Searching for Assata

Searching for Assata

I thought long and hard about the type of creative project I wanted to do for my Gender & Society class. This project is a really cool one, in which gender and the things I learned in class would be combined. At first, I was going to interview four teenage African-American girls about their experiences about being Black and female in this society. Due to technical difficulties (raggedly camcorder), I was not able to complete that task. Then I thought about doing a feminist critique of Scarlett O'Hara, the main character from "Gone with the Wind" but that type of thing is for a ten-page paper, not a creative project. Finally, I decided to do a collage depicting the life of Assata Shakur, one of the most wrongly convicted individuals in U.S. history. Her story is a sad chapter in American history, in which the color of her skin, social class, political affiliation, and gender played a role in her subsequent exile from her homeland.

On May 2 1973, racial prejudice would change the life of Assata Shakur forever. An incident of what would now be labeled "racial profiling" takes place on the New Jersey Turnpike. Ms. Shakur, an active participant in the Black Liberation Army (BLA), was traveling with friends, Malik Zayad Shakur and Sundiata Acoli when state troopers stopped them, reportedly because of a broken headlight. A trooper explained that they were "suspicious" because they had Vermont license plates. The three were made to exit the car with their hands up. All of a sudden, shots were fired. When it was all over, state trooper Werner Foerster and Malik Shakur were killed. Ms. Shakur and Mr. Acoli were charged with the deaths of state trooper Foerster and Zayd Malik Shakur. While held in jail, she was shackled and chained to a bed, with bullet wounds still in her chest. She was also forced to undergo the jabs of shotgun butts of the New Jersey State troopers and heard their voices shouting Nazi slogans and threats to her life. In the history of New Jersey state, no female prisoner had ever been treated as she, confined to a men's prison, under twenty-four hour surveillance of her most intimate bodily functions.

Ms. Shakur and Mr. Acoli were eventually sentenced to 30 years plus life. Although the verdict was no surprise since it was an all-White jury who convicted them, many questioned the racial injustice of the trial because it was riddled with many human rights violations and constitutional errors. The pretrial publicity was extremely negative and African-Americans were purposely excluded from the jury. Even more incredible was the fact Ms. Shakur was shot with her arms in the air and it was anatomically impossible for her to commit the murders she was convicted of.

However, in the country of the United States where there is suppose to be freedom, justice, and liberty for all, the only people who have that luxury are rich, White people, particularly, White males. Ms. Shakur had the triple jeopardy of being Black, female, and poor and she was a member of a political organization that had been targeted by the CIA and FBI because of its political views. Any organization that challenges the status quo has to be eliminated at all costs.

This magnificent woman was sentenced to life plus 33 years and she spent six and a half years in prison, two of those in solitary confinement. During that time, she was beaten, raped and tortured on a daily basis. While imprisoned, she gave birth to her daughter Kakuya, whom they took away a week after birth. In 1979, fearing for her life, she made a daring escape that continues to infuriate the United States government. There was a nation-wide search for her. In 1984, she granted political asylum by Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba and was finally united with her daughter.

When I first read about Ms. Shakur, I cried. I could not believe the things that this woman went through for fighting for equal rights. Because of the triple jeopardy of race, sex, and class and her political affiliation, she was unjustly sentenced to jail for a murder she did not commit. According to the textbook, Thinking about Women, African-American women experience more bias in the courts than White women