Political activist to political refugee: remembering Black liberator, Assata Shakur

Graphic by Fai Fong

Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther and the first woman ever added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, died Thursday, Sept. 26, in Havana at the age of 78. 

In a statement made by Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she passed due to “health conditions and advanced age.” She leaves behind a daughter, Kakuya Amala Olugbala Shakur, who confirmed her mother’s passing in a Facebook post. 

On March 25, 1977, Shakur was convicted of murdering New Jersey State Trooper Fred Foerster in a gunfight, where police shot Assata Shakur twice and fatally shot Zayd Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). She was held at the Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in New York, until her famous escape in 1979 with the help of the BLA. 

She stayed in hiding until Fidel Castro, a revolutionary and former president of Cuba, granted her political asylum in 1984.

In 2013, forty years after her conviction, the FBI identified Shakur in its Most Wanted Terrorist list, which included a $2 million bounty, claiming her escape increased their resolve to have Shakur continue her sentence. Last year September, New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Iganamort sponsored a resolution calling for the extradition of Shakur “so that she may be brought to justice” for Foerster’s murder. 

“For years, we have worked with the State Department to bring Chesimard back to New Jersey, so she could face justice for the cold-blooded murder of an American hero. Sadly, it appears she has passed without being held fully accountable for her heinous crimes,” expressed New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and New Jersey State Police Superintendent Col. Patrick Callahan, in a joint statement released a day after Shakur’s passing. 

Although Shakur was convicted of murder, evidence “suggests that there was no gun powder residue on her fingers. None of her fingerprints were found on any of the guns at the scene,” according to Alondra Nelson, a sociology professor at Columbia University, in an interview with NPR.

Shakur, also known as JoAnne Chesimard, was born in New York and lived with her mother and grandparents until they moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, in the 1950s. She was the oldest of two children, and according to her book, “Assata: Autobiography,” her family tried to instill in her the importance of an education and a “sense of personal dignity” as a means for survival during her time in the deeply segregated South. 

Shakur moved back to New York in the 1960s and later enrolled in the Borough of Manhattan Community College before transferring to City College of New York, “where her exposure to Black Nationalist organizations profoundly impacted her activism,” according to the Center of Race and Social Problems at the University of Pittsburgh. 

In the 1970s, Shakur joined the Black Panther Party’s Harlem chapter and volunteered in the Black Panthers’ Survival Programs. The Panthers provided free medical services, such as tuberculosis and sickle-cell anemia testing, breakfast for children, and drug rehabilitation. 

According to journalist and historian Santi Elijah Holley, in his book “An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created,” Shakur adopted her surname in honor of Saladin Shakur (formerly known as James Costin Sr., who changed his name after the assassination of Malcom X) and to showcase her commitment towards Black liberation and decolonization. “We want to learn about Black nationalism. And that was what the name sort of represented for this younger generation,” explained Holley to NPR. 

In 1978, attorney Lennox Hinds, founder of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, petitioned the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, alleging multiple prisoners had their human rights violated inside different U.S. prisons. In response, a delegation of eight international jurists investigated the claim and found that the FBI operated a covert program called Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that practiced illegal government activity and misconduct, such as discriminatingly targeting political activists for “provocation, false arrests, entrapment, fabrication of evidence, and spurious criminal prosecutions,” according to a report summary. 

The report also defined a class and a list of victims, which included Shakur. “One of the worst cases is that of ASSATA SHAKUR, who spent over twenty months in solitary confinement in two separate men's prisons subject to conditions totally unbefitting any prisoner… She has never on any occasion been punished for any infraction of prison rules which might in any way justify such cruel or unusual treatment,” see report here. 

Assata Shakur’s impact in Black liberation, anti-colonialism, and in the fight to end racial injustice continues to influence racial justice activists and grassroots organizations. “Rest in Power, Assata Sakur. Revolutionary fighter, writer, exile, elder of the Black liberation, and carrier of freedom,” stated Black Lives Matter, in a tribute to Shakur on X. “We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains,” taught Shakur, a quote famously circulated during racial justice movements.

In addition to serving as an inspiration for racial justice activists today, her influence also reached Hip-Hop, where she was referenced in songs by Public Enemy, Commons, and most notably by her godson, Tupac Shakur. “Assasta Shakur is a sister who I feel America made a target of…she was in the foreground, not in the back, helping brothers get their proper justice,” explained Tupac, in a lecture to young students in 1991 (see here). 

After her escape to Cuba, Shakur continued her activism work in Havana, where “she remained engaged with contemporary radical politics specific to the United States,” according to professor and political activist Angela Davis.

“Before going back to college, I knew I didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together,” wrote Shakur.