2 | Dear Mama | The Women of the Black Panther Party
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Trigger warning. This episode contains drug use. Listener discretion is advised. ♪

Uh, what are you up to over there? You know, just vibing, listening to some music, getting into the right headspace for the show. Okay, Conjus, I can't believe that I haven't asked you this before, but what kind of music are you into? I love R&B, you know, some rap, hip-hop, you feel me? Sometimes a little bit of pop music, depending on if I'm up to it, but mainly like, you know, rapping. Oh, you can listen to the pop girlies. Okay. All right. Well, listen, I feel like I might regret asking you this.

But who are your top five rappers of all time? I ain't trying to tussle with you now, Francesca. That's a controversial question now. One that has caused beating in these streets for over 50 years. I knew I was tempting fate, but I feel like you are a man of the people. So you're going to have a good mix of answers that are going to make everybody feel seen and heard. So give me your top five. My top five, I go with...

Big K. You know, I go with Andre 3000. Tupac, of course. Some Cole.

And then that last one, I've been going back and forth on it because I'm so used to seeing her, but I've been learning stuff about, you know what I'm saying, how the creating of the music happened, but I'm still going with Lauryn Hill. I think that is a pretty well-rounded list. You know what, too? I'm realizing I got to run that back. I can't have my New York. I'm going to New York right now. Oh, my. Hell me. Boy, hold on, though. Hold on, though. Goddamn. This is my favorite. I got to take somebody out. Me not having Biggie in there, I don't know.

I just set myself up to be to be counseled consciously how dare you disrespect the discography of hip hop like that and not listen man somebody gonna be uh listen I think I think you did a good job and the thing is is that Tupac

is almost on every single official and unofficial list for the best rapper of all time. And it's probably because not only was he an amazing lyricist, but he was so good at mixing a sense of consciousness into his music. Yeah, Pac was definitely one of the few rappers who gave us music that makes you want to dance, music that make you want to fight, music that make you want to examine the systems in place to keep us oppressed.

I mean, who else could have given us California love, hit him up, and keep your head up, all from one brain? I mean, that's incredible. Nah, that's what's really real. And that knowledge he was spitting in part came from his mama, Feeney Shaquille. She was a Black Panther during his heydays. And she taught Pac a little something-something about being proud, being outspoken, and doing it for your people.

In this episode, we take a look at the life of Afina Shakur, best known for being Pac's mother. But we'll explore how she was more than a mother. Against the odds, she took on the state and won her freedom and the freedom of 20 of her comrades. Let's get into some Black history, for real. It's April 2nd, 1969. It's eerily quiet inside an empty, Afrocentric Harlem apartment until the door slams open. ♪

Afeni Shakur enters in a huff. Her husband, Lumumba, follows behind, shaking his head at his hot-tempered wife. Lumumba tells Afeni she's being paranoid. He knows that the Black Panthers, the militant Black liberation organization they belong to, has been infiltrated. Police have been taking leadership out like flies, but ain't no way his friend Yedwa Sudan is a fed.

Afeni throws her coat aside and grabs Lumumba's hands. She tells him that Yedwa just isn't passing the vibe check. She's caught him telling small lies here and there, and he's just a little too eager to want to start shit with the cops. It just isn't sitting right. Lumumba shakes his wife off and picks up her coat from the floor. Afeni never did like Yedwa. She thinks he's a loudmouth sexist.

Just as Lumumba goes to hang up their coats by the door, it bangs open again and he's knocked backwards on his feet before crashing to the ground. Lumumba screams for Afeni to run and in a flash, she is already in the back room, her reflexes like a cat. Two officers slam Lumumba onto his chest while the others chase after Afeni, semi-automatic pistols raised. Hands up! Before Afeni can hop out of the open window of the back room, the officers train their guns on her back.

She knows they are prepared to kill and can see more officers waiting on the ground outside the window. There's nowhere to go. Feeney sighs and raises her hands. Nothing hurts more than having to comply with a pig. Not even the handcuffs they sadistically tighten around her wrists, purposefully cutting off her circulation.

You're under arrest for attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to bomb buildings. The officer keeps rattling on, smiling in her ear as he pushes her down by her short afro and drags her out the door.

what she would do to wipe that damn smile off his face. But she has bigger things to worry about. She'll soon find out that she and Lumumba are just two of several Black Panthers arrested on more than 150 charges that include plans to bomb a railroad, the New York Botanical Garden, and other public spaces like department stores.

Man, you know, when I first learned about the Black Panther Party, I really was shook by how many trumped up charges they was dealing with. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it sounds like they're just like picking things out of a hat. Like, oh, this sounds like a viable charge. We'll just do this one, too. It's like they're truly like doing a word search of just coming up with things.

Yeah, and to keep it a stack, I think that black folks remember the Black Panther Party so much and what they went through. And that's the reason why we are so skilled at being able to call out BS when somebody trying to legally do something to us. Mm-hmm.

And in this instance, the charges rely heavily on the testimony of Ralph Yedwasudan White, who was one of several undercover officers who had infiltrated the Harlem chapter of the Black Panthers. A fact that probably led to the loudest I told your ass in history. Afeni and the 20 other Panthers will become known as the Panther 21 in one of the biggest trials of New York state history.

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From under me, 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 head.

I'm Conscious Lee. And I'm Francesca Ramsey. Continuing our four-part series, Women of the Black Panther Party, today we're telling the story of Afeni Shakur. You might know her as the mother of Tupac. And while he is considered to be one of the most influential rappers in history, Afeni was famous in her own right.

She was so gangster, she rejected outside counsel and defended her damn self in court against a stack of hefty charges during the Panther 21 trial. That trial made Afeni an icon in the fight for Black liberation and justice. But her struggle with addiction caused a rift between mother and son that almost wasn't healed until its tragic end. This is episode two, Dear Mama. Black is beautiful.

It's 1968, and 21-year-old Afeni, then known as Alice Faye Williams, walks down 125th Street in Harlem. Racist policing and poverty have really done a number on the largely black neighborhood, and her big doe eyes notice every dope user and dealer on every corner. But she's not afraid. She's already seen and experienced a lot. Alice grew up in an abusive household. She often saw her father beating her mother. And as a teenager, she joined a gang and started using cocaine.

Even though she's been trying to kick those habits, she understands these people. She nods and says hello to each of them. These are her friends. In fact, the street folks in her neighborhood and the students at the school where she teaches are some of the only friends Alice has. She's been feeling increasingly isolated as the conditions around her get worse and get worse.

Everybody thinks she's too angry about the state of the world, but she's always using her anger for protection. She feels like if her mother was going to be weak, her dad was going to be a dog, anger was often all she had.

I hate this idea that anger somehow invalidates truth. Like when bad stuff happens, you're allowed to be angry about it. And it doesn't mean that your anger is not justified or it somehow invalidates how you feel about your circumstances. Agree.

She doesn't understand why so many people aren't angry. The street folks get it, though. They are mad as hell, too, and that is what scares people about them. That anger is also the excuse that police use to brutalize them and everyone else around here. But Alice is desperate for outlets for her rage that won't send her into an early grave. She notices some commotion on the corner of her street. Some guy with an afro is talking to the crowds.

Is that a street preacher or something, she groans? These street preachers don't do nothing but talk. Her people need more than prayer. But as she pushes through the crowd, Alice catches a bit of what the man is saying. He's no preacher, at least not the kind she's used to. His name is Bobby Seale, and he's talking about Black people organizing to change their conditions. He's talking about liberation and armed struggle.

We armed from block to block and we gonna patrol you from our windows. And we not gonna have you brutalizing none of our people in the streets. Do you realize what kind of power black people have then? Because you begin to neutralize that police force because them cops gonna start riding shaky and scared. In fact, we in a position then to demand that they withdraw from our community because they occupy our community just like a foreign troop occupies territory.

Alice stops in her tracks. As she listens, this is the first time she's heard anybody saying that the brothers off the block, the brothers with gas heads, the crazy brothers that drink wine all the time, can lead the struggle. It's the first time someone explains that a person as angry as her can do something about it. There's no question, this is an outlet for Alice's rage that she has been desperately searching for, and she has to be a part of this organization.

The first thing that comes to mind is Black people and anger have a weird relationship, especially perceptionally, because when you learn about American history, white colonists having men angry that they're being taxed on representation is seen as a viable way to express your anger. But when Black folks get mad almost in any instance, it seems like we pacify to be passive and docile. Yeah. It's so interesting, this idea of Blackness

black anger and how it's policed. And I realized that I've internalized a lot of that because I go out of my way to speak calmly and not curse too much and speak in a way that is approachable and warm. And even when I do all of that, I'm still accused of being angry. And so I

to your point about Black rage and Black anger and us having like this complicated relationship with it, I often feel like I'm never allowed to be angry. And I sometimes shy away from expressing how I really feel because like I'm already assumed to be angry all the time, even when I'm genuinely like painting my apartment on Instagram. Yeah.

I'm not about it. What I am. Perhaps there's a lot of folks in our community that can identify with what you said. And that's the reason why so many of us are sick and tired of being sick and tired. I think it's one of the reasons why you see the prevalence of the name Shakur kind of reexists because they also identify with being so sick and tired of being sick and tired. They want it to be illustrated also in name.

Yeah, I mean, it's really powerful stuff. And the reality of this story specifically is that the Black Panther Party offers Alice a community that she really didn't know that she needed. So she jumps right in. They have her booked and busy. She writes for the Harlem Black Panther newsletter and volunteers at a hospital.

And through the Black Panther Party, Alice meets Lumumba Shakur, charismatic, intelligent Muslim man with swagger, who introduces her to the Nation of Islam and fellow revolutionary Assata Shakur. In November 1968, Afeni marries Lumumba. Like Assata, Alice converts to Islam and changes her name to Afeni Shakur.

When I see clips of a lot of people from the Nation of Islam or people that changed their names, I recognized how pissed off it made people during that time. And it blows my mind, especially now living in a day where, you know, we're more politically correct in terms of preferred pronouns and preferred surnames.

For those that don't know, the Shakur surname came from a follower and associate of Malcolm X, James Costin Sin, who changed his name to Saladin Shakur after Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. Like many women in the Panthers, Afeni faces heavy sexism within the organization, which prides itself on the masculine identity of black men.

But her past in the Bronx women's gang has given her the confidence she needed to go toe-to-toe with the men. She finds a home for anger and solace in the community, building efforts led by the Panthers. But everything begins to unravel when multiple undercover New York City police officers successfully infiltrate the Harlem chapter. After Afeni's arrest, most of the Panther 21 are forced to spend 10 months in jail awaiting trial.

They're held in solitary confinement with the lights on 24 hours a day. They're denied reading materials, recreational facilities, and family visitation. Several of the defendants were not given mattresses. Two female members, Afeni and Joan Bird, were limited to only four sheets of toilet paper per day. Now listen, man, you know I really chaps my ass?

is that when you read what they were going through, especially in the historical context it was happening, the American government was using taxpayers to go invade other countries for doing significantly less. Think about it. The COINTELPRO was justified by being able to say... COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program, was a series of shady, sneaky, and often illegal projects conducted by the FBI from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The program aimed to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt various individuals and political organizations, including the Black Panthers, that were deemed threats to national security.

The COINTELPRO was justified by being able to say these Negroes are communists and socialists. They were able to do that because they were able to criminalize in every instance what the socialists and communists was doing, like ripping people or denying people of, you know, their human rights or right to counsel or being able to be seen as innocent to prove a guilty. It kind of blow my mind. Oh,

That is truly the American way. It's always do as I say, not as I do. We stay in somebody else's business telling them how they should operate.

while at the same time not taking care of our own citizens. And we have seen this and punishing and mistreating members of the American public. We've seen this throughout history. This is not anything new. But you're correct when you actually read what they were doing to the Black Panthers through, you know, their infiltrating and the way that they were talking about them in the press and in the media. Yeah.

to then how they were treating them in prison is really infuriating and something that you and I have talked about on this show a number of times. Even when you have been accused of a crime or nay committed a crime, you are still a human being and you are still entitled to human rights and those should not be thrown away just because you have been imprisoned. Now I feel Black Panther. Under the stress of imprisonment, tensions between Afeni and Lumumba intensified.

It wasn't just that he didn't listen to her warnings about Yedwell. That was only one example of her stubborn ass husband not giving her thoughts the respect she gave him. It was the fact that he was increasingly dismissing her ideas. In contrast, another Black Panther member, a handsome fella by the name of Billy Garland, had been showering Athene with love and respect.

He showed up for her in jail whenever he could, with promises to wait for her when she got out. He would later make good on that promise. So it wasn't all bad. Besides the blossoming love affair with Billie, Afeni was receiving substantial public support alongside the other Panther 21. It seemed that white people were waking up to the BS of the police when it came to targeting the Panthers. Even famed composer Leonard Bernstein helped raise bail money for them.

Afeni was being held at the Women's House of Detention, which stood across from the Stonewall Inn, the site of the fateful queer uprising that would erupt shortly after. Looking back on her time in jail, Afeni said that she began relating to the gay sisters, beginning to understand their oppression, their anger, and the strength in them and in all gay people.

A group of younger activists formed one of the most important LGBTQ organizations of the time, the Gay Liberation Front, to protest the Women's House of Detention in support of the Black Panthers. These beautiful friendships would nurture Afeni's own queerness and inspire her to become an advocate for gay rights within the Panthers.

Hold up. Wait a minute. Let's sprinkle a little intersectionality in it. This illustrates. That hit rhyming. You know, you know, you know, you got to sprinkle some of them portable skills you get from the hood every now and then. Now, just remember, not everybody knows what intersectionality means.

So help the children out. Yeah, so you know, that's why I said a whole long way that we're going to sprinkle some intersectionality in it because I'm going to give you the context. You see what I'm saying? We recognize that the interconnectedness of oppression

and systems of power is one that collides. Like, Afeni was a black woman that also was dealing with being a mother, also dealing with, you know, exploring her queerness. Those are, like, intersectional ways that identity was colliding. What I like about this is that it illustrates historically how queer movements and black movements have always been going on simultaneously and how the coalition is one that goes back way, way then. The second thing that comes to mind is...

We know that, I got a theory that says that when black folks was coming together in 2020, 2021,

The powers to be had to figure out a way to break it up and dissolve it. I think it's not ironic that they used the LGBT community in many different ways to try to weaponize it against the black community, especially recognizing how Phoenicia Court was locked up right across the street where the infamous wall, you know what I'm saying, a rise happened. You know what I'm saying? Shout out to Marsha P. Johnson. Again, I'm a broken record here, but there has always...

always been this idea that if we work together, which is reality, our liberation is connected and that when you win, I win. When you rise, we rise. And so, of course, there has always been a vested interest in trying to pit marginalized groups against each other. But the reality is, while we don't have all of the same struggles, many of our struggles are interconnected. And so, you

It is incredibly powerful that even in prison, dealing with all of this mistreatment, Afeni was able to find community with the queer women she was meeting in jail. And they were able to say, you know, well, we're going to we're going to ride for you, too, because your liberation is our liberation.

And before I get back to the narrative, imagine, Francesca, Black men going to a Feeny and saying, look, listen here, sister, we ain't got time to be shucking and jiving with the man. Are you Black first or are you queer first? Imagine it. I don't have to imagine. I do not have to imagine them there. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, that is a reality of the experiences, especially when we talk about

women in no matter what identity you embody,

Oftentimes, we are encountering sexism at the same time that we are trying to advocate for other people that look like us. And I think it's really hard, again, no matter who you are, for folks to acknowledge that they do still have privileges. Even if you are an oppressed person or a marginalized person, you still have some privileges that you need to reckon with in order to fight for the liberties and lives and the happiness of everybody.

Before we keep on going, let's take a few seconds of silence to let that marinate in y'all spirits. In the vein of thinking about intersectionality,

and how different systems of oppression are interconnected. What Afeni was able to do was recognize the relationship and interconnectedness of her Black woman-ness and Black femininity with the other sisters that was also being criminalized that happened to be queer. Through that, they were able to forge a coalition that allowed for them to really, you know, share notes with each other and really able to, you feel me, keep it moving.

But none of this support would matter much if the Panther 21 lost their cases. The government was intent on locking them up, and Afeni knew that the government almost always won. Despite the flimsy evidence against her, she had spoken to lawyers who told her, best case scenario, she'd be going to jail for a whole bunch of years. So she decided to take matters into her own hands, facing over 300 years in prison. 300 years.

24-year-old Afeni Shakur decided to represent herself in court. Afeni, dressed in a pantsuit, sits stoically in the courtroom beside the other defense lawyers, watching the district attorney ranting and raving on the other side.

The DA calls the Panthers a terrorist organization. He's already tried to paint them as scary communists by reading passages from a communist manifesto and showing jurors scary scenes from a film about the war for Algerian liberation. Real Red Scare stuff.

Now he's finishing up his leading questions for Yedwa or Ralph White, the snitch Afini had clocked immediately. Acting as her own lawyer, she gets a chance to question White. She's been waiting many months for this. Speaking from experience, you don't want no parts of a black woman that's fed up and pissed off having to prove herself because you bound.

to Drizelle. Think about how far the black community would be if a lot of us non-black women just listened. Message. Finally, the DA sits down and it's Afeni's turn to cross-examine the witness. When she stands, all eyes turn to her belly. She's pregnant with Billy's child and the baby has lit a new fire within her.

She felt it blazing when she interrogated the other two undercover officers and destroyed their testimony. One officer admitted that he assumed the record would be set straight when it came to the Panthers being innocent. Another confessed he'd never witnessed a Feeney do anything violent. Now, if she could just do the same damage to the testimony of Ralph White, she was starting to believe she could win.

Yetawa, aka Ralph White, takes the stand. Why, Yetawa, have you done this to us? It was the first thing she had said to White since her arrest. She wanted him to squirm under the heat of his betrayal. When he tugged at his collar, Ruffini hid a smirk.

Oof, I know she was loving seeing him squirm, especially because she knew from day one that something wasn't right with him. And now she, despite the circumstances, is being validated in what she knew to be true from day one. White, meanwhile, insists that he honestly believed that she was dangerous. She presses him on specifics and he stammers. Did you ever see me at Lincoln Hospital working? Yeah, I have.

Did you ever see me at the schools working? Yes, I have. Are these some of the things that led you to think I was military-minded? No, it was not. You don't remember the other things? At the time, I remember them then. White was beginning to sweat. I remember. You reminded me of the good things you were doing. If you reminded me of some of the things you said, I could answer that.

The baby was kicking in Afini's belly as if it was celebrating. "'Yes, I guess so,' Afini mused. "'Nothing further, Your Honor.'" The state's case rests almost entirely on the undercover agent's testimony, and White can't remember anything more than her helping her community and saying a few choice words.

You know, they say the more you mess around, the more you find out. Well, if you don't lie, if you don't lie, the truth is right there. So it's easy to remember the truth. It's hard to remember a lie. But peep game, though, when you think about it, majority of the undercover officers involved with COINTELPRO was trained to do exactly that. Lie! In her closing remarks, Afeni speaks directly to the jury.

She's used to fighting, not being vulnerable, but she knows that's exactly what she needs to do now. She takes a second to hold her pregnant belly, and in that moment, it's as if she couldn't do anything else. "I would appreciate it if you end this nightmare," she says, tears welling up in her eyes.

There's no logical reason for us to have gone through the last two years as we have to be threatened with imprisonment because somebody somewhere is watching and waiting to justify being a spy. Show us that we were not wrong in assuming that you would judge us fairly. And remember that that's all we're asking of you.

After an eight-month trial, the longest and most costly in New York State history at the time, the verdict comes in. Afeni and the rest of the Panther 21 are found not guilty of the 150 charges leveled against them.

Oh, my God. That is just so incredibly impressive. One, to have so many charges and to be able to dismantle them one by one, but also to represent yourself. There's so much legalese that is just so difficult to wrap your mind around, to be doing that at such a young age and then under the stress of being pregnant and then in the public eye. It's just...

It's incredible that they were able to have this outcome despite all of those circumstances. What's wild about that story is what she said in her autobiography, how she felt is the exact moniker that the Black Panthers took on and why they called themselves Panthers. Because the Panther will only strike and defend itself when it feel like it's being backed into a corner. And I feel like that illustrated the reality of Black folks. And I feel like what Afini just said,

That's how she felt in that courtroom. Her back was at the wall, and that's why she came out like the Panther that she was. And what she was going through during that pregnancy, it obviously lit a fire in that baby that was in her womb as well. But she was also writing new life. One month later, Afeni gave birth to a beautiful boy and named him Lassane Parrish Crooks. Her son will be a warrior like her, so he needs a warrior name too.

She changed it to the one that honors the Inca revolutionary who resisted Spanish colonialism. The name we all know him by today, Tupac Amaru Shakur.

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While the Panthers had won the battle of this trial, they were losing the larger war within their organization. With many of their leadership in jail or in exile, the Panthers were critically weakened. Even amid dwindling membership, most of the other Panthers 21 had been kicked out for skipping bail. And Afeni saw this as a blatant betrayal by the organization. The final straw was when a close friend of hers was deemed an enemy by the Harlem chapter. They were tied to a chair,

and shot to death in a Panther's office in 1971. Afeni had spent a lifetime trying to escape such violence, and it had now taken over her only refuge. So, she quit. Without the structure and guidance of the organization, her past began catching up to her. Her affair with Billy Garland was short, but her husband disowned Afeni after he found out about their love child.

Afeni fell in and out of bad relationships. Her drug use escalated to addiction, which contributed to the neglect of her son. In 1975, Afeni got married and divorced again a few years later. She couldn't escape the toxic habit she'd known since childhood. The only good thing that came out of her brief marriage was a baby girl.

Afeni dreamed of a better life for her kids, so she decided to move from New York to Baltimore with her children, hoping to get away as far from her past as possible.

It's 1988, and 16-year-old Tupac Shakur hops off the bus with his headphones on. He's coming from Baltimore School of the Arts, where he studies acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet. He's popular among the teachers and his peers, and has gained a reputation for his sharp sense of humor and as the school's best rapper. ♪

I ain't got nothing real deep to say, but when you read more, when I read more and more about his life and upbringing, it made sense to me why so many people was mad at him for representing the West Coast.

Oh, you mean just because he technically was not from the West Coast? I mean, yeah. Because it's like, usually it'd be like, where you graduate high school from, it's like, but bro, you was on the East Coast when you was 16 years old, fam. Right. You graduated high school from the East Coast? Fam, you from the East Coast. But shout out the West Side, dog. I don't want to smoke with y'all at all.

His friend Jada Pinkett jokes that his head literally gets bigger every time he wins a cypher. But hopping off the bus always makes him feel so small. As he walks, he notices the sun is still out. Usually he doesn't notice things like that. The closer he gets to home, everything starts to feel bleak, which is why he generally finds every excuse to stay after school late.

But for the past few months, his mother, Afeni, has been sober. And each day seems a little brighter. They're more broke than they've ever been, but Tupac would trade all the money in the world for his mama's sobriety. In fact, he'd trade his whole life. The first time, he's starting to think he won't have to keep making such drastic sacrifices. All that talk about being a panther might translate into some real strength to overcome her addiction. Otherwise, what was the point?

He gets to the door. He feels hopeful. But the hope disappears as quick as it came. The inside of the house is a mess. There is trash everywhere. And tables, chairs overturned.

His 14-year-old sister, Setua, stops cleaning to meet him at the door. She forces a smile and asks him to take her to go get food. He asks why, and she mumbles something about not eating all day. He knows she's not lying, but he also knows she's only so insistent right now to stop him from coming inside. She's hiding something. He pushes past his sister and storms up the stairs. He tries to open the door to his mother's room, but it's locked.

Afeni weakly shouts, go away. But Tupac doesn't. Instead, he smashes the door down. Tupac sees his mother sprawled out on the floor with a burnt glass pipe beside her. Her eyes are heavy and she's totally out of it. It seems like she can barely register who he is, much less what he says. But he has something to tell her anyway. I'm leaving. I can't do this shit no more. Afeni is left to deal with her demons on her own.

Athene, thinner and even more disheveled, stares at herself in a greasy bathroom mirror. She'd hoped a move to the affluent Marin City, California might help her get sober and fix her relationship with her children. But it hasn't stopped her from spiraling, nor Tupac from leaving Oakland to follow his dreams without looking back. It's been months, and she's barely spoken to him since. ♪

She knows he's doing okay. In fact, he's doing amazing. The whole West Coast seems to know him, and the rest of the world is catching up to his brilliance as the rapper behind the hits Brenda's Got a Baby, Trap, and If My Homie Calls. Feeney thinks he should watch his mouth on his songs a little more, but then again, she's got a dirty one on her too. He's just like her in so many ways, except one, she prays.

Afeni looks down at her shaking hands that hold an old glass pipe filled with crushed whitish rocks and a lighter. She wheels her hands to move to smoke it, but they just shake harder. Until eventually she launches the pipe into the trash as though it's just caught on fire. She can do this. She has to. For her kids. She runs out the bathroom into the rotary phone in the hall.

Hearing his voice over the radio all the time is almost worse than not hearing it at all. She needs to hear it speaking to her. Hopefully, it's been long enough for him to forgive his mother. Afeni calls Tupac. No answer. She makes excuses for why he doesn't pick up. He's probably busy. Such was usually too. They don't hate her. They don't think she's weak and worthless. They don't think she's a horrible mother who couldn't even take care of her own damn kids.

She smashes the receiver back onto the base and the receiver falls off. She smashes it a few more times and the base breaks off the wall. Maybe the better life she'd always dreamed of was meant for her children, not for her. She runs back to the bathroom and fishes the pipe out of the trash. Afini didn't get sober that day or the next, but each time she threw that pipe away, it stayed in the trash a little longer.

Each time she returned to rehab, she learned more healthy ways to cope with the stress of life. By 1991, she could claim sobriety without it feeling like a lie or aspiration. And she reunites with her children.

As somebody that grew up around addiction, both my mother and her mother, you know, dealt with addiction pretty much my whole life. Tupac's story has always inspired me and always been relatable to me because of all the trials and tribulations that he went through with his mother while still trying to progress. Kudos to them. It's tough for any child to heal from a parent dealing with addiction. Very tough.

Tupac gets into it a bit in the 1993 interview with MTV. And what was that like to have a mother who was addicted to crack? I love my mom. She's a bond to me. I know she is now, but what about then? It was hard. It was hard because, you know, she was my hero. In 1995, the rapper released a track dedicated to his mother titled Dear Mama. The touching lyrics forgave Afeni for her missteps while acknowledging the difficulties she faced as a single mother raising two kids in poverty.

It showcases the young, brilliant artist's deep love and maturity and offers so much promise for his future. It's September 13th, 1996. Afeni sits on her couch watching a talk show interview with the founder of a philanthropic organization. It's inspiring. She's been sober for some time now and has started to consider how to put her passion for justice to good use again.

In the throes of her addiction, the fire that had led her to the Black Panthers had quieted down, but it never quite went away. Reconciling with Tupac and Setua had lit it anew, just like connecting with Tupac in her womb in that courtroom all those years ago. Afeni gets up and answers the phone. Afran sounds panicked on the other end, talking a mile a minute.

Afeni can't make out what's being said, but she knows it's something bad. Girl, please slow down. The friend finally manages to get out just four words. Turn on the news before falling apart again. Afeni's heart drops. This was similar to the feeling she used to get when a cop told her to do something she didn't want to do, but knew she had to. She sits down and turns on the news. She sees her son's face.

The words on the chyron reveal Tupac has suffered multiple gunshot wounds in a drive-by shooting. He's in critical condition. Afeni drops the phone to the floor and heads to the door. She knows exactly where to find the dope boy, and she knows exactly how much better she will feel when she smokes what he's selling. But not even that will make up for this pain. Her hand freezes on the cold doorknob as her eye catches the vinyl player across the room.

Her song is queued up. If there's one thing that ever started to make up for any pain, it's this. She turns on Dear Mama and cries herself to sleep.

After Tupac's death, Afeni finds protection in something much higher than herself. In a moment when she had every right to be pissed off and dive back into her drug addiction, she let go of the anger that took her down a path of self-destruction and was guided by her faith. Now, Afeni may have had her faith restored and healthier coping habits, but she's still a fighter.

Afeni would learn that although Tupac sold millions of records, he barely had a cent to his name. So being the fighter she is, Afeni filed a lawsuit against Death Row Records and the most feared record executive at the time, Suge Knight.

Afeni would go to win the case against Death Row Records and established Amaru Entertainment which oversaw Tupac's posthumous releases. However, this wasn't about money for her. Afeni felt she owed guidance and protection to her children and the children in the inner cities, so she started the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation.

She used the foundation to fund several scholarships and programs for young people interested in arts, realizing arts can save children no matter what's going on in their homes. When Afeni died in 2016, the official statement from the Panthers highlighted her importance to the party.

As the communications secretary for the Harlem chapter of the Black Panthers, she was one of the highest-ranking members on the East Coast. Her leadership was the reason many young women joined. She fought sexism, homophobia, and violence within and outside of the organization. Her fighting spirit helped pave the way for the ascension of the first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party, Elaine Brown, who would go on to fight some of the same battles as Afeni.

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 two of our four-part series, Women of the Black Panther Party. We use multiple sources when researching our stories, but Jacobin Magazine, Vibe Magazine, and The New York Times, Complex Music, and YouTube 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 Manriquez-Wren. 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.