Abstract

Excerpted From: Cameron D. Clark, Assata Shakur, 1947 -- 2025: 'We Were Very Glad They Hadn't Caught Her. I Hoped They Never Would.', 25 Berkeley Journal of Black Law and Policy 3 (2025) (36 Footnotes) (Full Document)

I have advocated and I still advocate revolutionary changes in the structure and in the principles that govern the United States. I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed people inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression.

If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty.

Assata Olugbala Shakur, a Black liberation activist, died on September 25, 2025, in Havana, Cuba. She died a free woman, having spent the majority of her life in political exile, a fugitive of the American criminal legal system. Shakurs activism--both in word and deed--has inspired generations of advocates seeking fundamental changes to the systems of law and policy that govern Black American life and all life at the margins. Through years of study and struggle, first with the Black Panther Party, then the Black Liberation Army, Shakur built an embodied praxis that aimed to meet the material needs of the Black community.

Born Joanne Chesimard in 1947 New York, Shakur spent much of her childhood between the borough of Queens and parts of the Jim Crow-era South. Her early interactions with Pan-Africanist students at Columbia University exposed Shakur to the Black radical tradition and set the scene for her advocacy at the forefront of liberatory movement-building. She would later change her name to Assata (?she who struggles?) Shakur (?the thankful one?) to better reflect the legacies of resistance and community care which served as the foundation of her activism.

Shakur joined the Black Panther Partys (BPP) New York chapter in 1970, but quickly separated in favor of joining the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1973, a shoot-out between law enforcement and BLA members left Shakur severely injured and two others--a BLA member and a New Jersey state trooper-- deceased. With little evidence demonstrating her proximate role in the state troopers death, Shakur was tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. In a now-infamous 1979 prison break operation, BLA activists successfully freed Shakur from the maximum-security facility in which she was condemned to remain until death. Shakur later reemerged in 1984, residing in Cuba under government protection as a political asylee. Despite extensive, coordinated federal efforts to facilitate her extradition back to the United States to complete her life sentence, Shakur would, in fact, spend the remainder of her days a free woman.

[ . . . ]

My grandmother had been dreaming all of her life, and the dreams have come true .... She dreamed my mother would be a schoolteacher, my aunt would go to law school, and, during the hard times, she dreamed the good times were coming .... She did her part. The rest was up to us. We had to make it real. Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

Assata Shakurs aunt, Evelyn Williams, was a lawyer--in fact, she was the lawyer representing Shakur during her 1970s criminal trial. In her autobiography, Shakur speaks in awe of her aunt and the efforts she made to enrich Shakurs artistic, cultural, and critical thinking development. Shakurs attorney-aunt worked diligently to defend Shakur and her interests, fighting to ensure adequate treatment and timely visitation with family and counsel while in prison. Like many individuals in Assata Shakurs community, her aunt was also the subject of invasive law enforcement surveillance and tactics of deception that justified near-constant fear and insecurity.

For Evelyn Williams, no legal or professional credentials could immunize her from the federal scrutiny levied against Black liberation organizers and those serving as their counsel. Presciently, Williams recognized that even her benign litigious advocacy carried the same impact and risk-of-destabilization of those most-feared revolutionary acts. Williams saw herself as no-less implicated, noless threatened, no-less targeted a member of the Black liberation movement. That her work was respectable--set at the courthouse rather than on the streets; presented in typewritten briefs rather than through amplified bullhorns--made no difference to the federal actors hellbent on upending the enterprise root-and-branch. Though her work involved different skillsets than those at the forefront of the movement, Williams knew that success in the domains of law and policy were inextricably linked to the overarching goal of changing the material conditions which the Black community endures.

As practitioners in law and policy, the experiences of Shakur and Williams both remain instructive as we face ongoing and expanding efforts to dismantle liberation movements--within the Black community specifically, and across racial, gender, geographic, economic, and political communities more broadly. Even in our present moment, federal actors work to investigate law and policy professionals--including scholars and students alike--for even the slightest expression of criticism or inquiry into alternative modes of social and political existence. The chilling effects caused by this increased scrutiny are palpable, with the risk that Black advocates will self-censor preemptively to avoid greater social and professional repercussions to come. As we continue our mundane efforts to study, create, and apply the law in just ways, may we always remember that our actions are no less political--no less a threat to power--than the efforts of the Black Panthers to feed, clothe, house, and resource the Black community and oppressed communities worldwide. Propelled forward by legacies of resistance and community care, from New York to the Bay Area and beyond, Black law and policy professionals are called to redouble our efforts in the face of mounting pressure and tangible threats of persecution.

Assatas grandmother was a dreaming woman, and she taught Assata to dream as well. But Assata knew that dreams had to be willed into reality, and did everything in her power to shepherd the wishes of her community through her words and deeds. To truly manifest liberation, it is not sufficient to merely dream of freedom: It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to win.

We must love each other and support each other.

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

 Cameron D. Clark is a Clinical Supervisor in Berkeley’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, pursuing legislative reforms to abolish administrative fines and fees imposed on youth who are involved in the criminal legal system.