Fania Davis

Fania E. Davis is a leading national voice on restorative justice. She is a long-time social justice activist, civil rights trial attorney, restorative justice practitioner, writer, professor and scholar with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. She came of age in Birmingham, Alabama, during the social ferment of the civil rights era; the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing crystallized within Fania a passionate commitment to social transformation.

For the next decades, she was active in the Civil Rights, Black liberation, women’s, prisoners’, peace, anti-racial violence and anti-apartheid movements. Studying with indigenous healers, particularly in Africa, catalyzed Fania’s search for a healing justice, ultimately leading Fania to bring restorative justice to Oakland, California. Founding Director of Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth (RJOY), her numerous honors include the Ubuntu award for service to humanity, the Dennis Maloney Award for excellence in Youth Restorative Justice, World Trust’s Healing Justice award, the Tikkun (Repair the World) award, the Ella Baker/Septima Clark Award, the Bioneer’s Changemaker Award, and the Ebony POWER 100 award. She is a Woodrow Wilson fellow, and the Los Angeles Times named her a New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century