Assata Shukar is an escaped prisoner and was the second woman to make the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists list, and she is still on it. She was born on July 16th, 1947 in Jamaica, New York. Shakur’s original name was JoAnne Deborah Byron, but she later changed it for her name to rather mean “she who struggles”. Shukar grew up working for her family’s restaurant with her grandparents and mom in North Carolina after her parents divorced. She spent most of her time reading when she wasn’t serving or making food. Shakur attended both Catholic and public schools throughout her childhood. At the age of seventeen, she dropped out of school and ran away from her house as she wanted to expand her knowledge. Shakur went to the City College of New York and Borough of Manhattan College. At Borough of Manhattan, she got heavily involved in the Golden Drums, which was a black studies group. This group led her to being a future black panther. Shakur got her General Education Development degree at college. She married Louis Chesimard, a fellow student-activist at CCNY, in 1967; however, they got divorced in 1970.
The same year of the divorce Shakur joined the Black Panther Party. Even though the party was in the liberation, she organized protests and educational programs. Shakur eventually left the organization because she thought the men in the group were misogynistic and many of the members were not knowledgeable of black history in the United States. After she withdrew from the Black Panthers she later organized at the Free Breakfast Program for mostly children. Things took a dark turn when Shakur got involved in many crimes. On April 6th 1971, she was at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Manhattan and, as stated by the police, she attempted to get into a guests room and then pulled out a revolver yelling for money. In later years, Shakur admitted to a situation involving drugs to an interviewer. Only a few months after that, she committed two other crimes. First, Shakur attempted an unsuccessful robbery in a bank in Queens; in doing so, she was not caught right away but was later proven guilty. The other crime was a complicated situation involving attacking police officers and their equipment. Shakur was one of four unknown assaulters of two officers in Queens. The five did this by throwing hand grenades at the police cars and the two police officials.
Despite the many crimes, Shakur was not yet put in prison. She was also accused of another bank robbery in the Bronx of 1972 and a church robbery later that same year. During the year of 1972, Shakur started to be on the run. While the FBI and other investigative agencies were on a manhunt for her, they found that Shakur was apart of the Black Liberation Army, an organization to kill New York City police officers. Through that organization, she was directly involved in the murders of Foster, Laurie, Piagentini, and Jones. Many crimes were committed between 1972 and 1973 by Shakur, but the most famous and the one that she got put in jail for was the New Jersey shootout in May of 1973. It started with Shakur getting pulled over by two New Jersey troopers and during the conflict, a shootout endured. This killed both troopers and caused Shakur to be put in jail for six years. She sneakily escaped the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women with the assistance of members of the Black Liberation Association in 1979. In 1988, she published an autobiography called “Assata”. Shakur now lives in Havana, Cuba as a fugitive and was officially put on the FBI most-wanted terrorist list in 2013.
Additional Facts:
- She is the step-aunt of Tupac the rapper
- She was involved in other activist groups for student rights and ones against the Vietnam war
- One of her most famous quotes is told in her autobiography: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
- She was granted asylum in Cuba
