Assata Shakur, Black Liberation Icon, Dies Free in Cuba
By Tandy Lau
Assata Olugbala Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard)
(New York Amsterdam News) Freedom fighter Assata Olugbala Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard) died this past Thursday afternoon, Sept. 25, in Havana, Cuba, where she spent the last four decades of her life in exile. She was 78. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement in Spanish announcing Shakur’s death from illness and advanced age.
Her daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed the news on Facebook.
“Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time,” Kakuya wrote. “I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this movement. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time.
Born in Queens on July 16, 1947, Shakur is remembered as an ex-political prisoner who participated in struggles ranging from the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and the Black Panthers to Manhattan Community College and City College campus groups like the Golden Drums.
A perennial target in United States efforts to dismantle Black Nationalist Movements, she spent six years behind bars — despite countless calls for her innocence and conflicting medical evidence — before her BLA comrades sprung her from a New Jersey prison. Despite FBI manhunts, massive bounties, and numerous Black Panther site raids, Shakur evaded authorities and resurfaced in Cuba in 1984, where Pres. Fidel Castro offered her political asylum.
In 1998, the Amsterdam News published an open letter by Shakur to the media with her side of the story regarding the deadly New Jersey Turnpike shooting which she had been convicted (after a mistrial) for after New Jersey State Troopers stopped her and two comrades. The encounter left fellow revolutionary Zayd Malik Shakur and state trooper Werner Foerster dead. She was charged alongside Sundiata Acoli, who was also in the car.
“Neither [Sundiata] Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial,” she wrote. “We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media were ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press daily. In 1977, I was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison.”
Before Shakur’s conviction, authorities threw several other criminal cases at her, which ended in dismissals or acquittals. Malcolm X Grassroots Movement organizer Jomo Muhammad called her as a beacon of hope for New Afrikan movements. But he says it’s important to remember her also as a person and hopes more people will come forward to share stories about her now that concerns for attempts to lure her back to the United States are over.
“It’s important to always remember that Assata was a parent, an auntie and a human being,” said Muhammad. “And a human being that loved people, that loved her people — that she was willing to make sacrifices for her people and their desire to be free. She’s been categorized as the soul of the BLA but I think she was a little bit bigger than that: she was really a soul of a movement.
“She is one of the most recognized political prisoners and political exiles, and so she continued, even in her exile in Cuba, to be a force here inside the United States, in helping to keep alive our fight to bring home our captured freedom fighters and to create the conditions for Assata to come home, if that’s what she had chose.”
Recently, the state released several of her political prisoner peers due to elder parole and compassionate release mechanisms. In 2022, the AmNews reported Acoli’s release from prison 29 years after he became parole eligible. Her close confidant and stepfather to her godson (the icon Tupac Shakur), Mulutu Shakur, faced a conviction stemming charges including orchestrating her escape and was also released as an elder in 2023 shortly before his passing. Sekou Odinga, a New Afrikan organizer who also aided Shakur’s escape, was released from prison in 2014 and died last year.