Ellen and I saw this last summer. I had looked for it again this year, but didn't find it until today. I still don't know why there is a large picture of the famous black radical activist Angela Davis -- in full 1970s militant mode, afro and all -- on the wall of a nice Left Bank Parisian neighborhood not too far from Le Bon Marche. But apparently, the French are taken with her. Last summer, Ellen and I saw some socks with her image on them (this same image, I think). Davis studied in Paris during her youth, so perhaps that's part of the connection. Maybe her image is like that of the famous picture of Che Guevara which has become such a commodity that it's on t-shirts, posters, and everything else. Che is probably turning in his grave -- how can you fight the system when you are co-opted by the system? I wonder what Angela Davis thinks?
Jeffrey H. Jackson is Associate Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (2003) and the co-editor of Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines (2005). For more information, visit http://jeffreyhjackson.blogspot.com
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