mastermind
Rest In Power Kobe
I read this a few weeks ago and it was an amazing read. She had issues but was an inspiring person.
Afeni Shakur Took on the State and Won
By Taseem Reed
Afeni Shakur is ready to fight.
She’s already spent eleven months in the Women’s House of Detention and, although she’s out on bail, she is not free. It’s September 8, 1970, and she’s waiting inside the New York County Criminal Court in Manhattan. Seventeen months ago, she was indicted on charges including attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to bomb buildings. A conviction threatens to send her behind bars for the remainder of her life.
And, to add to her troubles, she is pregnant with her first child — a boy.
To the jury who will decide her fate, Afeni looks like any other young member of the Black Panther Party — an average-size, dark-skinned, short-haired, twenty-three-year-old black woman. A group about whom the media had spent years conjuring up scare stories at this point.
Soon, she will stand before a white judge and face an all-white prosecution as the government of the country she lives in actively works to eradicate the organization she’s a part of, as they have effectively done with most of those they’ve deemed a credible threat.
However, Afeni can’t afford for her mind to be frazzled by her circumstances. She’s about to defend herself in the trial without the aid of a lawyer — a decision widely viewed as suicidal.
Afeni is not alone. In The People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur et al., there are twelve other defendants, all part of the “Panther 21,” who on April 2, 1969, were arrested and indicted on charges of attempted murder, arson, and bombing.
But proving Afeni’s innocence and earning her freedom is now her responsibility alone. If she’s found guilty, the penalty is a 350-year sentence. She has no experience in court, no legal background whatsoever.
“We didn’t know what we were dealing with,” Shakur said, looking back. “We were in over our heads.” And if she fails, her life — and her unborn child’s — is effectively over.
Both violently and nonviolently, in her time as a Panther and afterward, as an activist, Afeni Shakur sought to tear down the system of oppression that she had been born into. But ultimately, she believed that the Black Panther Party, and she herself, failed.
“Instead, we turned against God, and how you gonna win like that? You have to have a moral imperative to win,” Afeni said. “We didn’t understand that. We drew violence to ourselves. We drew bitterness to ourselves.”
But in this early life-and-death fight, Afeni unquestionably won. She would be jailed again, make bail again, and thrive as her own de facto lawyer, playing a key role in the acquittal of the Panther 21 on all charges in May 1971. A month later, she gave birth to her son.
She would watch him grow into a man who brought her values to a global audience, becoming one of the most famous and beloved black men in the world — only to see him die of gunshot wounds at the age of twenty-five, the same violence she saw break the Panthers taking the life of her firstborn child.
Afeni, who passed away in 2016, had a life filled with troubles. She became addicted to drugs shortly after winning her freedom, and it forever strained her relationship with her son, who became distant as his music career took off, as well as with her daughter, Sekyiwa. She was impulsive and selfish at times. She could be stubborn, and she had a temper.
At no point, though, did she forget her people and her fight. Like many black women born in the South decades before Jim Crow’s defeat, she was born into struggle and violence. The world, it seems, wanted to break her into a million pieces.
But again and again, up until her death at the age of sixty-nine, Afeni triumphed over them all.
Afeni was born Alice Faye Williams in Lumberton, North Carolina, in 1947. Her mother, Rosa Belle, took care of the household while her father, Walter Williams Jr, worked as a truck driver. Shakur described her father as a “street nikka” who beat her mother frequently.
“Here I was … this bright little girl who wanted so much for her father to find her special and wonderful, and he never did,” Afeni said. “I needed a father who was there. I needed a father who was not a threat to my mom.”
Rosa, who was from Lumberton but had moved to Norfolk for her family, managed to put up with Williams’s domestic abuse for years. Eventually, though, she broke down and called her brother to come and help her and her two daughters move first back to Lumberton in 1958 and then to the Bronx.
In New York, Afeni was free from her father, but she was still haunted by the memories of his abuse. “For most of my life I have been angry. I thought my mama was weak and my daddy was a dog,” she said. “That anger fed me for many years.” In the Bronx, she got into fights with boys and girls alike at school and in her neighborhood. “Everything around me seemed hurtful,” Afeni said. “We had no protection. I never felt safe.”
Despite her festering rage, Afeni performed well in school. Her test scores got her into the Bronx High School of Science, but she became more interested in the streets and joined the Disciple Debs, a women’s gang in Harlem. “All I wanted was protection,” Afeni said. “That’s all every woman wants. To feel secure.”
She finally found that protection in 1968. While walking down 125th Street that year, she noticed a man standing on a corner and speaking in front of a crowd. It was Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale. The crowd drew her attention, but what made her stop was Seale’s words.
Afeni Shakur Took on the State and Won
By Taseem Reed
Afeni Shakur is ready to fight.
She’s already spent eleven months in the Women’s House of Detention and, although she’s out on bail, she is not free. It’s September 8, 1970, and she’s waiting inside the New York County Criminal Court in Manhattan. Seventeen months ago, she was indicted on charges including attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to bomb buildings. A conviction threatens to send her behind bars for the remainder of her life.
And, to add to her troubles, she is pregnant with her first child — a boy.
To the jury who will decide her fate, Afeni looks like any other young member of the Black Panther Party — an average-size, dark-skinned, short-haired, twenty-three-year-old black woman. A group about whom the media had spent years conjuring up scare stories at this point.
Soon, she will stand before a white judge and face an all-white prosecution as the government of the country she lives in actively works to eradicate the organization she’s a part of, as they have effectively done with most of those they’ve deemed a credible threat.
However, Afeni can’t afford for her mind to be frazzled by her circumstances. She’s about to defend herself in the trial without the aid of a lawyer — a decision widely viewed as suicidal.
Afeni is not alone. In The People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur et al., there are twelve other defendants, all part of the “Panther 21,” who on April 2, 1969, were arrested and indicted on charges of attempted murder, arson, and bombing.
But proving Afeni’s innocence and earning her freedom is now her responsibility alone. If she’s found guilty, the penalty is a 350-year sentence. She has no experience in court, no legal background whatsoever.
“We didn’t know what we were dealing with,” Shakur said, looking back. “We were in over our heads.” And if she fails, her life — and her unborn child’s — is effectively over.
Both violently and nonviolently, in her time as a Panther and afterward, as an activist, Afeni Shakur sought to tear down the system of oppression that she had been born into. But ultimately, she believed that the Black Panther Party, and she herself, failed.
“Instead, we turned against God, and how you gonna win like that? You have to have a moral imperative to win,” Afeni said. “We didn’t understand that. We drew violence to ourselves. We drew bitterness to ourselves.”
But in this early life-and-death fight, Afeni unquestionably won. She would be jailed again, make bail again, and thrive as her own de facto lawyer, playing a key role in the acquittal of the Panther 21 on all charges in May 1971. A month later, she gave birth to her son.
She would watch him grow into a man who brought her values to a global audience, becoming one of the most famous and beloved black men in the world — only to see him die of gunshot wounds at the age of twenty-five, the same violence she saw break the Panthers taking the life of her firstborn child.
Afeni, who passed away in 2016, had a life filled with troubles. She became addicted to drugs shortly after winning her freedom, and it forever strained her relationship with her son, who became distant as his music career took off, as well as with her daughter, Sekyiwa. She was impulsive and selfish at times. She could be stubborn, and she had a temper.
At no point, though, did she forget her people and her fight. Like many black women born in the South decades before Jim Crow’s defeat, she was born into struggle and violence. The world, it seems, wanted to break her into a million pieces.
But again and again, up until her death at the age of sixty-nine, Afeni triumphed over them all.
Afeni was born Alice Faye Williams in Lumberton, North Carolina, in 1947. Her mother, Rosa Belle, took care of the household while her father, Walter Williams Jr, worked as a truck driver. Shakur described her father as a “street nikka” who beat her mother frequently.
“Here I was … this bright little girl who wanted so much for her father to find her special and wonderful, and he never did,” Afeni said. “I needed a father who was there. I needed a father who was not a threat to my mom.”
Rosa, who was from Lumberton but had moved to Norfolk for her family, managed to put up with Williams’s domestic abuse for years. Eventually, though, she broke down and called her brother to come and help her and her two daughters move first back to Lumberton in 1958 and then to the Bronx.
In New York, Afeni was free from her father, but she was still haunted by the memories of his abuse. “For most of my life I have been angry. I thought my mama was weak and my daddy was a dog,” she said. “That anger fed me for many years.” In the Bronx, she got into fights with boys and girls alike at school and in her neighborhood. “Everything around me seemed hurtful,” Afeni said. “We had no protection. I never felt safe.”
Despite her festering rage, Afeni performed well in school. Her test scores got her into the Bronx High School of Science, but she became more interested in the streets and joined the Disciple Debs, a women’s gang in Harlem. “All I wanted was protection,” Afeni said. “That’s all every woman wants. To feel secure.”
She finally found that protection in 1968. While walking down 125th Street that year, she noticed a man standing on a corner and speaking in front of a crowd. It was Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale. The crowd drew her attention, but what made her stop was Seale’s words.
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