Revolutionaries: Assata Shakur

Assata Shakur (1947-present) was a member of the Black Liberation Army who was imprisoned and convicted of murdering a police officer. She escaped prison in 1979, and has lived in exile in Cuba ever since. In 2013, she was the first woman to be placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List. 

For Further Reading: 

• Assata: An Autobiography
• Assata Olugbala Shakur (1947- )
• AssataShakur.org

This Black History Month, we’re talking about Revolutionaries: 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 used their power to try and pull those worlds into view.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more.  Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. 

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones and Abbey Delk. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. 

Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Heyl. I'm Aaron Hanes. I'm the editor at large for
The Nineteenth News, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender politics
and policy. I'm also the host of a brand new
weekly podcast from the Nineteenth 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.

(00:23):
Our very first episode features my dear friend and Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist Nicole Hanna 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,

(00:45):
colonial rulers, and enslavers. These women had the courage to
imagine radically different worlds, and they use 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

(01:06):
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 Asada Shakur. Asida Shakur was born in
nineteen forty seven. Her mother named her joe Anne Deborah Byron.

(01:28):
Asada 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 nineteen fifty. North Carolina was segregated by race. ASADA's
grandparents made sure to raise her with a sense of
personal dignity. Asada learned to hold her head up high,

(01:49):
look white people in the eye, and speak up. They
taught Asada that she was as good as anyone else.
As a child, Asida 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, Asida returned to New York,

(02:12):
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 seventeen,
Asida dropped out of high school and started working. This

(02:35):
was the mid nineteen sixties. The news was filled with
stories about the Vietnam War and uprisings in black neighborhoods
across the country protesting government violence. Asada 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

(02:58):
of communists. Eventually, Asada 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.

(03:20):
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, Asida went to California,
where the Black Panther Party was founded. After meeting with
revolutionary groups and exchanging ideas on the West Coast, she

(03:41):
returned to New York. There she joined the Black Panther Party.
She worked in their medical cadre, then their free breakfast program,
but Asida 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

(04:03):
eliminating the Panthers. In nineteen seventy one, Asada went underground.
She joined the Black Liberation Army or BLA, a militant
offshoot of the Black Panther Party. Asaida later described the
BLA as a people's movement of resistance against oppression. That

(04:24):
same year, she officially changed her name to Asada Olubala Shakur.
Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy three, Asada 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.

(04:48):
About half those charges ended in acquittals, the other half
were dismissed. On May second, nineteen seventy three, Asada was
driving down the New Jersey Turnpike with Zaid Chiquur and
Sundiata Akali. Their car allegedly had a faulty tail light
and they were pulled over by state troopers. Accounts of

(05:11):
what happened next very but we know that shots were
fired and when the dust settled, zaide Chaquur and State
Trooper Werner Forster were dead. Asada had been shot multiple times.
ASADA's arm was temporarily paralyzed from her bullet wounds, her
clavicle was broken, and one of her lungs had fluid

(05:31):
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 nineteen seventy four.
She gave birth while awaiting trial at Riker's Island in
dire living conditions. In March nineteen seventy seven, Asada received
her first and only convictions. She was found guilty of

(05:55):
six counts of assault and the murder of Werner Forster,
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 ASADA's arm was paralyzed immediately after being shot,
meaning she couldn't have fired a gun. Asida later said, quote,

(06:19):
it was obvious I didn't have one chance in a
million of receiving any kind of justice. Asada was sentenced
to life in prison plus thirty years. She was imprisoned
with white supremacists, and she was held in two men's prisons.
The United Nations later described ASADA's confinement as totally unbefitting

(06:40):
any prisoner. She was afraid that she would be murdered
in prison, so she planned her escape. In nineteen seventy nine,
Asada broke out of prison and went underground. She reappeared
eight years later in Cuba. In nineteen eighty seven, she
published Assada Shakur and Autobiography, which included an account of

(07:04):
her early life and her time spent in prison, as
well as our poetry. Many of the details we know
about her life are thanks to these writings. The New
Jersey State government kept trying to capture Asida Shakur after
her disappearance. In nineteen ninety seven, Pope John Paul the
Second was planning to visit Cuba, the New Jersey State
police wrote a letter to the Pope asking him to

(07:26):
help extradite Asada. Then Asada wrote her own letter to
the Pope. It opened with the lines, my name is
Asada Shakur and I in the twentieth century, escaped slave.
In twenty thirteen, forty years after Trooper Forrester's death, the
FBI put Asada on the most Wanted Terrorist list. Her

(07:49):
bounty totaled two million dollars. She was the first woman
to appear on the list. Asada has managed to evade
the United States government for more than forty years. She's
still alive today, and so was the revolutionary spirit that
powered her. All month, We're talking about revolutionaries. For more information,

(08:11):
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. Talk to you tomorrow.