Assata Shakur, Fugitive Black Militant and Godmoth in Tupac, dies in Cuba
Assata Shakur, a black liberation activist who received the political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 flight from an American prison where she had served a perpetuity imprisonment for killing a police officer, died, said her daughter and the Cuban government.
Shakur, born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died Thursday in the capital of Havana due to “advanced health and age conditions,” the Cuba foreign ministry said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter Kakuya Shakur, confirmed her mother’s death in an article on Facebook.
A member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, Shakur had long been emblematic of difficult relations between the United States and Cuba. The American authorities, including President Donald Trump in his first mandate, had asked for his return from the Communist Nation for decades.
The FBI has put Shakur on its list of “most sought -after terrorists”, but, in its story – and in the minds of its supporters – it was prosecuted for crimes which it did not commit or which were justified.
From the police shooting to the prison break
Shakur and two others were involved in a shooting with the police soldiers of the New Jersey State following a traffic stop on the road on May 2, 1973.
Soldier Werner Foerster was killed and another officer was injured, while one of Shakur’s companions was also killed.
Shakur, who was wanted at the time for several crimes, including the flight of bank, fled but was finally apprehended.
The New York native was found guilty in 1977 murder, armed robbery and other crimes and was sentenced to life prison to escape in November 1979.
The members of the Black Liberation Army, pretending to be visitors, stormed the Correctional Center of Clinton for women, took two hostage guards and requisitioned a van to break Shakur.
She disappeared before finally emerging in 1984 in Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum, according to the FBI.
A symbol of American-Cuba tensions
Offering Shakur Asylum has been one of Cuba’s most famous examples aligning what he describes as revolutionary forces fighting against the oppressive capitalist empire in the north.
Just as Cuba supported anti-colonial and left-wing forces in Africa, Central and South America, the Cuban government has seen the black armed release movement in the United States as part of a world revolutionary struggle.
New Jersey’s state deputy Michael Inganamort, who sponsored legislation last year calling Cuba to extradite Shakur, deplored on Friday that “justice was never done in the insane murder of Trooper Foers”.
Shakur has kept in her writings over the years that she has not shot anyone and had her hands in the air when she was injured during the gunshots.
In recent years, his writings have become a rallying cry during the Black Lives Matter movement, even if the opponents criticized his words as being influenced by the Marxist and Communist ideology.
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win,” wrote Shakur in “Assata: An Autobiography”, initially published in 1988. “We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose only our channels.”
Black Lives Matter Grassroots Inc., a collective of racial justice activists in the United States, paid tribute to Shakur on Friday.
“Let his courage, his wisdom and his deeply love and manufacturers allow each other to each dimension and guide us,” the group said in a press release published on Instagram. “May our work be fair and courageous while we are fighting in his honor and in memory.”
Hip-hop heritage
Shakur’s influence has extended into the world of music. She was famous close to the family of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, who had considered her a godmother.
The enemy public, the political hip-hop group and rock and roll Hall of Fame, are considered the first great artists to be reference to Shakur. The 1988 song “Rebel Without a Pause”, from the album It Takes A Nation, includes the lyrics “supporter of Chesimard”, referring to his legal name.
The award -winning rapper at the Grammy Awards Common tells Shakur’s story in his 2000 song “A Song for Assata”. In 2011, Common’s invitation to a White House poetry event during the Obama administration attracted the indignation of conservatives and law enforcement groups who thought it was disrespectful towards the family and police officers of Foerster.
A companion who was also sentenced in the murder of Foerster, Sundiata Acoli, obtained parole in 2022. His lawyers had argued that the octogen then had been a model prisoner for almost three decades and had advised other detainees.
___
The writers of the Associated Press Aaron Morrison and Michael Weissenstein in New York contributed to this story.
https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25269538388845.jpg?resize=1200,600
About The Author
