Early bio

Assata Shakur was born Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard on July 16, 1947 in New York City. From an early age, she was raised to be a socially aware and proud black woman. Her parents were divorced shortly after she was born and when she was three years old, she moved down South to North Carolina with her grandparents. All of her familty tried to instill in her a sense of personal dignity, forcing her to never make subservient gestures to whites and constantly stressing that she was just as good as whites. While Shakur found her grandparents defining pride and dignity within the value system of the white capitalist system of America. Success meant getting the nice things that whites had: a car, house, money etc. In her autobiography, she remarks that her grandmother "had a lot of Booker T. Washington, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, "talented tenth" ideas." (Shakur 31)

Shakur saw the same when she returned to New York. She lived in Jamaica, Queens and attended elementary and middle school there. She saw that blacks were completely brainwashed without being aware of it. They accepted white value systems and sometimes even the white man's view of themselves. In school, constantly, girls were trying to make themselves fit to the white beauty standards as much as possible. Furthermore, the education she received in schools was a further part of her brainwashing as schools taught a history that was just not true. Shakur ran away from home briefly and lived in the Village of Manhattan, where she experienced what the real world was like for poor, impoverised blacks. Eventually, she returned to school and lived with her aunt Evelyn (who eventually became her lawyer during her trials). During a summer of her high school years, Assata tried to join the NAACP. She could not, however, accept the idea that she should just accept people spitting on her. It has led her to believe that "nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them." (Shakur 139) The racist system will always use its oppressive powers to maintain itself. You cannot hope to change the system through the system.

Shakur attended Manhattan Community College, where had a significant percentage of black and third world students and where black consciousness and nationalism were omnipresent. The students there belonged to many organizations, including the Black Muslims, Garveyites, and Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity (OOAU). Here Assata began to do social work. During the summer, she worked with grade school students in remedial programs to improve their reading and math skills. Instead of using convential textbooks, she often wrote stories that pertained to the lives of her students. She also allowed them to direct classes to empower them. In college, Assata was also exposed to socialist groups and learned much about socialism. However, she experienced a lot of arrogance and dogmatism within these groups. Arrogance in fact was a major reason why Assata believed that black peple had to come together and organize their own revolutionary party. The white left was too arrogant that no real friendship nor respect could be gained working with them.

After graduating from college, Shakur went to Oakland, California. There she was exposed to revolutionaries of other racial groups. Native Americans, Chicanos, and Chinese revolutionaries were abound and Shakur learned much from these groups. She was so inspired that she decided to investigate the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Oakland. There it was made clear to her that the true enemy was not white people, but the capitalistic, imperialistic oppressors. She was impressed by the BPP in Oakland that she returned to New York and joined the chapter there. It was here that she met Zayd Shakur, who she would later be accused of murdering.

Upon joining the BPP in New York, however, Shakur began to face some difficulties. She dealt with many arrogant personalities, such as Robert Bey who expelled her the first day for speaking back to him. She was reinstated soon afterwards, however. Shakur also felt that the education within the BPP was lacking as many issues were discussed without delving into the historical context or the underlying causes. As a result, many of the BPP members were just robots repeating the party line. It convinced Shakur that a systematic program for political education for political education was necessary for a successful movement of Black liberation.

Shakur also began to disagree with the direction of the BPP. Huey P. Newton, the leader of the BPP, preached intercommunality, which stressed that oppressed communities existed, not oppressed nations. Shakur saw that the problem with that was that no one had told the oppressed communities that they were no longer nations. This conflicted with Shakur's tenet that without a truly internationalist component, nationalism was reactionary. Any community that was concerned with its liberation had to be concerned with other peoples' freedom also. In addition, criticism within the organization was not encouraged and Huey Newton began to act like a dictator within the BPP. He changed his title to Supreme Servant and expel many long-standing Panthers. The organization had become stagnant. Assata left the Party. Assata realized later that the degradation of the BPP was actually a product of the FBI's COINTELPRO, who destroyed the party by using divide-and-conquer tactics, turning members against each other.

Shakur's experience with the BPP helped shape her ideas of how liberation should take place. Armed struggle was necessary, but not sufficient to bring about a revolution. The hearts of the masses must also be won. The most important task, according to Shakur, was to help politically mobilize, educate, and organize the masses of Black people. Revolutionary groups could not survive without their support. The political and military actions of the liberation groups should be clearly understood, supported, and publicized in the Black community.

Shakur kept a low profile after she left the BPP but one day she found out that she was wanted for question in relation to the murder of two police officers. She became a fugitive but still worked on Liberation and joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA). On May 2, 1973, Shakur was stopped on the New Jersey State Turnpike, along with two Black Panthers: Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli . In an ensuing gunfight, Zayd Shakur and one New Jersey state policeman were killed and Assata Shakur and one New Jersey state policeman were injured. Over the next two-and-a-half years, Shakur was incarcerated, beaten, and tortured in a series of federal and state prisons. The charges ranged from kidnapping to assault and battery to bank robbery. She was acquitted in all six cases. During her incarceration, she became pregnant and had a daughter.

However, Shakur was found guilty of the murder of both the state trooper and Zayd Shakur, for her involvement at the gun battle. In 1979 she escaped prison and lived underground until 1986, when she was granted political asylum in Cuba, where she resides today.

References:

http://assata-shakur.biography.ms/

Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography. Connecticut: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1987.