The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama has come under fire after it rescinded a decision to honor the activist and academic Angela Davis.
Davis, a Birmingham native, has spent decades fighting for civil rights. She was an active member of the Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the US communist party. She is now an outspoken supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that protests Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It is this ideological affinity that appears to have inspired the revocation of the BCRI honor.
BCRI president and chief executive Andrea Taylor said in October the institute would be “thrilled to bestow this honor” on Davis, who she said was “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak”.
But on Saturday the BCRI announced that in late December, “supporters and other concerned individuals and organizations, both inside and outside of our local community, began to make requests that we reconsider our decision”.
Its statement added that “upon closer examination of Davis’ statements and public record, we concluded that she unfortunately does not meet all of the criteria” for the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights award.
The statement did not indicate what criteria it found Davis did not meet, or identify the origin of the requests to reconsider.
Davis said she was “stunned” by the decision.
In a statement expressing “dismay”, Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin said the protests came from the “local Jewish community and some of its allies”. He called it a reactive and divisive decision and offered to facilitate dialogue in response.
On social media, many people responded with outrage. To some, the reference to “allies” was a critical clue. Sophie Ellman-Golan, an activist who works for the Women’s March, called the decision “disgraceful” but said she doubted Jews in Alabama could have effectively lobbied for such a move alone.
“The idea that Jews in Alabama – as opposed to the many Christian Zionists in Alabama – have the structural power to make this happen should give us pause,” she said. “‘It’s the Jews’ is an all-too-frequently-used explanation.”
Conservative evangelical Christians, who dominate the political landscape of the southern US, have long held strong Zionist positions for political and scriptural reasons.
Ahmad Ward, an 18-year-veteran of the BCRI who left in 2017, said he had “nothing but pure, profound love” for the Institute but called the decision to revoke Davis’s award an insult to the legacy of Shuttlesworth, a Birmingham minister and civil rights activist.
“I spent an inordinate amount of time with Fred L Shuttlesworth,” Ward wrote in a Facebook post. “He was a warrior. He was defiant. He was steadfast and solid.
“He WOULD NOT agree with this. I am personally offended at that statement. The unmitigated gall to assume that Fred L Shuttlesworth would be OK with the disrespect inflicted on Professor Davis is maddening.”
Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN contributor who was released after making pro-Palestinian remarks in a November speech, called the decision “shameful”.
“I stand with my dear sister and friend Angela Davis,” Hill wrote in a tweet.
According to the BCRI, which opened in 1992, recipients of the Fred Shuttlesworth award must “embody the principles that guided the American civil rights movement”, including the “philosophy of non-violence and reconciliation”.
Former winners include politicians John Lewis and Eleanor Holmes Norton, actor Danny Glover and attorney Bryan Stevenson.
This article was amended on 8 January 2019 to correct Sophie Ellman-Golan’s comments, which were mistakenly changed in the editing process.