Assata Shakur
Assata Olugbala Shakur (born JoAnne Deborah Byron; July 16, 1947, often referred to by her married surname Chesimard), is a former member of the Black Liberation Army, a black nationalist urban guerrilla group, who was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder, under New Jersey’s “aiding and abetting” statute, of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum.
Born in Flushing, Queens, New York City, she grew up in New York City and Wilmington, North Carolina. After she ran away from home several times, her aunt, who would later act as one of her lawyers, took her in. She became involved in political activism at Borough of Manhattan Community College and City College of New York.
After graduation, she briefly joined the Black Panther Party and, rejecting her ‘slave name’, adopted the name, Assata Shakur. She then joined the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers which led an armed struggle against the U.S. government through tactics such as holding up banks and killing police officers and drug dealers. Between 1971 and 1973, she was charged with several crimes and was the subject of a multi-state manhunt. In May 1973, Shakur was arrested after being wounded in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike. Also involved in the shootout were New Jersey State Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper and BLA members Sundiata Acoli and Zayd Malik Shakur. Harper was wounded; Zayd was killed; Foerster was killed by Acoli. Between 1973 and 1977, she was charged with murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, and kidnapping in relation to six other incidents. She was acquitted on three of the charges and three were dismissed. In 1977, she was convicted of the murder of Foerster and of seven other felonies related to the shootout, in a trial, her supporters argue was unfair.
On November 2, 1979, a group of BLA members broke her out of prison. After living as a fugitive, she emerged in Cuba in 1984, where she received political asylum. She has lived in Cuba ever since, despite U.S. government efforts to have her returned.
After graduation from CCNY, Shakur briefly joined the Black Panther Party (BPP). She soon left the party, disliking the macho behavior of the men and believing that the BPP lacked knowledge and understanding of United States black history. Shakur then joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an offshoot of the BPP whose members, inspired by the Vietcong and the Battle of Algiers, led a campaign of armed struggle against the U.S. government using tactics such as planting bombs, holding up banks and executing drug dealers and police.
Chesimard changed her name to Assata Olugbala Shakur in 1971. Assata is a West African name, derived from the Arabic name Aisha, said to mean “she who struggles”, while Shakur means “thankful one” in Arabic. Olugbala means “love for the people” in Yoruba. She now identified as an African and felt her old name no longer fit: “It sounded so strange when people called me Joanne. It really had nothing to do with me. I didn’t feel like no Joanne, or no negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman”.
On April 6, 1971, Shakur was shot in the stomach during a struggle with a guest at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. According to police, Shakur knocked on the door of a guest’s room, asked “Is there a party going on here?”, then displayed a revolver and demanded money. In 1987, Shakur confirmed to a journalist that there was a drug connection to this incident but refused to elaborate.
She was booked on charges of attempted robbery, felonious assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of a deadly weapon, then released on bail. Shakur is alleged to have said that she was glad that she had been shot since, afterward, she was no longer afraid to be shot again.
Following an August 23, 1971, bank robbery in Queens, Shakur was sought for questioning. A photograph of a woman (who was later alleged to be Shakur) wearing thick-rimmed black glasses, with a high hairdo, pulled tightly over her head and pointing a gun, was widely displayed in banks. The New York Clearing House Association paid for full-page ads displaying material about Shakur. In 1987, when asked in Cuba about police allegations that the BLA funded themselves through bank robberies and theft, Shakur responded, “There were expropriations, there were bank robberies.”
On December 21, 1971, Shakur was named by the New York City Police Department as one of four suspects in a hand grenade attack that destroyed a police car and slightly injured two patrolmen in Maspeth, Queens; a 13-state alarm was issued three days after the attack when a witness identified Shakur and Andrew Jackson from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) photographs. Law enforcement officials in Atlanta, Georgia said that Shakur and Jackson had lived together in Atlanta for several months in the summer of 1971.
Shakur was one of those wanted for questioning for wounding a police officer attempting to serve a traffic summons in Brooklyn on January 26, 1972. After an $89,000 Brooklyn bank robbery on March 1, 1972, a Daily News headline asked: “Was that JoAnne?”; Shakur was also wanted for questioning after a September 1, 1972, Bronx bank robbery. Based on FBI photographs, Monsignor John Powis alleged that Shakur was involved in an armed robbery at his Our Lady of the Presentation church in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on September 14, 1972.
Content: Wikipedia
Photo: definearevolution.com
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