Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an iconic African-American activist, educator, and author who has dedicated her life to the fight against oppression. My place setting for Ms. Davis is intended to provide a glimpse of her life and work as a whole. I chose to make the plate red because of the red flag of communism and socialism and Ms. Davis was heavily involved with the movements. The color red is displayed in the communist red flag to symbolize the blood of workers who were killed in the battle against capitalism in the French Revolution of the 18th century. Initially, I was going to display a silhouette of Ms. Davis’ well known afro, but once reading a quote in which she said, “I am remembered as a hairdo”, I decided against it. In my opinion, Ms. Davis’ legacy is more than her afro, her words and her actions are what she should be remembered for. I decided to decoupage quotes by Ms. Davis as well as words I felt described her and her work. I thought it was extremely important to include her views of American society which she viewed as extremely oppressive, I re-worked the the American flag on her plate. I intentionally put blue lines like bars over her ideas and thoughts to symbolize the oppression she saw and placed the word “freedom” multiple times over the bars to show that freedom for all men, women, and children was her main goal. The place setting is an actual American flag in order to show a contrast between the plate’s ideas and the flag’s ideas. The goal of showing the contrast between the two is to even more emphasize the idea that Ms. Davis did not believe America abided by the values their flag symbolized. I chose to have her utensils be black because while Ms. Davis is well known for her role in the Black Panther Party, she accomplished and was a part many other activities as well. Utensils are meant to assist with one’s eating therefore I found it fitting to make to have the black utensils symbolize the Black Panther Party being just one aspect of her life. An avid scholar with a thirst for knowledge, I thought it would be nice to place a book on the side of her place setting. The chains placed around the place setting are to symbolize prison reform, an issue near and dear to Ms. Davis's heart. Lastly, I made the conscious decision to have a danity china cup serve as her drinking cup to pay homage to her southern roots. The idea of danity china cup has to do with the idea while in the South, during Ms. Davis’ upbringing in the 1950s, white women were seen as wives and mothers who stayed at home and enjoyed the luxury of having tea parties and other frivolous social gatherings, while black women were depicted as working outside the home and excluded for the ideal of domesticity.