1 | Run Girl, Run | The Women of the Black Panther Party
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Black History for Real early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Warning. This episode includes depictions of violence. Everything ain't for everybody, y'all. Please be advised. Francesca, how you doing? Oh, I'm excited. I can't believe we are finally doing a podcast together. I mean, I followed you on social for so long. I'm trying not to fangirl, but like, it's happening, dude. No.

No, don't do me like that. You got me over here blushing. You know what I'm saying? I'm too black to be blushing now, you know? I think I can hear you blushing. Well, you know what, though? You've been following me on social media. I've been following you on social media. And what inspires me to make content on social media is really trying to inspire, edify, and educate black folks in ways they probably haven't been done in their life, you know, or haven't

experience yet. I mean, listen, that is a big part of why I love your content so much and why I was such a fan before I ever met you and got to work with you, which brings me to something that, you know, ties into the show that we're now hosting together, Black History, because so much of Black History has either been whitewashed, downplayed or just outright hidden. And even then, we really only hear about the same figures over and over and over again.

MLK, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, etc. Respect, but there are a plethora of other black folks and stories that have a huge impact on black history and help shape this here culture. While we at it, let's talk about the cap that's been floating all around these years and years. Oh!

Like the cap about the Black Panther Party, one of the most greatly misunderstood and outright lied about organizations. Because when we think about the Panthers, we usually picture armed Black men keeping an eye on the oppressor, which is true.

But here's the thing. It was actually the women in the group who really held it all together and made sure the party stayed strong. 100. That's facts. By the late 1970s, women made up the majority of the party and are still out here fighting for justice and liberation to the Black community to this day. So it's only right we talk about the most famous and to some the most infamous Black woman at the Black Panther Party, Asala Shakur. Let's get into some Black history for real.

It's a little before 1 a.m. on May 2nd, 1973. Assata Shakur shoots a nervous glance at the rearview mirror from the passenger seat of a Pontiac Le Mans. She's rolling down a dark New Jersey turnpike. The driver is a comrade in the Black Liberation Army, BLA for short. Another comrade cracks a joke from the backseat, but Assata doesn't respond with her usual laugh.

She knows the short journey will be anything but easy for the three of them, and all she can think about are the many ways she could go left.

The BLA is an underground Black nationalist militant operation composed mostly of former Black Panther Party members. The police have been closing in on the BLA in New Jersey for months. Assata saw the same sort of police escalation and sabotage lead to the disintegration of the Black Panthers. She knows the government pulls out all the stops when their targets are making an escape.

Both comrades laugh at the joke, but Asada shushes them. She points out a pair of headlights in the mirror, the same lights that have been trailing them for some time. The driver nervously clenches the wheel and slows, giving the car room to pass. It doesn't. Instead, its headlights are joined by flashing red and blue and a siren. Asada curses, wiping beads of sweat from beneath her afro. The driver's trembling foot is ready to go on the accelerator, but Asada shakes her head.

She doesn't expect engaging with the pigs to be safe, but a car chase could be even more dangerous. They need more time to figure out a plan. The driver sighs. He knows she's right. He pulls over. The cop parks behind them, leaving only the sound of the three militants trying desperately to calm their anxious breaths. Right then, another police car arrives.

A white officer exits from each vehicle and approaches either side of the BLA car, one blinding Asada with his bright flashlight through her window. A state trooper asks for the driver's name. He lies. Asada asks why they've been pulled over, and she would put it on her mama, but it's another lie when the trooper mentions their broken taillight. The second trooper tells the driver to get out of the car so he can question him at the rear of the vehicle.

Assata gives an encouraging squeeze to her comrade's sweaty hand before he reluctantly exits. What happens next is all a blur. And what Assata recalls, the police will later dispute. The first trooper tells Assata to raise her hands. And with a smirk, he shoots her when she complies.

Damn, that's messed up. Asada opens the door and stumbles onto the road bleeding. The backseat comrade jumps out and onto the first trooper struggling for the gun. This don't sound like it's going anywhere. Oh, just you wait. Asada hears more shots as she crawls through her own blood into the backseat of the Pontiac, gasping for air. She can barely take it all in before the driver jumps back into the driver's seat, disheveled, and speeds down the road.

Asada's vision gets fuzzy, but minutes later, she makes out more red and blue lights heading straight towards them from all directions. Run, girl, run! She would, but...

There's nowhere to go. The driver skids off the road and gives Assata an apologetic look. She frowns. The BLA comrade knows she hates being pitied and tells him to go. The driver runs off, leaving Assata to contemplate the nightmare she just witnessed. The comrade is in the backseat and the second trooper's lifeless body is on the ground.

She sees Seth the thought that if she wasn't black, she'd never be forced into this mess and her friend would still be alive before she loses consciousness.

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From Wondery, this is Black History for Real, where we chronicle the stories of movers and shakers from Black history all over the world. The stories will inspire you, educate you, and more often than not, leave you shaking your damn heads.

I'm Francesca Ramsey. And I'm Conscious Lee. In this four-part series, we're going to be telling you about the stories of preeminent women in the Black Panther Party, starting with Masala Shakur. She became a target for government forces seeking to discredit Black liberation movements before becoming one of the most notorious fugitives in America, all because she fought for Black people to be treated with dignity. This is episode one, Running Girl Running. Hey.

It's 1953 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Well before adopting the name Assata, six-year-old Joanne Chesimard is helping close her grandparents' beach property, Freeman's, for the night. Like everywhere else in the South, the beach is completely segregated. Freeman's, folks call it Bop City, is one of the few places Black people can go to see the ocean. ♪

Not all of the neighbors are happy with this. Little Joanne has been helping around the restaurant and has seen this unhappiness up close many times. White boys come in and spin out their cars in the dirt parking lot, shouting curses and racist insults.

Just a few weeks ago, Joanne was forced to run for cover as a white man drove by firing his gun in the air. - Racial terror is, well, terrifying at any age, but you can imagine for a child. And these white men did terrify Joanne, but she's learned to avoid them.

In fact, she's decided she'll avoid them forever, even if it means she's stuck in a segregated shop for the rest of her life, listening to her bossy grandmother who has just insisted that the table she's wiped down three times already aren't clean enough. As she scrubs a grease stain that's never going to come out, Joanne hears commotion outside in the parking lot. She peeks out the door to see her grandmother facing off against a white man.

He's shouting at her with the arrogant tone they love. Joanne's heart stops. So much for avoiding him forever. From what Joanne can decipher, the man is ordering her grandmother to open the gate so that he can turn around his car on their property. The road leading to the restaurant is tight. No, I can't let you do that. Her grandmother responds calmly. Joanne begins to sweat.

If she's learned anything about these white men, it's that they don't like being told no. Oof, a lesson that she's learned way too early and will see repeated throughout her story, unfortunately. The man says, come on now, auntie, I got a mammy in my house. He offensively assumes Joanne's grandmother might empathize with the reference to his black nursemaid. Now open the gate and let me turn around.

Her grandmother replies, what'd you say? Or at least Joanne thinks her grandmother says that. She hopes to God she's hearing things. I said I got a mammy in my house. Now come on, open up. Joanne's grandmother leans over the man's face. I don't care how many mammies you got in your house. I don't care if you got a hundred mammies in your house. You're going to back out of here tonight. And I want you off my property now, right now.

And, you know, not to take it too deep, but the level of cultural competency in this little historical accounts right here shows that this white man thought that it was smooth and cool to relate to this black woman through servitude. Not only servitude, but like... What did he think?

She was going to be like, oh, okay, no problem. Oh, yes, boss. I'd like to work. You thought I would love to work for you, too. I'm not I'm not sure what he wanted, but actually I am sure we want. I think that he thought that was very rational to show that this black woman, I can relate to your humanity based off of the previous black woman that have served me before I met you.

Joanne runs towards her grandmother, hoping to save her from the violence that's certain to come. Instead, the man's face turns red, as red as a redneck can turn, and backs his car up. By the time Joanne reaches her grandmother, her fear has morphed into awe. Don't you respect nobody that don't respect you, you hear me? Her grandmother says, pulling the girl close. Right then it hits her.

It might be impossible to avoid racism, but maybe it is possible to challenge it when you inevitably experience it. Yes, grandmother, Joanne responds. Now, did you get that damn stain out? By middle school, Joanne and her mother had moved to Queens, New York, where Joanne attends a mostly white Parsons Junior High. It feels like she's the last of her friends to start dating, but a classmate named Joe is dead set on changing that.

He's just spotted her on the way home from the store, and she lets him walk beside her. He's a sweetheart, and she knows he's been leaving flowers on her window sill, which no boy has ever done before. Her mother told her, tell that little boy to stay away from my window, which only made his efforts to court her even more cute and exciting.

We love it when a young man is persistent. But here's the thing. Her friends call Joe a black frog. He's real dark with short little legs. Now, is that something that normally people make fun of you for? The length of your legs? I didn't know that was something that people were...

We're taking note of when it came to insults. Hey, if you are dark skinned and you short and you short and black. Oh, yeah. You a man. Listen, whether we talk about 1950, 1960 or 2020. Don't no woman want no short man typically, you know. So I get it. I get I get the I get the mixture of colorism in and I guess height stigmas. Maybe this is me and my progressive, my progressive steez, but I'm I'm I'm.

opposed to a short guy. We like a short king in this house.

But that colorism, though, you are spot on about that. Unfortunately, colorism is something that we continue to struggle with or see play out in our media and our interpersonal conflicts. And it's that same groupthink, too, because even though Joanne doesn't personally find this guy ugly, she can't help but feel embarrassed when her friends start making fun of her calling him her little boyfriend. Yeah.

That's why she stifles her laughter as she walks beside him, even though everything he's saying is mad funny. Hey, on my mama, though, it made me think, like, so culturally speaking, it's always been cool to throw out a little insult for Black people to be like, it come little so-and-so. So anytime it's like little in front, you know, it's like a little shade. You feel me? A little insult, you know, like a little hazing. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh.

Well, eventually, even despite all of the heckling from the friends, Joe works up the nerve to ask, will you go out with me? Joanne stops in her tracks. She should have known this was coming. She should have listened to her mother and told Joe to stay away from their window and that he couldn't walk her back from the store. She can't date a black frog, no matter how loved he makes her feel. No, she says. Why not, though?

She doesn't know what to say. Her tongue feels stuck in her throat, weighed down by everything she has learned from the world about who is desirable and who's not. She stammers and stutters until finally she blurts out, "'Because you're too black and ugly.'"

His look of sadness morphs into something else, something Joanne has seen once before in her grandmother's face when facing off against that racist white man. He looks like he hates her more than anyone in the world, and she knows she deserves it. Oh, man.

When we were kids, there are a lot of things that we don't pick up on in terms of social cues. And I feel like it allows for us as kids to say very hurtful things that we don't recognize at the time, but it sticks with the person for the rest of their life. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's so many things in my childhood that at the time it didn't feel like it'd be something I'd carry forever. But then in hindsight, you realize that it really shaped me.

Heartbreaking.

To be lost in the sauce of racial inferiority. The internalized racism runs deep, and this shows how society encourages it. It's not surprising that Joanne's questions about the anti-Blackness she was seeing within her own community led her to becoming more and more isolated from her peers and in her adult life.

It even caused fractures in her relationship with her grandmother, who would often refer to Joanne's poor friends as alley cats. But if distancing herself from her friends and family was the price she had to pay to feel loved as a Black person, Joanne was willing to pay the price. By 16, Joanne was regularly running away from home. Sometimes she stayed with strangers, and she didn't stop even after fighting off an attempted rape.

So Joanne turned against the world.

One day, after running away, Joanne was spotted by a friend of her Aunt Evelyn. The friend scooped Joanne up and took her to Evelyn, who was maybe the perfect aunt for this situation. Evelyn A. Williams was a civil rights attorney. Not only did she keep a watchful eye on Joanne, she also taught her how to redirect her anger at the world into organizing for social change. In the mid-1960s, Joanne was accepted into the borough of Manhattan Community College and ready to fight for respect.

It's 1967. The civil rights movement is in full swing and has taken over college campuses across the country. At Borough of Manhattan Community College, a lot of organizing has been led by the Golden Drums, which has organized today's protests.

Hundreds of black students and their allies gather in front of the main academic building. A short, skinny twig of a girl with a big afro takes the megaphone in front of them. She says her name is Joanne Chesimore in a voice bigger than you'd expect. As she passionately calls out the university's lack of a black students program and the absurdly low numbers of black faculty, the crowd hoots and hollers in agreement.

Joanne looks out into the crowd and she can't help smile. It seems a whole life has been built to this moment. Police begin to gather at the outskirts of the crowd, but it doesn't deter Joanne. In fact, she points and laughs when one stumbles over himself. She smirks as she shouts, they can't scare me.

The thing that impresses me so much about Joanne and the woman who will soon become Assata Shakur is how she had this like fire in herself from youth. And when I think of myself at that time in my 20s in college, I absolutely did not have that kind of self-confidence and passion. And it's really inspiring, really.

especially knowing everything that she ends up going up against throughout her life, to know that she's always had that fire and that passion. Then Joanne announces the students will be locking down and chaining themselves to the building and that anyone who doesn't want to be arrested should leave. She holds her breath, waiting for the crowd to dwindle. But only a few students fall away. Her smile grows wider. The people are braver than she ever believed.

Joanne puts the megaphone away and chains herself to the building along with the other students. When the police enter the crowd, they aim straight for her. One grabs and pulls at her bony arm aggressively. It hurts like hell. And as much as she wants to punch him in the face, she resists. The golden drums have made it very clear that this is to be a nonviolent action. It takes everything she has not to strike back.

Without resistance, she knows the cops will break these chains eventually, but at least she's made her voice heard. That feeling of being heard will become insatiable. She's already thinking about bigger actions, bigger crowds, and bigger disruptions to the status quo. This won't be the last time she's arrested. She won't be complacent in the face of injustice. But for the first time, that feels like a superpower.

In college, Joanne learned that fighting to change the way things are usually resulted in violent repression, especially when it involved Black folks. But as far as she was concerned, facing off with police only meant that she was on the right track. But without self-defense, it always meant ever-escalating abuse. Yeah. If she's going to keep on organizing, Joanne would need more protection than the Golden Drums offered.

and a new group based in Oakland was offering just that. The Black Panther Party were a communist black militant organization ran by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. And unlike the Golden Drums, the Panthers believed in self-defense. In addition to their free breakfast and health care programs, the Panthers proudly took arms and conducted cop-watching patrols to challenge the brutality of the Oakland Police Department.

Once Joanne graduated, she moved to Oakland, joined the Panthers, converted to Islam, and became Asada Shakur. She felt that the name Joanne no longer fit who she was. She saw it as a slave name. And Asada Shakur is oh so fitting with who she's becoming. Asada is a West African name, which means she who struggles, and Shakur means thankful one in Arabic.

Asada found gratitude for her journey. It shaped and motivated her to fight for the respect and safety of her people. But even in the Panthers, Asada wasn't really safe. Because despite the organization's progressive politics, it was still mostly run by men. Within the group, women were often disregarded and passed over for leadership positions. And worse, some experienced sexual and physical violence at the hands of male members.

Many men in the party felt that their militancy was undermined by any female perspective, but Assata didn't let that deter her. She felt that the Panthers' shared commitment to radical Black liberation was the best starting point even if she had to become one of the guys in order to survive.

Assata would later say,

Asada's critiques about how she was treated in that movement, specifically with the Black Panther Party, it made me really think about how much I had internalized a lot of misogyny and sexism really being like, shit, natural. The sky's blue, dogs bark, and woman, you better shut up. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's literally how I was kind of raised, you feel me? So I had to unlearn so much about it. I think...

even just acknowledging how much is ingrained in us. And I really try to do the same thing, right? Like talking about the fact that like as a cis woman, there are things that I have to unlearn about the gender binary so that I can be in better community with my trans brothers and sisters and siblings, right? So,

Just admitting that some of this stuff is unconscious is the first step to actually acknowledging that things have to change. We have to grow and learn. So as Assata gained the respect of her comrades, she also caught the attention of their ops. It wouldn't take long before she would become arguably the FBI's biggest target in Black Panther history.

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After the 1973 New Jersey Turnpike shooting, Asada was arrested with gunshot wounds in both arms and a shoulder and charged with the murder of a state trooper in addition to several other crimes related to the incident. She alleges she was subject to months of torture by police as they attempted to force a confession.

To this day, Asada Shakur maintains her innocence. Meanwhile, the BLA comrade who got away was arrested after a 36-hour manhunt and was charged with murder too. Prior to the shooting, Asada had been also charged with two bank robberies and the kidnapping of a Brooklyn Huron dealer. She insists that she is innocent of those charges as well and that they are results of being targeted by a COINTELPRO.

Now, for those unfamiliar, COINTELPRO is short for Counterintelligence Program. It was a series of covert and illegal undercover projects conducted by the FBI during the late 50s, 60s, and 70s. The goal? Disrupting and discrediting various political organizations by infiltrating their ranks.

It's just so telling that the FBI would spend so much money and time and resources to try and dismantle Black-led organizations rather than trying to do any sort of work to uplift the community. If there was some mastermind plan to clean up the neighborhood and make a better world and a safer community and da-da-da-da-da-da,

The way to do that would be to invest in our communities, not to try to disrupt them. You know, it's just like a perfect example of how our government always seems to find the resources to put into what's important to them. They always show us for better or for worse what that is. In the famous words of Tupac.

They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor. It's one, it's a reoccurring thing that we see throughout American history. Yeah, and we see it literally right now. J. Edgar Hoover, the co-founder of the FBI, made the claim that the Black Panther Party was the biggest threat to domestic security ever.

based off of how they were empowering the youth and based off of how they were using their leadership. So for me, when I think about COINTELPRO, I think specifically of the Black Panther Party members that died in jail, even after the public generally knew that the COINTELPRO was not only unconstitutional, but there were a lot of individuals made political prisoners. They ain't do shit.

Assata even had an FBI investigation named after her. They called it Ches Rob. That's her birth name. Chesimar plus Rob because they believe she was robbing banks. Basically any bank robbery in East Coast involving a black woman, they said it was Assata. Assata explained the FBI's attempt to railroad her and reiterated her black liberation principles in several public letters and tapes, including her famous chant.

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. Let's run some tapes she recorded for Pope John Paul II.

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. - A sickly-looking woman sits alone in a jail cell scribbling something on a yellowed sheet of paper. She's in rough shape, her afro is matted, and she's struggling to write with her non-dominant hand. Meanwhile, she can barely move the other hand without flinching in pain.

That woman, of course, is Assata Shakur. She sniffs the collar of what looks like an ugly old maid's uniform. It stinks. People incarcerated at Middlesex County Jail are only given one clean uniform a week. And that's just the start of the inhumane treatment here. A bowl of uneaten gray mush sits by her door. The joke of a meal the guard delivered hours ago.

Seeing the various ways that Asada was, I feel like, had psychological warfare raised against her while she was incarcerated, it really made me think about just different ways that our spirits and our emotions, you feel me, and our safety and our trust changed.

gets caught up in fighting for liberation. Yeah, I think about also the fact that so many people seem to just be okay with the idea of like, well, if you've been incarcerated, then it's not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be terrible. And the reality is that even if you have committed a crime, you're still a human being and you should still be treated humanely. And it's mind-blowing to me that that is a difficult concept for people to wrap their minds around.

It shouldn't be that way, especially when you acknowledge the fact that there are people that are in jail or incarcerated that have not committed any crime. And they also deserve to be treated humanely. And that should not be something revolutionary or controversial to say.

The idea that an individual being incarcerated must go through dehumanization is usually things that the American government talks about in terms of foreign entities and say that we must invade that country because they're doing X, Y, and Z to their citizens. The whole time, we've been doing America even better for decades on decades. Some could even say centuries. Who has that voice? That was me flexing my vocal abilities. Damn it.

Well, back to our story at hand. Soon, the guard will be back with dinner. And if she can finish her task on time, it'll be the last meal Asada accepts for a while. The door slams open. The guards never knock. This one holds a tray of slop.

Asada finishes scribbling her note, then folds it up, and then bolts past the guard. "Hey!" he shouts, struggling to keep the mush from spilling over. Asada is one of the only inmates who isn't allowed out of her cell, but every once in a while she uses mealtime as an opportunity to get some fresh air, just to keep the guards on their toes.

But this time, she has bigger ambitions. She's written a petition demanding better food, and she's determined for every inmate to sign it. She's tried going through her lawyer, her Aunt Evelyn, but to no avail. So she's decided to do what she does best, organize the people. The warden can't ignore all of them.

Get back to your cell, inmate, the guard yells, but Assata pays him no mind as she beelines across the dusty hallway towards the cell of another black woman. This petition isn't going to sign itself. Just the gangsterness of Assata is that though she's in captivity,

And being faced with like, do I eat or get some fresh air? She still got organizing on her mind. She's still organizing while being in captivity and making decisions between eating and getting the peace of mind. Exactly. And advocating for others. She's not just saying, you know, I'm going to get mine and that's it. She's always trying to do what's going to benefit others.

And it's incredibly inspiring to your point that even in a moment where she's been dehumanized and she hasn't been fed and she hasn't gotten clean and clothes, she's still thinking, what can I do to make the situation better for everybody? Because we deserve better. Like the Black Panther said, power to the people.

Pass it around. Asada hands the note to the woman. She nods knowingly and grabs it just as the guard pulls Asada back from behind. Amazingly, the petition works. Sort of. The warden agrees to discuss making the food more edible. The new and improved meals only last a few days, but it's proof that Asada can change her circumstances here. But she's only just beginning to grasp how much change she's able to make.

It's a few months after her arrest, and Asada has been transferred to New York to be tried for one of the bank robberies. When the trial begins, she and her co-defendant and fellow Black Panther Party, Kamau Siddiqui, are banned from the courtroom after repeated outbursts about being hustled by the justice system. So now, they're listening to the proceedings from a freezing cold room nearby.

Reuniting with the comrade and having some space outside of her cell looks good on Asada. Her afro is healthy and round again, and she's got a glow about her. A glow that's even brighter every time Kamo looks her way. And every now and then, she shivers when he looks away. You look cold. Come closer, Kamo says, holding up his arm.

At first, Assata hesitates. But after weeks of listening to the courtroom madness from their confines, something has sparked between them. She's always respected Camus' commitment to Black liberation, but now those feelings have deepened into more. She's even begun to imagine what life might be like with him as the father of her future children, which terrifies her.

With each passing day, it's becoming more and more clear that the case against Assata and Camus is rigged. The judge has dismissed nearly every motion Aunt Evelyn has filed and granted every motion by the prosecution. Even if by some miracle they beat these charges, Assata still faces a mountain of others, including the murder of that cop.

She'll likely spend the rest of her life in prison. And the average person would find it ridiculous to start a relationship under these circumstances, much less risk welcoming a child. But Assata's never been your average person. "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," she thinks.

I'm going to live and I'm going to love Camus. And if a child comes from that union, I'm going to rejoice. And despite being under constant surveillance, somehow Asada and Camus managed to outsmart their captors and solidify their love, if you know what I mean. Where there's a will, there's a way for sure.

When you read Asada's book, when she going through this point right here and she talking to her loyal friend, something that she says that really just catch me off guard every time I even think about it is she says,

I'm a revolutionary. I can't be a mother or I can't be a mother. I'm a revolutionary. Her recognizing the implications that she's always already risking as a revolutionary and how her not being able to create those, you know, spaces of safety, you feel me, security for her child is something that was always on her mind. As soon as she started thinking about having a child, it became, you feel me, knowledgeable that she was going to be having one. But it's something that really just catches me off guard and let me think like, damn, she really was with it.

Yeah, I mean, she was somebody who was cognizant of the forces beyond her control, but also knowing that she still had a greater purpose in life.

And I mean, that's something that takes years to cultivate. And again, it's something that continues to be inspiring to me about her is that that's something that's been inside her for a long time and I think is still able to inspire and impact us today. Hey, well, Francesca, listen, my juice is flowing now. Tell us how we're eating. Tell us what happened next. What happened next? What happened next?

Well, the bank robbery case ends in a hung jury due to a holdout on the jury, the lone Black juror. But there were more charges to face, so Assata is transferred back to jail, except now she's pregnant. Considering the horrible prison conditions, it's no surprise she suffers a painful pregnancy. Her treatment was rife with medical negligence. But on September 11th, 1974, Assata gives birth to a healthy baby girl.

Kakuya Shakur at Rikers Island. Asada was frail after giving birth, but her resistance to her incarceration intensified. She refused a mandatory medical examination despite threats and abuse and eventually was sent to solitary confinement for a month, one of the 20 total months she spent in solitary over the course of her incarceration. ♪

Just two things that made me think of that. She was born September 11th in New York. And second, Afeni Shakur and Asada Shakur, the sisters of the movement, had the same experience when it came to

childbearing, childbirth, and literally fighting for their freedom while they, why I'm saying, while it's going on. Because, you know, also Tupac, you feel me, was like born in jail damn near, you know what I'm saying? And mama was fighting for her freedom while he was, you know what I'm saying, in the womb. And the same way we see for Kakuya. It's like, man, while Asada's fighting for her freedom, you're carrying a baby. Well, despite that hung jury, it was still likely that Asada would spend the rest of her life in prison. But Kakuya had lit a fire within her.

It's 2.20 p.m., March 25th, 1977, and after three days and 21 hours of deliberation, the jury has finally reached a verdict in the murder trial of Asada Shakur. Asada, dressed in a bright yellow print dress and a turban, sits stoically as a jury of seven white women and five white men file in. The murder case against Asada was just as weak, if not weaker, than the bank robbery.

But the judge was just as biased. Asada's lawyer, Aunt Evelyn, recalls that the surviving officer admitted under cross-examination that he had lied in all three of his official reports and in his grand jury testimony. The fingerprint analysis of every gun and every piece of ammunition found at the scene showed none of Asada's fingerprints on any of them.

And there was no gunpowder residue on her hands. I mean, come on. She was shot under her armpit while her arms were raised. An expert testified that her arm would have been immediately paralyzed, meaning there'd be no possible way for her to fire a weapon afterwards, as the state alleged. But this is America. When the guilty verdict is read, Assata doesn't even flinch.

To too many white Americans, the audacity of a black woman fighting for her freedom means that someone like her is always guilty. When given her chance, Assata stands and speaks calmly and quietly. You abused the law, she says. I know the trial was racist. I know the judge was unfair. You have convicted a woman who had her hands in the air who is innocent.

The courtroom erupts into chaos and the Superior Court judge bangs his gavel for order, but Assata does not stop. She turns to the jurors, calling them misled and racist. When she is finished, and only when she is finished, Assata sits back down in her seat. The judge, he ain't appreciate Assata's outbursts or the chaos she's caused in the courtroom.

The judge immediately sentences Ms. Chesimar to mandatory life imprisonment. Mandatory.

When you was talking about the demographics of the trial, I just thought about how easy it was for COINTELPRO to be pushed because a lot of the tactics were already normalized. I'm supposed to have a trial, a jury of my peers. You got 11 white people up there. Right. It's not fair. That's not indicative of my peers.

The peers thing is also interesting because the legal system, the way that it's set up, it's not really made for like normal average people to understand what's happening. There's always there's so many times where people are being charged with all these different statutes and they don't actually understand what all of them are. And I find myself sometimes like following cases and thinking, I don't even know what some of these things are.

mean. So then when you realize, okay, if people who are supposedly well-read and well-educated, if they're struggling, and then you have a jury of your peers, supposedly, does everyone actually understand like every single thing that's being alleged?

what the different counts are, what they mean. I mean, it's just, it's one of those things to your point where it's not that the system is broken. It's working exactly the way that it was intended to. Like it's meant to be confusing. It's meant to have

all of these twists and turns and all these different loopholes that people can get caught up in and their lives can be disrupted by. And that's why anytime there is a tool that can make it easier for us to read the law, those tools are made inaccessible or those tools are criminalized. Shout out to critical race theory, all the critical race theory scholars.

all the critical race theory researchers, and all the people that put blood, sweat, and tears into making that literature base pop out the way it did. When we're talking about the specific trial that the Sadler Court went through, for me, reading some critical race theory, I understand how racialized the law is.

and how there are things that are mitigated within the law that make it where black people are always already seen as culprits of the law. And it's just like, hey, I know you did it. The question is just being able to prove it. So even notions of being innocent, of proving guilty, or notions of being able to have, you know, fair trial, or notions of being able to, you know, we see many of the 10 Bill of Rights

really being abused by Black people. So whether we're talking about COINTELPRO or we're talking about in 2024, it's like, man, to me, it seems like a lot of these tactics, it's just normalized.

It's November 2nd, 1979, and three men dressed in all black strut towards the entrance of Clinton Correctional Facility. Their identities aren't known, but it's assumed that these are Assata's comrades from the Black Panther Party. The youngest comrade smokes a cigarette to calm his nerves. He takes one last heavy drag before he tosses the cigarette and all three enter. Inside, they hand over their IDs and go through security.

As the guard pats him down, the youngest comrade starts to sweat. Another comrade elbows him in the back, as if to say, play it cool. But it's not like he can control his sweat. But then he recovers and remembers to hold his leg in a certain way during the pat-down, narrowly avoiding a close call. Thank goodness. There's too much at stake to mess this up. They've planned this meticulously, and there are many, many steps that have to go just right.

Once inside, they pull out the .45 caliber gun they've hidden beneath their clothes. When they eventually surprise Officer Miller, he tries to lead them in the wrong direction, but they know he's lying. They were told exactly where to find him. When the three men reach the side of the cell,

She beams at her comrades as they force the guard to open her cage. She switches places with Officer Mullet and locks him in. One of the men flashes a stick of dynamite as a warning. Once she's out of her cage, Assata leads the way. The four power past the other guards before they can even register what's happening, breaking into a sprint once they get outside. You got the keys? Assata asks.

The ringleader nods, and together they quickly climb into a police cruiser in front of the prison. Before she pulls away, Asada takes one last look at the torture chamber she was forced to live in for the past five years. Under her breath, she vows to return and free everyone inside. But for today, her freedom will have to be enough. She'll finally be able to meet her godchildren, and most importantly, see her daughter, who is now five years old. She puts her foot on the gas and never looks back.

Asada lived as a fugitive in Pittsburgh for nine months. And as you can imagine, the police did not give up on finding her. They constantly raided her neighborhood, terrorizing the largely black community as they searched. But this only made people even more determined to protect her. She then flew to the Bahamas. And by 1984, she had landed in Cuba, where she was granted political asylum by the Castro government.

The thought of hiding in plain sight, so to speak, for four years is incredible to me. I can't imagine what it would be like to be looking over your shoulder at every moment. And the fear of knowing that if you talk to the wrong person or you shared the wrong thing or you made the wrong move, that everything could fall apart and collapse.

you could go right back to prison. And I feel bad saying it, but it's like when I read about Asada Shakur's story for the first time and read about Angela Davis' story for the first time, I thought like, damn, who would ever guess how beneficial racism could come in in terms of, you don't know your Negroes. You think all Black people look alike, don't you? So what we're going to do is all what's going to rock Afros in solidarity of Asada or in solidarity of Angela. Let's have big sunglasses on. Oh, yeah. Nah, man, I'm preaching.

Asada. Nah, I'm Pam. It's like, you know, I feel like when I read about it, it's like, hmm, I can't imagine the anxiety every single day of thinking they're going to. Let's be real, Francesca. If they caught her, if they caught her. It would be over. They're going to beat her to a poke and literally keep her alive just to beat her. And that's the thing to keep in mind. Like, all that's going on right now, as you listen to them, Asada still want it.

Assata's case obviously became a contentious issue in the U.S.-Cuba relations and an ongoing source of conflict. In the years since she fled the U.S., many politicians have requested her extradition. And on May 2nd, 2005, the 32nd anniversary of the Turnpike shooting, the FBI classified her as a domestic terrorist, increasing the reward for assistance in her capture to $1 million. She was the first woman on the Most Wanted Terrorist list.

Here's how Colonel Carl Williams from the New Jersey State Police explained the length law enforcement was willing to go in order to catch Assata. We would do everything we could to get her off the island of Cuba, and if that includes kidnapping, we would do it. It's 1985, and Assata's been living in exile in Cuba for over a year.

As much as she resents America, she misses the familiar tastes and people. But she's also starting to fall in love with the country. There are Black people here, too. Beautiful Black people, and they understand the plight of Black Americans. She's almost fluent in Spanish now and has built a loving community. She even calls Fidel a hero and a friend.

Still, she can't help looking over her shoulder. As much as she trusts Castro, she knows how much power the United States government wields and how far they will go to get what they want. And right now, they want her. She was hoping the efforts to put her back in the cage would die down by now, but they only seem to be increasing.

But right now, as she stands in her kitchen cooking, she's looking over her shoulder for another reason. There's a knock at the door. She wipes her hands and turns off the stove, grinning from ear to ear. She runs to the door and opens it. There's her Aunt Evelyn, who fought so hard for her, and the little girl Asada fought so hard for, her daughter. She's been living with Asada's mother while she's been in exile and has finally come to stay. She looks just like Asada remembers her,

Like Camus. Like everything Asada has ever loved.

So heartwarming in knowing when I'm reminded of her being reunited with her daughter is me thinking about how I felt when I was like seven or when I was nine or when I was 12 and I was reunited with my father. And I thought about how much it reminded me of touching him, seeing him, smelling him all the times my mom was in jail and being able to be reconnected with her after she got out. It's like something I can't even really put in words. And I feel like I'm damn good with words too.

In 1987, Asada's presence in Cuba became widely known when she agreed to be interviewed by Newsday. She continues to live there in exile to this day. Despite dreaming of otherwise, she never got to see her godchildren grow up, including her eldest godson, a rapper you might know by the name of Tepoxakur.

But back in the United States, Tupac's mother and Assata's good friend Afeni would carry the mantle for Black liberation. If you like Black history for real, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. ♪

This is episode one of our four-part series, Women in the Black Panther Party. We use multiple sources when researching our stories, but Asada, an autobiography by Asada Shakur, and asadashakur.com were extremely helpful. A note, our scenes contain reenactments and dramatized details for narrative cohesiveness. ♪

Black History for Real is hosted by me, Consciously. And me, Francesca Ramsey. Black History for Real is a production of Wondery and DCP Entertainment. This episode was written by Hari Zied. Sound design by Aaron May. The theme song is by Terrace Martin. For DCP Entertainment, associate producers are Quentin Hill, Brittany Temple, and Chris Colbert.

The executive producers for Wondery are Aaron O'Flaherty, Marshall Louis, and Candace Menriquez. Wondery.

Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.

Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.