Shakur, Assata (Chesimard, Joanne Deborah Bryon)

views updated

Shakur, Assata (Chesimard, Joanne Deborah Bryon)

July 16, 1947

Born in Queens, New York, Joanne Deborah Bryon, a nationalist and activist, spent her early childhood alternately with her grandparents in Wilmington, North Carolina, and with her mother in New York. She dropped out of high school at seventeen but returned to college during her early twenties, attending Manhattan Community College and City College of New York. She was married for a year while in school and continued to use her married name. She became a student activist and participated in rent strikes, antiwar demonstrations, and sitins, protesting racial injustices. As a reflection of her new political consciousness and her commitment to her African heritage, she changed her name to Assata ("she who struggles") Shakur ("the thankful"). The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 precipitated Assata Shakur's embrace of the militant Black Power movement and her rejection of nonviolence.

Assata Shakur moved to Oakland, California, where she joined the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Oakland and helped organize community education programs, demonstrations, and political rallies. When she returned to New York, she became a key member of the BPP's Harlem chapter. She helped organize and staff the Free Breakfast Program for community children, oversaw the planning of a free clinic, and coordinated member health care, first aid, and community outreach.

Assata Shakur, as well as many other members of the Harlem chapter, believed that politically motivated armed actions were a viable tactic in the struggle for black liberation. It is unclear what specific actions she participated in, but she became a prime target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Partially because of this surveillance and harassment, Assata Shakur went into hiding and became a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a clandestine nationwide network largely composed of former BPP members who had gone underground to escape criminal charges or police and FBI repression and who believed that structural change could be precipitated by armed struggle.

While underground, Assata Shakur was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted List and indicted for three bank robberies (April 5, 1971, August 23, 1971, and September 1, 1972), the kidnapping and murder of two drug dealers (December 28, 1972, and January 2, 1973), and the attempted murder of policemen on January 23, 1973. On May 2, 1973, Assata Shakur and two other BLA members were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by New Jersey state troopers. After the officers discovered guns in their cars, a confrontation ensued, and Assata Shakur was shot, one state trooper suffered minor injuries, and another, Werner Forrester, was killed. Assata Shakur's companions escaped. Accounts of this incident conflict, and it is un-clear if Assata Shakur discharged any weapon that night. She was hospitalized and charged with Forrester's murder.

During the next four years Assata Shakur was held in detention. The trials for the indictments brought while she was underground either ended in acquittal or were dropped because of lack of evidence. During her imprisonment she was confined to a men's prison, placed in solitary confinement for a year, given inadequate medical attention, and faced physical abuse. While in prison she became pregnant by Kamau, her codefendant during her New York bank robbery trial, and gave birth to a girl in 1974. Assata Shakur's imprisonment and what many of her supporters believed was a false arrest brought international attention to her plight as a political prisoner.

In March 1977 Assata Shakur was convicted of murdering state trooper Werner Forrester, although medical experts testified that her injuries would have rendered her incapable of firing the fatal shot. She was imprisoned at the maximum security prison for women in Alderson, West Virginia, then moved to New Jersey's Clinton Correctional Facility for Women. Two years after her conviction, she escaped from prison and was given political asylum in Cuba. The circumstances behind the escape are unknown.

In 1987 Assata Shakur's autobiography, which chronicles her life and ideological development, was published. Although many of her activities in Cuba have been shrouded in secrecy, Assata Shakur continued to be a vocal activist in the 1980s and 1990s, speaking out on global justice issues and the prison industrial complex. In 1998 the U.S. Congress passed a resolution to demand Shakur's extradition from Cuba, spurring Shakur's supporters to create the "Hands of Assata" campaign.