As for the attribution of the quote, it’s been one of the enduring ironies of my life that the quote has been reproduced over and over again based on both my Tumblr post and James’ recording, yet no one has the actual quote as written.

Thanks for reaching out and let me know if I can be of any other help here.

Johnathan Flowers

I spent hours searching and reading, but didn’t find what Sam managed to find. So, chapeau Sam Claxton!

The correct citation

My original dismay over, and criticism of, lack of correct and reliable editing and sourcing still stands. I welcome corrections - and in this case, I’d say excellent discovery - like Sam’s and I will update my prior piece.

For anyone wanting to use this quote, I suggest the following, modified according to whatever style manual you follow:

Angela Davis, live at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on 13 February 2014, Q&A post lecture as noted by Dr Jonathan Flowers in a post contemporaneously shared on Tumblr

Citing only the talk or even giving the time stamp in the talk is just sloppy and incorrect.

You will find the talk on YouTube and it is brilliant.