Assata: An Autobiography

“I want that head held high, and i don’t want you taking no mess from anybody, you understand?”

During a time of segregation in North Carolina, Shakur’s grandmother advised her granddaughter to hold her head up high with pride and to not debase herself for anyone. She wanted Shakur to grow up knowing that she was not inferior to white people despite the social structures of the time. This instillation of pride in her Black identity was an important foundation for her budding political consciousness.

“The tactics that my grandparents used were crude, and i hated it when they would repeat everything so often. But the lessons that they taught me, more than anything else i learned in life, helped me to deal with the things i would face growing up in amerika.”

Shakur’s grandparents were strict with her in terms of decorum. They wanted her to speak appropriately and carry herself with pride. As Shakur was a more reckless child, these lessons were especially hard for her. As an adult, she understands that they were trying to protect her by teaching her how to act with respect so that when she came of age in a racist country, she would know her worth.

“We had never heard the words ‘Black is beautiful’ and the idea had never occurred to most of us.”

When Shakur was a child, the other kids would tease each other with anti-Black slurs and derogatory statements about Black people that they had heard elsewhere. Looking back at these moments, in which she also participated, Shakur knows that this language came from a lack of messages that celebrated Black beauty. Thus, the only language available were anti-Black phrases that taught everyone to internalize those racist messages.

“I was supposed to be a child version of a goodwill ambassador, out to prove that Black people were not stupid or dirty or smelly or uncultured. I carried out this mission as best as i could to show that i was as good as they were.”

While Shakur is grateful for the lessons that her grandparents bestowed upon her about Black pride, she does not agree with their ideas of respectability. Her grandparents wanted her to behave with decorum as a way of distinguishing herself from poor Black people. They wanted her to set an example about exemplary Blackness. However, Shakur is critical of this imperative, believing that trying to become a model of what white people expect will not eliminate racism among white people. The entire playing field needs to change for true equality to occur.

“I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated.”

In her statement, “To My People,” Shakur’s first public address since her arrest, Shakur declares that being a Black woman and a revolutionary had made her especially vulnerable to racist, misogynist, and political attacks. She asserts that she was targeted for various crimes because she possesses multiple marginalized identities.

“White people’s fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it’s because they think about what they would do were they in our place.”

Shakur provides an analysis of white people’s fear of Black Liberation activists, especially groups like the Black Panthers who carried guns. She believes that this fear is due to white people’s realization that Black people have been oppressed for so long that their anger has ample justification. White people are secretly worried that they will become targets of Black people’s justified anger.

“I’m gonna live as hard as i can and as full as i can until i die. And i’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born. I’m going to live and i’m going to love Kamau, and, if a child comes from that union, i’m going to rejoice.”

While Shakur never imagined raising a child of her own in a racist world, her brief romance with Sadiki inspires her to imagine a future for a Black child. She realizes that the racist society that she lives in destroyed the dream before it had a chance to flourish. With so much struggle ahead for her, she realizes that having a child is a way of having hope for the future. It is one of the most radical acts she can pursue.

“She was considered less than a woman.”

Black women have historically been regarded as less than a woman. They were treated like property through the slave trade and debased as animals, raped by white slave masters and treated as breeders when their masters saw fit. Despite the end of slavery in the US, the residual social effects of this historical mistreatment continue through the debasement of Black women.

“We are pregnant with freedom. / We are a conspiracy.”

The poem, “Love,” written by Shakur concludes the chapter of her autobiography in which she announces her pregnancy. In the poem, pregnancy becomes a way of inaugurating the hope for Black liberation. She uses pregnancy as a metaphor for the hope that the Black liberation movement will bring freedom into the world just as she is bringing a child into the world.

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”

While Black organizing groups such as the NAACP practice nonviolence as a protest strategy, Shakur advocates communal self-defense against the violence of white supremacy. She does not believe that one can achieve justice and liberation by trying to reason with the oppressor. Sometimes the oppressor’s exercise of force requires force in return.

“A war between the races would help nobody and free nobody and should be avoided at all costs. But a one-sided race war with Black people as the targets and white people shooting the guns is worse. We will be criminally negligent, however, if we do not deal with racism and racist violence, and if we do not prepare to defend ourselves against it.”

While Shakur acknowledges that her belief in the right for Black people to take up arms is controversial for many people, she clarifies that she is not advocating for a race war. Rather she wants the acknowledgement that white people have historically been violent toward Black people. Thus, Black people’s self-defense against white people is long overdue.

“Everything is a lie in amerika, and the thing that keeps it going is that so many people believe the lie.”

Shakur learns early in her life that the bootstrap mentality of social advancement was created to give the illusion of fairness in US society. When Shakur relinquishes her belief that hard work in the formal workforce will create more opportunities for her as a Black woman, she quickly realizes that nothing she does matters when there is no justice for all the oppressed Black people in the country.

“The Black Liberation Army is not an organization: it goes beyond that. It is a concept, a people’s movement, an idea.”

Shakur here delivers an opening statement for the Queens bank robbery trial in which she was named as a culprit. In this statement, she explains that the media portrayal of her as a violent Black militant was fashioned by the US government. She takes the opportunity to explain that the political organizing work that she did with the Black Liberation Army was not about violence but inspiring Black people to imagine a brighter future.

“Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together. I was determined to do both.”

The notion of theory and practice came from Marxist thinkers who believed that both were necessary to create effective change. Theory alone would not change anything, and practice without theory would have no clear sense of direction. Shakur argues throughout the book that these two components of the revolution must go hand in hand.

“The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created them. Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”

In reflecting on the evolution of her relation to education, Shakur realizes that college was transformative for her because it encouraged her to seek out knowledge that was not immediately available. She spent her adolescence believing that US democracy was the fairest form of government only to learn later in life that the racism she experienced had a historical and social context. In her adulthood, she learns the truth that traditional schools never taught her.

“Everywhere I turned, Black people were struggling, Puerto Ricans were struggling. It was beautiful. I love Black people, i don’t care what they are doing, but when Black people are struggling, that’s when they are most beautiful to me.”

Shakur comes into political organizing due to her love of the struggle. She loves seeing Black and Puerto Rican people in New York fighting for their rights. These organizing efforts inspire her and remind her of the beauty of Black people and people of color. This love fuels her revolutionary work in the years to come.

“I believe that to gain our liberation, we must come from the position of power and unity and that a Black revolutionary party, led by Black revolutionary leaders, is essential. I believe in uniting with white revolutionaries to fight against a common enemy, but i was convinced that it had to be on the basis of power and unity rather than from weakness and unity at any cost.”

In Shakur’s critique of Black Liberation movements that are dogmatic in their practices, Shakur argues that despite differing ideologies and approaches, Black revolutionary leaders need to unite under a common cause. For Shakur, the common cause is to fight against imperialism and to counter anti-Black violence on a global scale. This is essential to sustaining a Black power movement.

“Revolution is about change, and the first place the change begins is in yourself.”

In Shakur’s autobiographical account of her political development, she explores personal changes in her beliefs as much as she shares what transpired around her during her rise to prominence. For her, there is no separation between The Personal and the Political. It is why she gives examples of her errors and early misconceptions to show how her experiences and encounters with others challenged the growth of her political consciousness. Her strength as a leader comes from this important self-examination.

“Revolutionary war is a people’s war. And no people’s war can be won without the support of the masses of people. Armed struggle can never be successful by itself; it must be part of an overall strategy for winning, and the strategy must be political as well as military.”

One of Shakur’s main critiques of the Black Panther Party is that it appeals to a lot of Black people who have yet to develop their political ideas and are moved by the notion of taking up arms. While she believes that self-defense is important for Black people, she also insists that armed struggle alone is not enough. A true revolution requires a political strategy that could unify all groups toward mass action.

“It was plain to me that we couldn’t look to the kourts for freedom and justice anymore than we could expect to gain our liberation by participating in the u.s. political system, and it was pure fantasy to think we could gain them by begging. The only alternative left was to fight for them, and we are going to have to fight like any other people who have fought for liberation.”

After enduring multiple abuses by the US court system, Shakur concludes that she cannot expect fairness from the country’s justice system. She becomes further convinced that a revolution is necessary to upend the oppressive order of the US justice system. To continue to believe that the US courts could provide true justice is to invest in an empty belief.

“Participating in the new jersey trial was unprincipled and incorrect. By participating, i participated in my own oppression.”

In reflecting on the New Jersey Turnpike shooting trial, Shakur is deeply regretful of her participation. From its start, a biased judge and an all-white jury ensured that her odds were slim. The continued abuses she endured through her imprisonment and treatment within and outside the court taught her that her participation would not have mattered anyway. Her guilty verdict was already decided when the US government framed her for the crime. By participating, she was portraying a false ideal that there was a chance of fairness in the US justice system.

“You’re coming home. I know what I’m talking about. Don’t ask me to explain it anymore, because I can’t. I just know you’re going to come home and that you’re going to be all right.”

When Shakur’s grandmother visits Shakur in prison, she tells her granddaughter of a dream that she had. In the dream, Shakur was freed from prison and returned home. This dream is conveyed so powerfully that Shakur feels invigorated by it. She regards it as a true sign of her eventual escape.

“The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

Shakur advises that one must not become accustomed to the state of their oppression. When one denies their oppression, they become used to it and lose desire for freedom. She argues that to become free from oppression, it is important to recognize the ways in which one has been oppressed.