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Assata Shakur (born July 16, 1947) was a leader in the Black Liberation movement in the United States. Her name at birth was JoAnne Deborah Byron Chesimard, although she changed it to avoid using what she considered to be a slave name. She grew up in New York City and attended Manhattan Community College, where she was involved in many struggles. In her career as a social leader and revolutionary, she has fought for welfare recipients' rights, free breakfast programs in poor Black neighborhoods, prisoners' rights, and many other causes, both as a member of the Black Panther Party and in other organizations.
On May 2, 1973, Shakur, no longer a member of the Black Panther Party, was stopped on the New Jersey State Turnpike by State Trooper James Harper, along with two Black Panthers: Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli, for nothing more than a broken taillight. In an ensuing gunfight, Zayd Shakur and State Trooper Werner Foerster, married and a father of a three-year old boy, were killed and Assata Shakur and Trooper Harper injured. Over the next two-and-a-half years, Assata Shakur claims she was incarcerated, beaten, and tortured in a series of federal and state prisons while being tried in six different criminal trials arranged by the FBI COINTELPRO program against the Black liberation movement. The charges ranged from kidnapping to assault and battery to bank robbery. She was acquitted in all six cases.
However, Shakur was found guilty of the murder of both Foerster and her companion Zayd Shakur, for her involvement at the gun battle. In 1979 she escaped an maximum-security prison in Hunterdon County and lived underground until 1986, when she was granted political asylum in Cuba. In 1998, the United States Congress unanimously passed a resolution asking Cuba for the extradition of JoAnne Chesimard. Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus later explained that they were against her extradition, but they had not recognized her name when the bill was proposed.
Her book, Assata: An Autobiography, was written in Cuba, where she still resides, a fugitive from American justice.
For more information: www.AssataShakur.Org (http://www.assatashakur.org)
Listen to her speak at: www.PanAfrican.TV (http://panafrican.tv/index.php?cPath=23_37)
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