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Most of us know more than
our share of facts about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks,
Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. We have been fed information about
these persons from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Every February, it is
the same ole people; this is not to say that these persons aren’t
important but after a while one should begin to find it a little strange
that these are the only people worthy of recognition. Well this article
and those that will follow, will be to educate you, the people, of
persons not usually spoken of or recognized. Healers. Fighters.
Revolutionaries. People, like you and me, that struggled to leave an
impact on their portion of the world.
“After the bears and the gates and the degradation, What is left?/ After
the lock ins and lock outs and lock ups, What is left?/ I mean, after
the chains that get entangled in the gray of one’s matter, after the
bars that get stuck in the hearts of men and women, What is left?/ After
the tears and disappointments, after the lonely isolation, after the cut
wrists and the heavy noose, What is left?/ After the murderburgers and
the goon squads and the tear gas, after the bulls and the bull pens and
the bull shit, WHAT IS LEFT?”
What’s left is a strong, beautiful sista who’s been taking refuge in
Cuba since 1984, raising her daughter and writing her story in order to
impact the world. This sista is Assata Olugbala Shakur, born JoAnee
Deborah Byron on July 14, 1947, in Jamaica, New York. At the age of
three, she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina to live with her
grandparents. There she spent the majority of her childhood years and
worked in her grandparents’ store. During her teen years she moved to
Queens, New York to live with her mother but left at the age of
seventeen when she began to see the struggle of black people in America.
She needed to find the answer. So she dropped out of school, and joined
the Black Panther Party in the late sixties.
Soon after her involvement in the Black Panther Party, she became known
as “the soul of the Black Liberation Army,” an underground paramilitary
group that came from the east coast chapters of the Black Panther Party.
She devoted all of her time and energy to organizing, speaking, and
leading members to take initiative in the struggle for Civil Rights and
black empowerment. She was known as the one of the major forces that
kept all of the members united. She became close friends with Afheni
Shakur, Tupac’s mother, and Zayd Malik, Tupac’s uncle. Around 1971,
Assata was forced to take her activities underground because she had
been accused of 6 crimes (she was acquitted for each one) including
killing almost 10 police officers, robbing banks, ad kidnapping drug
dealers. Of course, there is evidence that this was a government setup,
and by 1969 members of the FBI’s COINTELPRO counter intelligence
program, were determined to find and destroy the leaders and organizers
of the Black Panther Party. After all, J. Edgar Hoover had already named
them as the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”
How long could she keep running and escape the fate of one who
challenges the structure of the government? She managed to work
faithfully for the black cause until May 2, 1973, when she, Zayd Malik,
and Sundiata Acoli (other Panther members) were stopped on the New
Jersey Turnpike for what the police say was a “faulty headlight.” They
were later asked to step out of the car because they had “suspicious”
Vermont license plates. Assata was shot twice, Zayd was killed, and
State Trooper Werner Foerster was killed also. Sundiata and Assata were
convicted by an all white jury of murdering the state trooper and their
friend Zayd. Even though medical evidence and testimonies by a
neurologist, surgeon, and pathologist proved that Assata’s hands had to
be in the air in order for her to be shot the way she was, and that her
fingerprints were not on the gun, she was convicted in 1977 and
sentenced to a life sentence and 33 years in prison.
In prison she was treated inhumanly, denied medical attention, beaten by
members of the Aryan Sisterhood Prison Gang, placed in solitary
confinement, and had her daughter taken from her in 1974, a week after
she was born. She knew that her life was in danger if she remained in
prison and petitioned for the support of her brothers and sisters in the
struggle. With great help from outside forces, Assata Shakur escaped
from prison in 1979 and moved to Cuba. She was warmly welcomed by Fidel
Castro and others. Her daughter was found and brought to Cuba also. Over
the past twenty years, Assata has written an autobiography, done
interviews with various reporters, spoken with Pope John Paul II, and
worked in support of the Communist government. Currently she is working
on another book, raising her daughter, and fighting for the liberation
of political prisoners in America. This sista truly lived her life by
Harriet Tubman’s quote
“There was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death. If I
could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me
alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted…”
So what is left for Assata Shakur? Healing and living. A continuance on
the path to discovering what freedom is and if it is something that
others give to us or something we allow ourselves to have. Hotep. |
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