Twenty-eight years ago, in a highly disputed trial, an all-White jury
convicted former Black Panther Assata Shakur of the murder of a New
Jersey state trooper. In 1979, while serving a life sentence, she
escaped from prison and eventually resurfaced in Cuba, where she was
granted asylum and has lived ever since. But the U.S. government has
continued to pursue Shakur, regularly increasing the bounty on her head
and classifying her as a “domestic terrorist.” Last May the Justice
Department issued an unprecedented $1,000,000 bounty for the return of
Assata Shakur, 58, who continues to maintain her innocence. Kathleen
Cleaver, a law professor and former communications secretary for the
Black Panther Party, talks about why we all need to know about Assata,
and why she must live free:
I was startled when I heard about the $1,000,000 bounty for the capture
of Assata Shakur. What triggered this renewed interest in Assata? Why
spend so much time and money to hunt her down when Osama bin Laden,
head of an international terrorist enterprise, remains at large?
It turns out that FBI and New Jersey police officials revealed the
million-dollar bounty on May 2 of this year, the thirty-second
anniversary of the New Jersey Turnpike shootout in which State Trooper
Werner Foerster and Black Panther Zayd Shakur were killed. Sundiata
Acoli and Assata Shakur were arrested for the murders. Assata was
severely wounded, shot while her hands were up. She has always
insisted—and expert defense testimony from the trial bears it out—that
she did not kill anyone. But in separate trials, Sundiata and Assata
were convicted of murdering Werner Foerster.
In 1979, while incarcerated for life in the Clinton Correctional
Facility for Women in New Jersey, Assata escaped. As the FBI circulated
the wanted poster that called for her arrest, all over the New York–New
Jersey area her supporters hung posters proclaiming “Assata Shakur is
welcome here.” Cuba gave her political asylum several years later on
the grounds that she had been subjected to political persecution and
had never received a fair trial.
Apparently the million-dollar bounty has already been covertly offered
by police to a relative of Assata’s for assistance in kidnapping her
from Cuba. This bounty evokes the memory of those vicious slave
catchers who were paid to capture and torment our runaway slave
ancestors and return them dead or alive. This extraordinary bounty on
the head of a Black woman inevitably brings to mind Harriet Tubman,
that Underground Railroad “conductor” whose ability to organize escapes
earned a $12,000 price on her head from the state of Maryland. Outraged
slave owners added $40,000.
Many freedom fighters I knew and loved, including Eldridge Cleaver, to
whom I was married, were arrested and imprisoned because of our
membership in the Black Panther Party. Our organization started in
response to the gruesome war in Vietnam and the racism and injustice
here that drenched our lives in violence. Demonstrations, riots,
rampant police brutality and political assassinations marked those
years when I witnessed thousands upon thousands of people arrested and
hundreds killed. Many turned into fugitives to save their own lives,
including my husband, whom I joined in Algeria in May 1969. That was
around the same time that Assata, then a bright New York City college
student named Joanne Chesimard, joined the Black Panthers.
WE had a concrete ten-point program to end racial inequality. The Black
Panther Party demanded the power to determine our own destiny. We
insisted on decent housing, appropriate education, economic justice, an
immediate end to police brutality, and other rights our people had been
fighting for since slavery ended. We were not patient, we were not
passive, and we were willing to defend our principles with our lives.
Since Panthers couldn’t be bought off or scared off, the government
made the decision to kill us off.
www.assatashakur.org
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