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| Author | Assata Shakur |
|---|---|
| Country | United States, Cuba |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiography |
| Published | 1988 |
| Publisher | Lawrence Hill Books [1] |
| Pages | 320 pp |
Assata: An Autobiography is a 1988 autobiographical book by Assata Shakur. [1] The book was written in Cuba where Shakur currently has political asylum. [2]
The autobiography [3] begins on May 2, 1973. Shakur recounts what happened after a shooting on the New Jersey State Turnpike. The shooting left Zayd Shakur and New Jersey State Trooper Werner Forrester killed, Assata Shakur wounded, and Sundiata Acoli on the run. [4] The book continues with Shakur describing her early childhood growing up in Queens, New York, with her mother, and spending her summers in Wilmington, North Carolina, with her grandparents. Shakur tells her story by going back and forth between the "present" with Shakur's hospitalization, incarceration, pregnancy and trial following the events on the New Jersey State Turnpike; and the "past" with her early childhood schooling, the beginning of her radicalization, and her time as a prominent Black Power and human rights revolutionary.
"To My People" was a recorded statement released by Assata Shakur while in jail in Middlesex County, New Jersey. The tape was recorded on Independence Day, 1973, and was broadcast on numerous radio stations. [5] Shakur includes the transcript of the recording in Chapter 3 of the autobiography. [3] The recording was released in response to the media coverage about Shakur after the New Jersey Turnpike Shooting. In the recording, Assata publicly described herself as a black revolutionary, her participation in the Black Liberation Army and her participation in the incident. In the message, Assata describes the corruption of police, structural inequality between blacks and whites, and the American support of brutal wars and regimes in Cambodia, Vietnam, and South Africa.
Shakur describes the oppression she faced and witnessed throughout her life. The book [3] begins with the physical abuse she received from New Jersey police officers in the hospital after the shooting on the Turnpike. [6] She discusses the trials against her and describes them as completely fabricated. Along with the oppression from the state, she recounts the racism she, and her family experienced in North Carolina as well as watching the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) train people for peaceful protests and sit-ins. [7] Shakur describes resistance methods taken by the NAACP, including the peaceful, non-violence ideology. Though she does not adopt this, she respects it. Shakur chooses to take on roles with the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army as forms of resistance to social oppression.
Throughout the book [3] Shakur describes her personal desire to be a revolutionary, and the social revolution she believes is necessary for African Americans and other minorities. She discusses this revolution many times, including in the “To My People” recording. The idea of revolution is also mentioned when she makes the opening statement [8] at the New York State Supreme Court County of Kings during the trial against her, where she was accused of the kidnap of a drug dealer, for which she was acquitted.
In Chapter 13, Shakur describes her introduction into the Black Panther Party while visiting the Bay Area. She discusses her reservations about joining the party with the members which included their lack of politeness and respect for the people they talked to. Shakur eventually joins while living in New York. It is when she joins the party, she witnesses and experiences the Federal Bureau of Investigation infiltration of political organizations now known as COINTELPRO. [9] It is this surveillance that leads her to choose to go "underground" and eventually leave the party.
The New York Times ' review stated: "The book's abrupt shifts in time can annoy after a while, as can the liberties she takes with spelling – court, America and Rockefeller, for example, become kourt, amerika and Rockafella. But, all in all, the author provides a spellbinding tale that evokes mixed feelings in the way the autobiographies of Malcolm X, Sonny Carson and Claude Brown did in years past." [1]
The book [3] was first published in the United Kingdom by Zed Books in 1987. [10] In 1999, an American edition was released by Lawrence Hill Books of Brooklyn, New York. [11]
Rapper Common released "A Song for Assata" in 2000 after visiting Shakur in Cuba. [12] The song details some of the events in the book.
The 2014 edition of the book [3] features forewords by activist Angela Davis and criminal justice scholar Lennox S. Hinds.
The book was adapted as an audio dramatization by BBC Radio 4 in July 2017. [13]
COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights and Black power movements, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, independence movements, a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the far-right group National States' Rights Party.
Assata Olugbala Shakur is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1977, she was convicted in the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is currently wanted by the FBI, with a $1 million FBI reward for information leading to her capture, and an additional $1 million reward offered by the Attorney General of New Jersey.
Afeni Shakur Davis was an American political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. Shakur was the mother of rapper Tupac Shakur and the executor of his estate. She founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and also served as the CEO of Amaru Entertainment, Inc., a record and film production company she founded.
The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Marxist-Leninist, black-nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed of former Black Panthers (BPP) and Republic of New Afrika (RNA) members who served above ground before going underground, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.
Mutulu Shakur was a New Afrikan activist and a member of the Black Liberation Army who was sentenced to sixty years in prison for his involvement in a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck in which a guard and two police officers were murdered.
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Sundiata Acoli is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. Acoli was granted parole in 2022 at the age of 85.
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Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women is a prison facility for women of the state of New Jersey Department of Corrections, located in Union Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, near Clinton. Its official abbreviation is EMCFW. The facility was named for Edna Mahan, one of the first female correctional superintendents in the U.S.
The Panther 21 is a group of twenty-one Black Panther members who were arrested and accused of planned coordinated bombing and long-range rifle attacks on two police stations and an education office in New York City in 1969, who were all acquitted by a jury in May 1971, after revelations during the trial that police infiltrators played key organising roles.
Various American fugitives in Cuba have found political asylum in Cuba after participating in militant activities in the Black power movement or the Independence movement in Puerto Rico. Other fugitives in Cuba include defected CIA agents and others. The Cuban government formed formal ties with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and many fugitive Black Panthers would find political asylum in Cuba, but after their activism was seen being repressed in Cuba many became disillusioned. House Concurrent Resolution 254, passed in 1998, put the number at 90. One estimate, c. 2000, put the number at approximately 100.
Nehanda Isoke Abiodun was an African American hip hop activist, black revolutionary, and fugitive who was living in Cuba. Abiodun was wanted by the FBI in connection of the 1981 robbery of a Brink's truck that resulted in the killing of a Brink's guard and two New York police officers. The United States federal government also charged Abiodun in connection with Assata Shakur's escape from prison, along with Susan Rosenberg.
Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad is an American writer and activist, Black Panther Party leader and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army. Dhoruba, in Swahili, means "the storm".
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The Black Panther Party was an American Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
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Eyes of The Rainbow is a 1997 documentary film by Gloria Rolando about Assata Shakur. The film was recorded in Cuba 33 years after Shakur's exile. The film consists primarily of a personal interview with Assata herself on the day her mother died as she recounts her experience as a prisoner in the United States. She reflects on the abuses she suffered as an inmate and the night she escaped from the correctional facility. The film encompasses the African Spirit Oya to illustrate the struggles Shakur has faced as a revolutionary. In the video Shakur talks about her life in Cuba, the influence of her grandmother as well as Afro-Cuban ancestry as a result of the African Diaspora.