By Editorial,
Assata Shakur, an activist with the Black Liberation Army exiled in Cuba for four decades, has died in Havana aged 78.
Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, died on Thursday of unspecified health conditions and “advanced age”, Cuba’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement on Friday.
She had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list for years after she escaped in 1979 from a New Jersey women’s prison, where she was serving a life sentence following her murder conviction in a shoot-out that killed a New Jersey state trooper and a fellow activists.
Shakur maintained her innocence and in 1984 reappeared in Cuba, where she was granted asylum by former President Fidel Castro.
Shakur was born JoAnne Deborah Byron in July 1947 in New York City and was raised between the city and Wilmington, North Carolina.
She became involved in political activism for black Americans while in college, first with the Black Panther Party, a group that favoured radical resistance to racism in the United States and developed schools and other social services for black people. ENDS
