Obituary: Assata Shakur Gives Her Life to Black Liberation in a Moral and Political Victory

On September 25, Black Revolutionary and freedom fighter Assata Shakur died at the age of 78 in Havana, Cuba, unrelenting and uncaptured. Shakur lived her final years with asylum in Cuba, fighting against extradition on murder charges for the annihilation of a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973. Shakur was freed from prison by the Black Liberation Army (BLA) in 1979 and remained one of the most wanted people by US imperialism which placed a $2 million bounty on her. None of the threats, bribes, and maneuvers by the US imperialists accomplished their aims of breaking or capturing the people’s fighter, consecrating her death as a moral and political victory for the vast majority of the world’s people.

For her revolutionary activity Shakur was sentenced to life in prison plus 26 years, a sentence commuted to freedom by the efforts of the Black Liberation Army with the support of the “May 19^th Communist Organization” in liberating her from prison in 1979. Shakur gravitated toward revolutionary action inspired by the war for liberation against US imperialist aggression in Vietnam. Shakur’s college activism began with direct action against the racist policies of colleges and universities in New York, battles in which she encountered Black Panthers, eventually relocating to Oakland, California, where she joined the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. There she carried out community programs and organized demonstrations before moving back to New York and leading the organization’s chapter in Harlem.

Shakur would leave the BPP due to its internal contradictions and join the more militant armed BLA. The BLA intended to carry out a guerrilla war in the US without regard to the principal that the Communist Party leads the gun and the gun does not lead the Party. Nonetheless, the BLA conducted successful actions and struck blows against imperialism including the expropriation of funds and selective annihilation against drug dealers and police who preyed upon Black people. Shakur was wounded by a gunshot to the stomach during an attempted expropriation of drug dealers in 1971, an incident which she later credited as formative in eradicating her fear of injury and death. She was hunted by the old state who accused her of expropriating banks.

Shakur was named a suspect in a military attack against NYPD which resulted in a hand grenade destroying a police car and injuring two police. It became clear that Shakur was being specifically targeted for assassination by being named in virtually every BLA action.

When in prison on the 1973 murder charge, Shakur faced brutality and torture at the hands of the reactionaries including the use of solitary confinement in isolation within men’s prisons. After her liberation from prison, posters appeared brandishing the slogan: “Assata Shakur is welcome here” and within days more than 5,000 protesters carried signs bearing the same message in New York City. The FBI and other law enforcement were outraged by the mass refusal to collaborate on her capture.

While Shakur had been influenced by Marxism and the national liberation struggles of the oppressed nations, the influence of political fashions outside of and contradictory to the ideology of the international proletariat are present in all of her writing. This includes the early manifestations of identity politics and support for revisionism. During the wave of Black resistance to police terror beginning in 2014, Shakur had a resurgence of support, mainly among petty bourgeois elements representing postmodernism who emphasized these secondary aspects in Shakur’s thinking, while denying or downplaying her defense of revolutionary violence and armed struggle. As Shakur enters the hall of immortal revolutionaries for her heroic struggle and victory over reaction it is important that all class-conscious people draw the correct lessons. Today Shakur’s life and struggle is monumental and towers far above all prominent activists in the US today, still shining a light in even darker times, times which will produce more revolutionary Black women of her caliber.

Image: Assata Shakur in undated photograph.

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