Angela Yvonne Davis is considered to be a distinguished social and political activist of the United States. She has made a huge contribution in the uplifting of the political and social conditions of black in the American society. She was born and brought up in Alabama by her upper middle class parents, who were also in political scene of their times. Davis has studied in New York, Frankfurt and Massachusetts, where she polished her already existing communist ideas in her mind. She started as an associate professor at the University of California in the subject of philosophy and side by side got involved in the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party. It was in the 1970s that Davis got in trouble with the law when one of her subject of study, a young black boy who was imprisoned, tried to escape from the jail and was found with a weapon that was claimed to have been given to him by Davis. She tried to flee the law but was caught and put in the jail until all of the charges on her were withdrawn. Davis has been a keynote speaker on the issues of feminism, condition of the prisoners in the jails of United States and the liberation of gays and lesbians at many renowned universities and institutions since that incident.

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and obtained his MA and PhD in philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary (where he has recently returned to teach), Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Paris. He has written nineteen books and edited thirteen books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, published by Beacon Press in 1993. His latest books are Black Prophetic Fire, which offers a fresh perspective on six revolutionary African American leaders (Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells) and The Radical King, a collection of MLK’s writings curated and introduced by Prof. West to reclaim Dr. King’s prophetic and radical vision as both a civil rights leader and—more broadly—as a human right activist. Both books were published by Beacon Press.

Cornel West appears frequently on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, CNN and C-SPAN, and he makes numerous appearances speaking to audiences large and small on subjects ranging from racial justice and queer rights to climate justice. Prof. West has appeared in over twenty-five documentaries and films, including Examined Life, Call & Response, Sidewalk, and Stand. He has also made three spoken-word albums, including Never Forget, collaborating with Prince, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, KRS-One, and the late Gerald Levert. His recent spoken-word interludes were featured on Terence Blanchard’s Choices (which won the Grand Prix in France for the best jazz album of the year for 2009).

He has recently been deeply involved in the Black Lives Matter protests and was among those arrested in Ferguson in 2015. Cornel West has a passion to communicate in writings and orations, through music and film, and in solidarity with groups and faith communities committed to justice in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.—a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Photo credit Sigrid Estrada.

Frank Barat is a human rights activist and author. He was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and is now the president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. His books include Gaza in Crisis, On Palestine and Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation.