Assata Shakur, a revolutionary fighter for Black Liberation, has died in Cuba at 78, per Democracy Now.
On May 2, 1973, Shakur was involved in a fatal roadside shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that left State Trooper Werner Foerster dead and Trooper James Harper seriously wounded. Shakur was convicted of first-degree murder in 1977 and sentenced to life. She spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba.
She had resided in Cuba since 1984, where she was granted asylum.
Her conviction for the murder of Trooper Werner Foerster, and subsequent escape garnered her a permanent spot on the New Jersey State Police’s Most Wanted List. The state long sought to extradite Shakur, who was born Joanne Chesimard, from Cuba, without success.
Cuban officials said she died in Havana of health complications and old age.
In her autobiography, Assata: An Autobiography, Shakur wrote: “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.”
Shakur, born on July 16, 1947, in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York, was the sister of fellow Black liberation movement icon Mutulu Shakur, who died in 2023 at 72, and the godmother and step-aunt of late legendary rapper and actor Tupac Shakur, whose mother, Afeni, was Mutulu’s wife.
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