Assata Shakur - an Autobiography
1. She changes her name from “JoAnne Deborah Chesimard" to “Assata Shakur”Â
2. Starts referring to her wyt name as her "slave name".
3. Joins the BPP and BLA. Shortly after J. Edgar Hoover ordered the forty-one FBI offices to intensify their efforts “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize” Black nationalist organizations and their leaders.Â
4. Gets pulled over for a minor offense (defective taillight), in New Jersey Turnpike.
5. Assata was shot in the back 2 times, (once with her hands up) paralyzing her arm, making her unable to hold a gun, yet the police insisted that she shot and killed an officer.Â
6. By the time she was shot and captured on May 2, 1973, she was wanted for a number of manufactured serious crimes, non of which led to her conviction or sentencing by the court due to insufficient evidence.Â
7. After being shot by police, she was transferred to hospital where she was subjected to forced interrogation and physical and psychological torture by variety of government agencies such as police and FBI.Â
8. They staged fake court in the hospital while she was tied to the stretcher.
9. She recalls the 3 books that a nurse smuggled for her in the hospital: A book of Black poetry, another one "Black Woman in White America", and Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha". How she read the poetry book out loud to protest her torture and prison inside the hospital.Â
10. She talks about her upbringing in the racist apartheid amerikkkan South. Education was completely empty, where they only learned to read and write, but never learned about the history of black oppression.Â
“(When we learned history, we were never taught the real reasons for things. We were just taught useless trivia, simplistic facts, key phrases, and miscellaneous, meaningless dates.) I couldn’t understand it. What were people all the way in amerika doing in a war because some prince got killed in Austria? I could just imagine going home and telling my grandmother that i got in a fight because some dude in Europe got killed.”
She described that later she learned that 1776 amerikkkan revolution, was a revolution for the freedom of whites only. They were told that Blacks were not fighting back against slavery. They didn't learn about black revolutionaries such as Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Cinque, and Nat Turner. She was taught at school that George Washington never told a lie, yet the reality is that not only he was a big lier, but once he sold a slave for a keg of rum. Same with Lincoln. among the most common lies are that Lincoln freed the slaves, that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves:Â
“The day i found out about Nat Turner I was affected so strongly it was physical. I was so souped up on adrenalin i could barely contain myself. I tore through every book my mother had. Nowhere could i find the name Nat Turner” (2)
 11. Finally, she gets convicted in 1977 by an all white jury of murdering a New Jersey State trooper, although no physical evidence indicated that she had been the shooter, Chesimard’s trial had been widely covered in the African American press as a symbol of police and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) efforts to suppress Black radical movements. (1)Â
12. In the book, Shakur mildly criticizes Huey Newton's strategy of drawing the battle line between Panthers and police at the Panther offices across the United States. Shakur seems to be puzzled on Huey's notion of guerrilla warfare.Â
13. In November 1979, she escapes a high security male prison with the help of BLA and seeks political asylum in Cuba until today.
14. She is the first women on FBI most wanted list, and later on the terrorist list with a renewed reward of 2 million Dollars. In 2016 New Jersey state claimed that she is a threat to US government. Former FBI director Louis Freeh reported that the FBI offered five Cuban spies that were being held in Florida in exchange for Assata Shakur and the deal was totally rejected. (3)
"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. (4)
15. Newsday reporter Ron Howell published the first interview with Shakur "On the Run With Assata Shakur" after her arrival in Cuba, confirming her presence and providing the first public glimpse into her life in Cuba. She contributed to the anti-racism and cultural education within the cuban government.
Although most foreign asylees studied at the University of Havana, the article reported the unusual claim that Shakur was studying politics, sociology and philosophy at the Escuela Superior del Partido, a system of colleges run directly by the Cuban Communist Party and populated by its members, with whom she would soon collaborate with as a political advisee. “She is clearly trusted by the Cubans,” wrote Howell, an observation that would prove prescient of the coming years as Shakur worked closely with the central committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and as an intermediary between the government and visiting American delegations...By the mid-1990s, Shakur had become a regular face at cultural and political events in Havana. Now fluent in Spanish and highly respected by Cuban officials, Shakur worked closely with the Central Committee of Cuba’s communist party, (1)
16. Tupac Shakur was Assata's godson. Tupac himself was named after Tupac Amaru (the last monarch Sapa Inca of the Neo-Inca State, the remnants of the Inca Empire in Vilcabamba, Peru, who was executed by the Spanish Colonizers). I Also read the semi-fictional book "T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E." by Sanyika Shakur. Towards the end of the book when the main character's aunt (A panther) is telling him about his family tree and blood line, she briefly mentions the story of Assata.Â
1. “Assata Shakur Is Welcome Here”: Havana, Black Freedom Struggle, and U.S.–Cuba Relations . Latner, Teishan A. 4, s.l. : Souls - A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, APRIL 18TH, 2018, Vol. 19.
2. Shakur, Assata. Assata, an autobiography. s.l. : Zed Books Ltd., 1987.
3. SOURCE, THE. CUBA REFUSES U.S. TRADE NEGOTIATION FOR ASSATA SHAKUR. THE SOURCE. [Online] MARCH 6, 2015. https://thesource.com/2015/03/06/cuba-refuses-u-s-trade-negotiation-for-assata-shakur/.
4. democracynow.org. Hands Off Assata Shakur: Angela Davis Calls for Radical Activism to Protect Activist Exiled in Cuba . democracynow. [Online] MARCH 28, 2016. https://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/28/hands_off_assata_shakur_angela_davis.