Assata Shakur, a Fighter for Black People

Sep 29, 2025

Assata Olugbala Shakur died on September 25 at 78 years old. As a young woman she became deeply involved in the civil rights and black power rebellion. She was raised in New York and North Carolina, “exposed to the degrading, dehumanizing side of segregation,” she later wrote. Conversations with African students helped awaken her to the history of colonization and slavery and the need to organize a struggle for freedom. After moving to Oakland, California and back, she led the Black Panther Party chapter in Harlem, and then joined an offshoot, the Black Liberation Army. In 1971 she stopped using the given name JoAnne Byron Chesimard, and renamed herself a combination of Arabic and Yoruba names.

Assata Shakur’s activity was always repressed by the government. She was indicted 10 times by federal and state authorities. All but one of those cases led to dismissal, acquittal, or a hung jury. In May 1973 she and two other activists were pulled over by New Jersey state troopers for having a broken taillight. The troopers fired. Shakur and a companion were shot and wounded. One state trooper was killed, and another was wounded. Prosecutors charged her with first-degree murder. They had no evidence. But an all-white jury found her guilty. She was sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years. She was the first woman to be named on the FBI’s “most wanted terrorists” list. Friends helped her escape from the penitentiary and eventually to Cuba, where she lived in exile for more than 40 years, until her death.

She declared in 1973, “I have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied. I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces…”

Some people know her as rapper Tupac Shakur’s godmother and step-aunt. She told the story of her life and struggle in her autobiography and other writings.