JoAnne Chesimard popularly known as Assata Olugbala Shakur was born on the 16th of July 1947, in Flushing, Queens. She spent more of her life in New York City and Wilmington, North Carolina.
Known for keeping late nights and running from home consistently, she was welcomed in by an aunt of hers who later in future would be one of her lawyers.
Assata took that name after her graduation year, during that period she was deeply participating in political activities at Borough of Manhattan community college and city college of New York.
During this period, she organized enlightenment programs and protests, she also had free breakfast moments and healthcare moments. She was seen all over as a mentor and role model who should be admired. She worked tirelessly during her days of civil right advocacy.
Assata then proceeded to join the Black Liberation Army(BLA), this group was famous for engaging in nefarious acts; they were a by-product of Black panthers; they engaged in armed struggle with the United States government. They robbed banks and killed police officers and drug dealers.
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During her time as an American freedom fighter, she was also a political activist, a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) also participating in the student rights movement and campaigns against anti-Black racism amongst other deeds, she set up organizations that were aimed towards racial and economic justice, immigrant rights, anti-capitalism, and the Vietnam war in the 1970s.
These various activities and involvements made Assata Shakur become an earmark for law enforcement. This was among their COINTEL-PRO crusade against Black activists in the 1970s.
In May 1973, Shakur was in a vehicle with a group of her gang members when some police road troopers flagged them down for a quick “routine motor vehicle stop” on the New Jersey Turnpike. They then proceeded to have a gun shoot out with the officers on duty.
During the course of the shootout, she sustained an injury to her arm as she was shot while her hands were raised high in surrender. This led to instantaneous paralysis in her right hand.
In 1979, she escaped from prison and made her way to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum and continues to live today. More than forty years after her conviction, Shakur, now seventy-four, remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
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But during Shakur’s trial, she denied ever holding or firing a weapon at police, since she was shot by police with her hands up, leading to immediate paralysis of her right hand. Fortune didn’t smile on Zayd Shakur, he was a fellow BLA activist who was shot dead during the course of the event with the New Jersey State Troopers who lost a fellow Werner Foerster.
After her arrest, she was indicted with murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, and kidnapping cases in connection to the shootout amongst various other crimes. Although maintaining innocence, of anyone murder, her defence argued she was innocent since she had a fractured arm from the shootout. She was however given a life sentence verdict.
While carrying out her life sentence at the Clinton Correctional facility for women in union Township, New Jersey, present time Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for women, with the help of the Black Liberation Army, and some members of the May 19 Communist Organization Assata Shakur was able to break out of jail.
She, however, came to light in 1984 while in Cuba where she stays in a political shelter not minding the tries of the United States government to have her extradited. She proceeded to become the first woman to appear on the Federal Bureau intelligence wanted list with a $ 2 million reward for information which would lead to her recapture.
Now aged seventy-four, she still remains the top wanted female on the FBI list.
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