Topics: assata shakur, black power, FBI, JoAnne Deborah Chesimard, plack panthers, Prison, Racism, News
Forty years ago to the day, Assata Shakur (birth name JoAnne Deborah Chesimard) was involved in a shootout at the New Jersey Turnpike, which left a state trooper dead. Shakur, then a Black Liberation Army and Black Panther Party member, was convicted of his murder in 1973. In 1979, with the help of allies in the black radical movement, Shakur escaped from prison, eventually emerging in Cuba, where she has lived since 1984. As of Thursday — the reward on her capture and return doubled to $2 million — the 66-year-old fugitive was named the first woman on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list.
Shakur was herself wounded by police shots during the Jersey Turnpike shootout and one of her militant comrades was killed. Despite the case’s verdict, many of Shakur’s supporters — and commentators rightly skeptical of the criminal justice system’s treatment of black liberation activists at the time — question Shakur’s murder conviction. Deserving of further questioning: Why, after 40 years, is Shakur (whose chosen name means “she who struggles”) worthy of a $2 million bounty and a spot among the FBI’s most wanted?
James Braxton Peterson, Director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University, has argued that the continued interest in Shakur’s capture reflects an evasion on the part of the U.S. government to truly come to terms with its racist recent past. “It is unlikely that our government will ever be able to come to terms with its own role in the violent racial conflicts of its immediate past, and thus unlikely that Assata will ever be able to live freely in her country of origin – these United States,” he wrote. The point being that if Black Panthers continue to be framed as dangerous, violent terrorists, the government’s role in the race war that birthed the panthers can be neatly tucked into history’s unread footnotes.
Comments
0 Comments