"Born JoAnne Deborah Byron on 16 July 1947, in Queens, New York, she was later raised in Wilmington, North Carolina during a time of racial segregation. She dropped out of high school and moved back to New York to work a low-wage job. Her life changed in 1964 when a conversation with African students about communism and Vietnam challenged her views."
"We're taught at such an early age to be against communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea what communism is, Shakur wrote in her 1987 memoir, Assata: An Autobiography. Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is. In the 1960s, she attended Borough of Manhattan Community College and then the City College of New York and became involved with Black activist group Golden Drums society, where she advocated for Black studies courses."
Assata Shakur died in Havana, Cuba, on 25 September at age 78; Cuban officials cited old age and health conditions. Her daughter, Kakuya Shakur, posted that she took her last earthly breath at approximately 1:15pm and expressed profound loss. Born JoAnne Deborah Byron on 16 July 1947 in Queens and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina during racial segregation, she left high school and moved to New York for low-wage work. A 1964 conversation about communism and Vietnam shifted her politics. She attended Borough of Manhattan Community College and City College of New York, joined Black activist groups and the Black Panther Party, changed her name in 1971 to reflect African identity, was convicted in 1977 in the death of a New Jersey state trooper, escaped prison, and spent decades exiled in Cuba, becoming a symbol of resistance and Black liberation.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]