Ode to Mama Assata Shakur

This month, specifically July 16th, marked the birth of Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who passed away in September of last year. 

Assata Shakur passed away in the capital city of Havana reportedly due to her "health conditions and advanced age," Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur's daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed her mother's death in a Facebook post. Officials in New Jersey, where Shakur was previously imprisoned, said she was 78.

Assata was a member of Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and The Black Liberation Army in the 1970s. During this time, Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were both convicted of murdering their own colleague Zayd Malik Shakur in addition to a New Jersey state trooper, Werner Foerster, during a shootout. This shootout took place after the three Black Liberation Army members were pulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. 

In this exchange, Zayd Malik Shakur was killed by police and Assata, who was not carrying a firearm, was shot twice, then reportedly tortured after being taken into police custody. However, both Assata and Sundiata received life sentences.  

Between 1971 and 1973, Assata was charged with murder, kidnapping, and robbery. Each of those charges ended in dismissal, acquittal, or a hung jury until she was convicted by an all-white jury of murdering Zayd Shakur and the patrolman. The guilty verdict came despite evidence proving that she could not have killed Foerster and the admission of trooper James Harper that he killed Zayd Shakur.

In 1979, she was rescued from prison by the Black Liberation Army and supporters. She was then later received by Cuba as a political refugee and granted political asylum in 1984.

Cuba supported revolution and thus revolutionaries around the world. As an example, between 1975 and 1991, Cuba sent a total of 300,000 to 400,000 troops to support the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government in fighting off rebels as well as invading South African forces following the country’s independence in 1975.

Therefore, being a revolutionary, Cuba supported Assata Shakur as well.  

While living in Cuba, she wrote an autobiography, entitled Assata, which also describes her harrowing torture during incarceration.

On May 2, 2005, the U.S. added her to the FBI’s domestic terrorist list, while New Jersey raised the $150,000 bounty on her head to $1 million. Federal Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gave his personal approval for the money to come from the Department of Justice. This bounty was then raised to $2 million in 2013. She was then also designated as one of the 10 most dangerous terrorists in the country.

After the government branded Assata a terrorist, death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, also framed for killing a cop, said of her: “To label this woman a terrorist is to bleed all meaning from the word. For, during her life as an activist, during her wounding and her arrest, and during her travails as an accused in courtrooms that were more lynching posts than halls of justice, she was terrorized by a system that wanted to punish her for daring to rebel.”

The Cuban President Fidel Castro was also adamant in her defense. “They wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie,” he said. Instead, Castro said, Shakur is a victim of “the fierce repression against the Black movement in the United States” and had been “a true political prisoner.”

The National Conference of Black Lawyers, meanwhile, demanded “that the U.S. government immediately withdraw the bounty offer, and permanently cease its pursuit of Assata Shakur as such is both illegal and unjustifiable under international human rights laws.”

Her return had been requested by the US for decades. Additionally, there were heightened attempts by the federal government, the United States Congress and the state of New Jersey to extradite Assata Shakur from Cuba to the United States in 2017. This included a June 2017 policy address that Donald Trump delivered to Cuba in Miami where he asked the Castro administration return Shakur.

Thus, the Hands Off Assata Campaign, a coalition of organizations and individuals who were outraged by this, was formed.

Fortunately, the Deputy director of American Affairs at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gustavo Machin, told Yahoo News that he has no intention of returning Assata to the United States. “I can say it is off the table.”

Assata wrote the following as a part of a larger letter to John Paul II in 1998, who was pope at the time, during his trip to Cuba.

“In 1977, I was convicted in a trial that can only be described as a legal lynching. In 1979, I was able to escape with the aid of some of my fellow comrades. I saw this as a necessary step, not only because I was innocent of the charges against me, but because I knew that [in] the racist legal system in the United States I would receive no justice. I was also afraid that I would be murdered in prison. I later arrived in Cuba where I am currently living in exile as a political refugee.”

Angela Davis also said the following in a 2013 interview with Democracy Now:

“I’ve been involved in the campaign to save Assata’s life for all of those decades. And now, of course, as there are new openings with respect to Cuba, we welcome the end of the embargo, the blockade, but at the same time we have to be attentive to what this might mean for Assata, given that there is $2 million reward on her head, that she has been designated as one of 10 most dangerous terrorists in the country.”

Assata Shakur was Tupac's godmother and his step-aunt. Assata's brother, Mutulu Shakur, was Tupac's stepfather. Tupac spoke highly of his godmother, referring to her as "America's Nightmare" in his 1991 track Words of Wisdom. 

Assata was referenced by her given name Joanne Deborah Chesimard, by the hip hop group Public Enemy in their 1988 song entitled Rebel Without a Pause, saying "supporter of Chesimard." She was also honored with a song by Hip Hop artist Common entitled "A Song for Assata.”

A true revolutionary. Even after her passing, our mama, our elder, Assata Shakur, still stands as a clear symbol of black resistance against white oppression as she is a Black woman that escaped and continued to resist. May your memory and lessons live on forever. Ase.