Angela Davis, the veteran American philosopher, writer, activist, feminist icon and symbol of Black liberation struggles, made the French headlines briefly last year. The council for the greater Paris region, the Île-de-France, took the decision to rename a high school in Saint-Denis, a Paris banlieue, which had been named the Lycée Angela Davis since shortly after it opened in 2017.
Why the sudden downgrading of Davis six years after being honoured as an important figure who had contributed exceptional service to humanity? It turned out that in 2021, Davis had cosigned an open letter that condemned the “colonial mentality” of “France’s governance structures”, quoting measures such as “the law against wearing the headscarf”. This, according to Valérie Pécresse, the rightwing politician who runs the Paris region – and who noticed the letter two years later – was “against the laws of our republic”.
