SPEAKER_00: Hey, y'all, I'm Erin Haynes. I'm the editor-at-large for The 19th News, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, and policy.
I'm also the host of a brand-new weekly podcast from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network called The Amendment.
Each week, we're bringing you a conversation about gender, politics, and the unfinished work of American democracy.
Our very first episode features my dear friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
It's out now, so please go listen and follow the show.
On top of all of this, I'm your guest host for this month of Wamanica.
This Black History Month, we're talking about revolutionaries, the Black women who led struggles for liberation from violent governments, colonial rulers, and enslavers.
These women had the courage to imagine radically different worlds, and they used their power to try and pull those worlds into view.
Today, we're talking about a woman whose work as a civil rights activist made her a target.
She was the first woman added to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list,
and she's refused to see herself as a criminal.
She fought for Black liberation
and spoke out against the criminality of the US government.
Let's talk about Assata Shakur.
Assata Shakur was born in 1947.
Her mother named her Joanne Deborah Byron.
Assata spent the first few years of her life living in Jamaica, New York.
When she was three years old,
she moved down south with her grandparents to Wilmington, North Carolina.
In 1950, North Carolina was segregated by race.
Assata's grandparents made sure to raise her with a sense of personal dignity.
Assata learned to hold her head up high,
look white people in the eye, and speak up.
They taught Assata that she was as good as anyone else.
As a child, Assata loved to read and had a vivid imagination.
When she wasn't daydreaming,
she was working at her grandparents' restaurant
or collecting fees for the beach parking lot that her grandparents operated.
Eventually, Assata returned to New York,
where she started attending an integrated school.
She was often the only Black child in her elementary school classes.
Some of her white teachers would treat her differently.
They would talk down to her
and discipline her specifically,
even if the whole class was misbehaving.
At the age of 17, Assata dropped out of high school
and started working.
This was the mid-1960s.
The news was filled with stories about the Vietnam War
and uprisings in Black neighborhoods across the country, protesting government violence.
Assata was reading that news and forming her own opinions.
She started making friends with African students who studied at Columbia University.
They taught her about the history of Vietnam's colonization
and the views of communists.
Eventually, Assata enrolled
at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
She later went to the City College of New York.
While in school, she got involved with the student group,
the Golden Drums.
She learned more about history, Black history,
the history of capitalism and communism, and colonization.
She cut her hair and grew an afro.
She attended demonstrations and started wondering how she could plot a revolution.
To learn more about what revolution meant,
Assata went to California, where the Black Panther Party was founded.
After meeting with revolutionary groups and exchanging ideas on the West Coast,
she returned to New York.
There, she joined the Black Panther Party.
She worked in their medical cadre,
then their free breakfast program.
But Assata had deep ideological disagreements with party leadership,
and eventually, she left the Panthers.
Even after her departure, she was surveilled.
The government at the time was committed to eliminating the Panthers.
In 1971, Assata went underground.
She joined the Black Liberation Army, or BLA, a militant offshoot of the Black Panther Party.
Assata later described the BLA as a people's movement of resistance against oppression.
That same year, she officially changed her name
to Assata Olubala Shakur.
Between 1971 and 1973,
Assata engaged in covert armed struggle as part of the BLA.
During this time period,
she faced charges for a series of crimes,
including two bank robberies, kidnapping,
and attempted murder of a policeman.
About half those charges ended in acquittals. The other half were dismissed.
On May 2nd, 1973, Assata was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike with Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Akali.
Their car allegedly had a faulty taillight,
and they were pulled over by state troopers.
Accounts of what happened next vary,
but we know that shots were fired,
and when the dust settled,
Zayd Shakur and state trooper Werner Foerster were dead.
Assata had been shot multiple times.
Assata's arm was temporarily paralyzed from her bullet wounds. Her clavicle was broken, and one of her lungs had fluid in it.
When she was taken to a hospital, she faced rampant abuse at the hands of the police while trying to recover.
Eventually, she was incarcerated.
In 1974, she gave birth while awaiting trial
at Rikers Island in dire living conditions.
In March 1977, Assata received her first and only convictions. She was found guilty of six counts of assault and the murder of Werner Foerster, the New Jersey state trooper.
The fairness of the trial was dubious.
The jury was all white,
and two jurors admitted their prejudice before the trial.
During the trial, a neurologist testified that Assata's arm was paralyzed immediately after being shot,
meaning she couldn't have fired a gun.
Assata later said, quote,
it was obvious I didn't have one chance in a million of receiving any kind of justice.
Assata was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.
She was imprisoned with white supremacists,
and she was held in two men's prisons.
The United Nations later described Assata's confinement as totally unbefitting any prisoner.
She was afraid that she would be murdered in prison,
so she planned her escape.
In 1979, Assata broke out of prison and went underground.
She reappeared eight years later in Cuba.
In 1987, she published Assata Shakur, an autobiography,
which included an account of her early life and her time spent in prison, as well as her poetry.
Many of the details we know about her life are thanks to these writings.
The New Jersey state government kept trying to capture Assata Shakur after her disappearance.
In 1997, Pope John Paul II was planning to visit Cuba.
The New Jersey state police wrote a letter to the Pope
asking him to help extradite Assata.
Then, Assata wrote her own letter to the Pope.
It opened with the lines,
my name is Assata Shakur,
and I am a 20th century escaped slave.
In 2013, 40 years after Trooper Forster's death,
the FBI put Assata on the most wanted terrorist list. Her bounty totaled $2 million.
She was the first woman to appear on the list.
Assata has managed to evade the United States government for more than 40 years.
She's still alive today,
and so is the revolutionary spirit that powered her.
All month, we're talking about revolutionaries. For more information, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast.
Special thanks to co-creators, Jenny and Liz Kaplan for having me as a guest host.
