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Assata: An Autobiography
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Chapters 13-15
Chapter 13 Summary
After Manhattan Community College, Shakur attended the City College of New York. She was married briefly to Louis Chesimard, a fellow Black radical activist, and she thought for a while that they had a “marriage made in heaven” (196). However, she realized that he wanted her to become a traditional wife, which was not what she wanted. They divorced on amicable terms.
To expand her knowledge of other political movements, Shakur visited the West Coast, where she encountered Indigenous people who were participating in the Occupation of Alcatraz Island—a political action in which Indigenous activists claimed the notorious prison island as Native land and held it for 19 months, from 1969 to 1971. As part of a first aid skills class, she joined the Native Americans who were protesting and learned more about their struggle. She also met the Brown Berets, a group of Chicano revolutionaries in the Bay Area. While she had some difficulties finding information about the Red Guard, the Asian American organizing group in the Bay Area, she stumbled upon them eventually while handing out fliers at a park.
Shakur also sought out the Black Panther chapter in the Bay. The Black Panthers welcomed her and wanted to know why she was not a member of the New York chapter, though she had volunteered for them from time to time. She shared honestly that she “had been turned off by the way spokesmen for the Party talked to people” (204) and that she was more interested in the “polite and respectful manner in which civil rights workers and Black Muslims talked to the people” (204). The Black Panthers listened and agreed, much to Shakur’s surprise.
During her time in the Bay Area, Shakur also heard about Johnathan Jackson, a young Black revolutionary who took a white judge and district attorney hostage when his brother and two other political activists were framed in prison for the murder of a white guard. Johnathan had refused to release his hostages until his brother and the other activists were released. He lost his life in that struggle. Shakur mourned his death and attended his funeral.
When Shakur prepared to return to New York, the Black Panthers in the Bay Area urged her to join the New York chapter. They told her, “You’ll be good for the Party, and the Party will be good for you” (207). She vowed to join the Black Panthers when she returned to New York.
Chapter 14 Summary
After being acquitted in the kidnapping case, Shakur still had to go to court for the Queens bank robbery case. She was sent to Manhattan Correctional Center to await trial. During this time, Evelyn had quit her job as a professor at New York University Law School to work on Shakur’s cases. She could no longer handle all the work alone, so she discussed with Shakur the possibility of hiring another lawyer. At first, Shakur was set on having another Black lawyer, but then she met Stanley Cohen.
While Shakur was hesitant about hiring a white lawyer, her interview with Cohen gave her confidence. While she expected him to give her a canned response as to why he was interested in working on her case, he told her candidly, “I like to win” (211). Cohen made clear to Shakur that the media coverage and evidence against her were formidable, but he said, “I believe you, and I’m going to fight for you” (212). His honesty and determination won Shakur over and she decided to hire him to be on her defense team.
During the trial, Stanley insisted on a lineup to have one of the witnesses try to pick the alleged robber from a group of Black women. The witness did not pick out Shakur as the robber, thwarting the FBI’s attempt to take advantage of the racist belief that all Black people look alike. The FBI also brought in a false expert on photo identification to insist that the woman in the photograph was Shakur. Stanley’s cross-examination showed that he was not an expert in the field but an expert in paleontology. Finally, when the bank manager gave his testimony, he stated that Shakur was a different weight and size from the culprit.
During the closing statement, the prosecution tried to argue that Shakur was the alleged robber because she was wearing the same earrings as the robber at the scene. Stanley presented his closing statement, asking every woman in the room to stand up if they were wearing the same earrings. Half of the women stood up. Despite the strength of her case and the flimsiness of the evidence against her in cross-examination, Shakur was not sure she would be acquitted. To her surprise, the jury decided in her favor. She was then released back to Rikers Island to face trial for the New Jersey Turnpike shooting.
Chapter 15 Summary
Shakur decided to join the medical cadre of the Black Panther Party in New York after returning from the Bay Area. She also assisted with the free breakfast program for children in East Harlem. While she was initially excited to join the party, there were also moments of conflict that made her unhappy. For instance, she did not get along with the leader, Robert Bey, who threw away her papers when she left them on the table. Shakur demanded to know the reason behind this impulsive action, and Robert’s answer was condescending. When Shakur called him “either a liar or a fool” (218), Robert had someone expel her from the Party. When Shakur confronted him directly, he apologized and reinstated her. However, it reminded her that she hated “arrogance whether it’s white or purple or black” (218).
During her time in the Black Panther Party, she befriended members of the Panther 21—a group of 21 Black Panther members charged with the bombing of a New York City police station. The members charged happened to be the most prominent leaders in the Party. They encouraged Shakur to read the writings of Karl Marx and other communist leaders. She felt that she had “learned more in one night [in the Black Panther Party] than [she] learned in City College in a month” (220). Shakur became close with Zayd, whose “cool and poised” (225) demeanor complemented her stubborn and more aggravated stance when they would do recruitment activities together.
The Black Panther Party held different types of political education classes. Shakur was most critical of the political education classes for existing members, as she felt that the political analysis of many members was still limited. Many members believed that their struggle consisted of only “picking up the gun and serving the people” (221). She believed that their cause could be strengthened by uniting with other Black organizations and learning about other community issues. Among other weaknesses of the Party, she lamented that “Criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged” (226) and that there was “the failure to clearly differentiate between aboveground political struggle and underground, clandestine military struggle” (227).
The Black Panther Party was under constant surveillance and attack by the FBI. When a member named Cotton came to New York as a reputable contractor, promising to fix up the new headquarters for the Party, none of the members knew that he was an undercover FBI agent who was part of COINTELPRO, a US intelligence program that was forged “to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular and the Black Liberation Movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics” (232). The most damaging effect of this was COINTELPRO’s falsification of letters and messages to Party leader Huey Newton, which led him to believe that other members were plotting against him. COINTELPRO sent a fake letter to leader Eldridge Cleaver criticizing Huey’s leadership, with the names of the Panther 21 as the authors. The FBI also sent a letter to Huey’s brother stating that the Black Panthers were plotting to kill Huey. With such heightened paranoia, Huey expelled the Panther 21 from the party, branding them as “enemies of the people” (232).
Disgusted by the Party’s actions, Shakur decided to leave. One day, she received a message from a friend advising her to not go home because “[her] place is crawling with pigs” (233). Shakur turned around and started for a friend’s house, knowing she could not see any family member as there would surely be police waiting for her there too.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
During Shakur’s early political organizing years, she learns a valuable lesson in solidarity among oppressed groups. While she is critical of white Marxist groups, she feels an affinity with Indigenous, Chicano, and Asian liberators in the Bay Area during her visit. Through her encounter with Indigenous groups the Brown Berets and the Red Guard, Shakur has a sense that these groups they share “the same enemy” as the Black revolutionary groups that constitute her own political community. This informs her political sense of coalition building toward a more just world for Black people and other marginalized communities.
While Shakur learns of other communities of color working toward a revolution, she also remains critical of radical Black organizing efforts. She is especially critical of the Black Panthers, whose New York chapter in her view mistakes aggression for power and sacrifices complex community organization and continuity across marginalized groups. For Shakur, the goals of the New York Black Panthers are short-sighted, promoting blind adherence to the leadership of the time. She believes that it is important to question existing ideas so that organizing efforts could continue to grow. By becoming stagnant, Black radical communities make themselves susceptible to FBI surveillance and infiltration.
Shakur’s description of the FBI’s COINTELPRO demonstrates the degree to which a hierarchy fueled by ego is especially susceptible to the FBI’s tactics of psychological manipulation. FBI operatives used clandestine tactics to exacerbate existing competitive tensions within the group, severely hampering its ability to effect change. This is enough to convince Shakur to leave the Black Panther Party, disenchanted with the state of the Party after so much paranoia and reactionary moves. The immense damage done to the Black Panther Party by the FBI’s deceptive tactics illustrates another aspect of the connection between The Personal and the Political: The party is only as strong as the personal relationships within it, and when the FBI uses psychological manipulation to poison those personal relationships, the group’s power to effect political change is greatly hindered.
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