Assata Shakur, fugitive Black activist who escaped life sentence for killing police officer, dies in Cuba

Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said.

Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, also confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.

Shakur’s case had long been a thorny issue in the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his first term, had demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.

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In her telling, and in the minds of her supporters, she was pursued for crimes she didn’t commit or that were justified. The FBI put Shakur on its list of “most wanted terrorists.”

Shakur and two others were involved in a gunfight with New Jersey State Police troopers following a highway traffic stop on May 2, 1973.

Trooper Werner Foerster was killed and another officer was wounded, while one of Shakur’s companions was also killed.

Shakur, who was at the time wanted on several felonies, including bank robbery, fled but was eventually apprehended.

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Shakur was found guilty in 1977 of murder, armed robbery and other crimes and was sentenced to life in prison, only to escape in November 1979.

Members of the Black Liberation Army, posing as visitors, stormed the Clinton Correctional Facility for women, took two guards hostage and commandeered a prison van to break Shakur out.

She disappeared before eventually emerging in 1984 in Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum, according to the FBI.

Assata Shakur in Old Havana, Cuba, in 1987. Photo by Ozier Muhammad/ Newsday RM via Getty Images

Offering Shakur asylum was one of the most famous examples of Cuba aligning itself with what it describes as revolutionary forces struggling against the oppressive capitalist empire to the north. Much like Cuba supported anti-colonial and left-wing forces in Africa, Central and South America, the Cuban government saw the armed Black liberation movement in the U.S. as part of a global revolutionary struggle.

Shakur maintained in her writings from Cuba over the years that she didn’t shoot anyone and had her hands in the air when she was wounded during the gunfire.

Her writings became a rallying cry during the Black Lives Matter movement in recent years, even as opponents criticized her words as being influenced by Marxist and communist ideology.

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“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win,” Shakur wrote in “Assata: An Autobiography,” originally published in 1988. “We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Black Lives Matter Grassroots Inc., a collective of racial justice activists from around the U.S., paid tribute to Shakur on Friday.

“May her courage, wisdom, and deep, abiding love permeate through every dimension and guide us,” the group said in a statement posted to Instagram. “May our work be righteous and brave as we fight in her honor and memory.”

A member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, she was famously close to the family of late rapper Tupac Shakur, who had considered her a godmother.

Shakur’s influence was also far-reaching in hip-hop.

Public Enemy, the political hip-hop group and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, are thought to be the first major artists to reference Shakur. The 1988 song “Rebel Without a Pause,” from the album It Takes A Nation, includes the lyrics “supporter of Chesimard,” referring to her legal name.

Grammy award-winning rapper Common tells Shakur’s story in his 2000 song “A Song for Assata.” In 2011, Common’s invitation to a White House poetry event during the Obama administration drew outrage from conservatives and law enforcement groups who felt it was disrespectful to Foerster’s family and police officers broadly.

A companion who was also convicted in Foerster’s killing, Sundiata Acoli, was granted parole in 2022. His attorneys had argued the then-octogenarian had been a model prisoner for nearly three decades and counseled other inmates.

Associated Press writers Aaron Morrison and Michael Weissenstein in New York contributed to this story.