“My name is Assata Shakur (slave name JoAnne Chesimard), and I am a revolutionary. A black revolutionary.” Assata Shakur wrote these words in her self-titled autobiography.
On Thursday, September 25, 2025, Assata Shakur took her last breath at 1:15 PM. She was 78 years old.
In a press release, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Shakur “passed away in Havana, Cuba, due to health conditions and advanced age.” Kakuya Shakur, her daughter, confirmed Assata Shakur’s passing in a heart-rending Facebook post. “Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time,” she wrote.
Born JoAnne Deborah Chesimard on 16, 1947, Assata Shakur was briefly a member of the Black Panther Party before becoming a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In the 70s, she was accused of a number of crimes, but the murder of state trooper Werner Foerster in March 1973 was the most noteworthy.
Of Shakur’s pre-trial detention, Lennox S. Hinds wrote, “In the history of New Jersey, no woman pretrial detainee or prisoner has ever been treated as she was, continuously confined in a men’s prison, under twenty-four-hour surveillance of her most intimate functions, without intellectual sustenance, adequate medical attention, and exercise, and without the company of other women for all the years she was in their custody.”
During her imprisonment, Shakur penned an open letter titled “To My People” in 1973. She concluded the letter, “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. We must fight on!!!”
Depending on who you ask, Assata Shakur was many things.
To the US government, she was a wanted fugitive with a $ 1,000,000 bounty on her head. Shakur was the first woman added to the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. During the 60s and 70s, Black liberation movements were often labeled as extremist or terror groups. This is in line with the US government’s efforts to “Discredit, disrupt, and destroy” such movements, according to a leaked report by the FBI’s counterterrorism unit.
To the Cuban government, she was a political prisoner. Assata Shakur was convicted of murder in March 1977. In November 1979, she escaped. “Fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case and who were also extremely fearful for my life,” Shakur later wrote in an October 1998 open letter.
Today, the world will recount the life of Assata Shakur. Depending on their opinion, she will be considered to be many things. However, to Black activists around the world, she was a freedom fighter to whom they wished “Rest In Power.