The revolutionary spent a long time in exile after escaping from a US jail in 1979, the place she was held for killing a police officer.
Assata Shakur, a Black American liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba, has died on the age of 78 after a long time in exile, her household and Cuban officers mentioned.
Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died on Thursday “resulting from well being circumstances and superior age”, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs mentioned in an announcement on Friday.
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Her daughter, Kakuya Shakur, additionally confirmed her dying in a Facebook publish. “Words can’t describe the depth of loss that I’m feeling presently,” she wrote.
The former Black Liberation Army (BLA) member, who was an emblem of resistance for a lot of activists, escaped a United States jail in 1979, the place she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer.
Shakur was discovered responsible in 1977 of first-degree homicide, 4 years after a shootout between BLA members and two state cops who had stopped them for a site visitors violation in New Jersey. Shakur at all times protested her innocence, saying she had her arms within the air through the altercation.
Werner Foerster, one of many cops, was killed “execution-style” at point-blank vary, whereas his colleague was injured, based on the FBI, which later positioned Shakur on its “most wished terrorist” checklist and supplied a $2m reward for her seize.
At the time of the killing, Shakur was being looked for a number of crimes, together with financial institution theft, it added.
One of Shakur’s fellow BLA companions died within the shootout, whereas the third, Sundiata Acoli, served nearly 50 years in jail earlier than being granted parole in 2022.
‘Duty to battle for freedom’
In early November 1979, Shakur’s colleagues from the BLA, a Marxist-Leninist organisation that separated from the Black Panther Party, posed as guests and broke her out of Clinton Correctional Facility for ladies.
After disappearing, she emerged in 1984 in Cuba, the place the then-leader Fidel Castro granted her asylum.
Shakur’s work later turned a rallying cry through the Black Lives Matter motion. However, she was criticised by some for being influenced by Marxist and communist ideology.
“It is our obligation to battle for our freedom. It is our obligation to win,” Shakur wrote in her autobiography in 1988. “We should love one another and help one another. We don’t have anything to lose however our chains.”
After her dying was introduced, Black Lives Matter Grassroots Inc, a gaggle of American racial justice activists, paid tribute to her in an announcement on Instagram. “May our work be righteous and courageous as we battle in her honor and reminiscence,” it mentioned.
The case of Shakur, who was shut with the household of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, triggered difficulties within the already tense relationship between the US and Cuba.
During US President Donald Trump’s first time period, he demanded that Shakur be returned from Cuba to face justice.
