The Track and Field Star Who Casually Shattered Race and Gender Barriers

"The United States government called her one of the world's most-wanted terrorists. Assata Shakur called herself a 20th-century escaped slave. Claiming the runaway slave narrative proved a powerful and inspirational metaphor. Drawing on historical memory, Shakur placed herself in the pantheon of Black freedom fighters from Nat Turner to Harriet Tubman who, by any means necessary, took their liberation into their own hands."

"Like many of those who ran before her, Shakur claimed her freedom only at a devastating cost: It meant relinquishing the ability to raise her only child; it meant she could never again return home, not to bury her mother, not to see her own grandchildren, not to be buried herself. Born JoAnne Deborah Byron in 1947 into a family of strivers in Queens, she split her time between her mother's home in New York and her maternal grandparents' in Wilmington, N.C."

"Her grandparents in the segregated South imbued Shakur with an unshakable pride and dignity in being Black. In her 1987 autobiography, Assata, Shakur describes being forbidden from acting subservient around white people: Hold your head up high, look white people in the eye, don't you respect nobody that don't respect you. Coming of age during the throes of the civil rights movement, while witnessing the Northern version of segregation, poverty and police brutality that seemed impervious to it, radicalized her."

Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Deborah Byron in 1947 in Queens and adopted a new name in 1971. She split her childhood between her mother's home in New York and her grandparents' in Wilmington, North Carolina, where they taught pride and dignity in being Black. Exposure to Northern segregation, poverty, and police brutality during the civil rights era radicalized her. She joined the Black Panther Party as FBI COINTELPRO undermined Black movements. She became an emblem in music and education through the runaway-slave narrative. Her flight into exile severed ties with her child and family and prevented her return home.

Read at www.nytimes.com