Assata Shakur, a fugitive Black militant sought by the US since 1979,
dies in Cuba
[September 27, 2025]
By PHILIP MARCELO
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 went by Joanne Deborah Chesimard before changing her name,
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, confirmed her mother's
death in a Facebook post.
Officials in New Jersey, where Shakur had been arrested, convicted and
imprisoned, said she was 78.
A member of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Shakur's case
had long been emblematic of the fraught relations between the U.S. and
Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his
first term, demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.
The FBI put Shakur on its list of “ most wanted terrorists,” but, in her
telling — and in the minds of her supporters — she was pursued for
crimes she didn’t commit or that were justified.
On May 2, 1973, Shakur and two others were pulled over by New Jersey
State Police troopers because the car they were driving had a broken
taillight.
A gunfight ensued and one of the troopers, Werner Foerster, was killed
and another was wounded. One of Shakur’s companions was also killed.
The New York City native fled but was eventually apprehended. She was
found guilty of murder, armed robbery and other crimes in 1977 and was
sentenced to life in prison. Shakur was charged with additional bank
robberies and in the nonfatal shootings of two other police officers,
but most of those charges were dismissed or resulted in her acquittal.
Shakur's prison stint was short-lived, though. 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 her out.
Shakur disappeared before eventually emerging in 1984 in Cuba, where
Fidel Castro granted her asylum.
Offering Shakur safe harbor 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.
New Jersey officials decry her asylum
New Jersey State Assemblyman Michael Inganamort, who sponsored a
resolution last year calling on Cuba to extradite Shakur, lamented
Friday that “justice was never served” in Foerster's death, while the
labor union representing New Jersey officers dismissed Shakur “for her
crime and cowardice.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and State Police Superintendent Patrick
Callahan said they would “vigorously oppose” any attempt to repatriate
Shakur's remains to the U.S.
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A reward poster announcing the federal bounty for the capture of
convicted killer Joanne Chesimard, who used the name Assata Shakur,
seen in West Trenton, N.J. on Monday, May 2, 2005. (AP Photo/File)
“Sadly, it appears she has passed without being held fully
accountable for her heinous crimes,” they said in a joint statement.
“Unlike his killer, Trooper Foerster never had a chance to live out
his days in peace.”
Sundiata Acoli, who was also convicted in Foerster’s killing, was
granted parole in 2022.
In her writings over the years, Shakur has maintained she didn’t
shoot anyone and had her hands in the air when she was wounded
during the gunfire.
Shakur's writings became a rallying cry
More recently, her writings became a rallying cry during the Black
Lives Matter movement, though opponents criticized her words as
being influenced by Marxist and communist ideology.
“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., vowed to “fight in her honor and
memory.”
Malkia Amala Cyril, an early organizer of the BLM movement,
expressed sorrow because Shakur died during a time of rising
authoritarianism.
“The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love
she practiced if we are going to survive it,” said Cyril, whose late
mother had been part of the Black Panthers in New York alongside
Shakur.
Shakur’s influence extended into the music world. She was famously
close to the family of late rapper Tupac Shakur, who had considered
her a godmother.
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.
Rapper Common told Shakur's story in his 2000 song “A Song for
Assata.” The Grammy award-winner's invitation to a White House
poetry event in 2011, 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.
___
Associated Press writers Aaron Morrison and Michael Weissenstein in
New York contributed to this story.
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