Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  "Be careful, man," said the boy whose house it was. "My mother will kill me if the house gets messed up."

  That was my cue. I picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. I picked up a lamp and something else, crying and screaming at the same time.

  "You might get me, but i'm gonna mess up your mother's house before you do."

  The boy who was supposed to go first made a leap for me and missed. I kicked over the table and knocked over a plant that was on the stand.

  "Get back! Get back!" i screamed.

  The boy whose house it was grabbed the boy who was sup posed to go first.

  "Come on, man, my mother will kill me."

  "Get back! Get back!" i screamed. "I'm gonna throw this lamp straight into that mirror." There was a big mirror hanging behind the couch. "Get them out of here. Get them out of here or i'll fuck this house up." I was shaking and crying, but i was serious as hell. I was gonna mess that boy's house up so bad no one would recognize it. "Get them out of here," i said, kicking the table over.

  "Come on," the boy said. "Y'all got to get out of here. My mother's gonna have a fit."

  "You crazy bitch," one of them said to me. "Come on, let's jump on her, man, she can't do that much damage."

  "It's the man's house," one of the others said. "Come on, let's go."

  "Get 'em out of here," i screeched at the top of my lungs.

  "That's okay," one of them said. "We'll wait for you outside, baby."

  Slowly, in what seemed forever, they left. Only the boy who had brought me remained. I could see that he was trying to figure out some way to jump me.

  "Don't come near me. You better stay back." I didn't know what i was gonna do next. They were all waiting for me outside. I couldn't call the police because the police were looking for me.

  "Get back," i told the boy who looked like he was trying to ease up close to me. "All right, get away from the door." I still had the lamp and something else in my hands. "Get back there," i told him, indicating the back of the apartment, "or i'll smash your house up." When he moved back i looked through the peephole. There was nobody in the hallway. "They must be waiting down stairs," i thought. "All right," i yelled, "get over by the door." He moved to the door. "Now get out in the hallway and knock on one of your neighbor's doors and bring a grownup back here."

  "What? “

  "You heard me, sucker. Now move.”

  "It wasn't my idea. I didn't want to do it. I had to.”

  "I don't want to hear that shit. Just get your ass out in that hall or i'll mess up your house so bad your mother won't even think it's her house."

  "Please," the boy said.

  "Please, my ass," i screamed. "If you don't get out there and knock on one of those doors, you can forget about your mother's house."

  He went outside into the hallway. I slammed the door after him and watched through the peephole as he knocked on a door. A lady answered, and i opened the door and started begging her to help me.

  "Please, miss, help me. They're trying to get me," i screamed, crying all over again. I still had the lamp in my hand. "Please walk me downstairs to the subway or to a cab."

  "What happened, honey?" she asked.

  "They tried to do it to me," i cried.

  The woman looked at me and then at the boy. "You wait there for a minute, honey," she said. Then she and her husband came out. "Don't worry, nothin's going to happen to you now." They brought me downstairs and put me into a cab.

  I thought a lot about those boys after that night. I hated them, but what i couldn't understand is why they hated me so much. Everybody was always saying what a dog-eat-dog world it was. There were all kinds of people in the world and most of them seemed unhappy. Everybody seemed to be in their own bag and few seemed to care about anybody else. I had read this play by Sartre. The play ended with the conclusion that hell is other people, and, for a while, i agreed.

  Back then, when i was growing up, boys gang-banging or gang-raping a girl was a pretty common thing. They called it pulling a train. It didn't happen to any particular kind of girl. It happened to girls who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. The boys talked about it like it was a joke or a game, like they were "only" out to have some "fun." If a girl was caught on the wrong side of a park or in the wrong territory or on the wrong street, she was a target. It was a common thing back then for boys to down grade girls and cuss at them in the street. It was common for them to go to bed with girls and talk about them like dogs the next day. It was common for boys to deny they were the fathers of their babies. And it was common for boys to beat girls up and knock them around. And then the girls would get hard too.

  "If the nigga ain't got no money, I don't want to be bothered." "If the nigga ain't got no car, then later for him.”

  The more i watched how boys and girls behaved, the more i read and the more i thought about it, the more convinced i became that this behavior could be traced directly back to the plantation, when slaves were encouraged to take the misery of their lives out on each other instead of on the master. The slavemasters taught us we were ugly, less than human, unintelligent, and many of us believed it. Black people became breeding animals: studs and mares. A Black woman was fair game for anyone at any time: the master or a visiting guest or any redneck who desired her. The slavemaster would order her to have six with this stud, seven with that stud, for the purpose of increasing his stock. She was considered less than a woman. She was a cross between a whore and a workhorse. Black men internalized the white man's opinion of Black women. And, if you ask me, a lot of us still act like we're back on the plantation with massa pulling the strings.

  After my close call uptown, i became more skeptical of every body. I was much more careful about the situations that i let myself fall into. I would talk to the men at Tony's but, more and more, i became "strickly business." The more i saw of street life, the uglier it was.

  One day, as i was walking down 8th Street, i saw one of my aunt's friends. Her name was Abbie or Addie or something like that and she was as big as a truck. I turned my head hoping she wouldn't recognize me.

  "Joey, Joey!" i heard her cry out. I kept walking. She kept calling. I kept walking. Then i felt her grab my arm.

  "I know you," she said. "You're Joey. Your aunt and your mother are worried to death about you."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," i said. "My name is Joyce and i don't know you or anyone else that you're talking about."

  "Come off it, Joey," she said. "You're not fooling me. Come with me while I call your aunt." She had my arm in an iron grip. I thought of making a run for it, but she was too big to play with. She took me to some bar and told me to sit at the counter while she made the call. As soon as she started dialing i made a beeline for the door. She was right on top of me, grabbing me with that iron grip. "You're not going anywhere until your aunt gets down here." In half an hour, Evelyn was on the scene throwing questions at me left and right.

  "Where have you been? What have you been doing? Where have you been staying? What have you been doing for money? How have you been eating?" she asked-and a million questions more. When Evelyn questioned me, she sounded like a lawyer cross examining a witness. In about an hour i had broken down and told her everything. She demanded that i take her to the hotel where i was staying. After i had packed my things, she told the guy behind the desk, "Do you know that you've had a thirteen-year-old girl staying here? I could have you prosecuted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor." The guy looked at me like he just couldn't believe it. I could have crawled under the floor. Then she called up Tony's and told him the same thing. I was dying of embarrassment, but in a way i was glad it was over. I was getting tired of the streets. I was tired of being grown and i wanted to be a kid again.

  Chapter 7

  Kamau and i were acquitted in the bank robbery trial in the Southern District of New York on January 28, 1973, and on the following day i was returned to new jersey. When i arrived at the morristown jail, t
here was a clump of reporters and photographers standing around. Morristown looked just like smalltown, usa. The jail was an ugly building attached to the kourthouse. There were a few other women in the jail and i was kept away from them. The only time i saw them was when i was being taken to or from my cell. They all appeared to be white, although i found out later that one was Black. The guards were all women, as old as the hills, and they had been working at the jail for an eternity.

  There was a television and a radio in the cell, and it had been so long since i had been able to watch the news on television or listen to a static-free radio station that i went crazy. And i had turned into a crochet fiend. My poor mother was the unfortunate recipient of my early "creations." Brave, devoted person that she was, she thought they were pure genius.

  We learned there were few, if any, Black jurors on the panel for the new trial. The news was depressing. The panel was selected from the voting rolls, and, since candidates running for office seldom represent the interests of Black and poor people, Blacks and the poor don't vote. But failing to vote means they don't sit on juries. Any chance that we would receive something even remotely resembling a fair trial was slim. We decided to try to have the trial removed to federal court. The chance of the feds taking over was slim, but it was worth the try. If the trial was held in the federal kourt in Newark, at least we'd be assured of a few more Black jurors on the jury panel.

  There were countless joint legal meetings, countless strategy sessions, and countless kourt appearances. My first look at the Morris County jury panel flung me into a terrible depression. There were only two or three Black jurors on each panel and they looked like extras in a soap opera. As a matter of fact, the whole jury panel looked like escapees from a soap opera. They dressed differently and had a whole different air about them than New York people. Morristown was supposed to be one of the ten richest counties in the country, and, looking at these people, i believed it. I could just see trying to explain to them what poor Black people in big cities go through. How could they understand someone becoming a Black revolutionary? They had so little to revolt against. They had bought the amerikan dream lock, stock, and barrel and seemed unaware that, for the majority of Black and Third World people, the amerikan dream is the amerikan nightmare.

  Evelyn and i had resolved our differences and she was back on the case. She, Ray Brown, and Charles McKinney, Sundiata's lawyer, worked hard on the motion to remove the trial to federal kourt. But after a hearing, the federal judge remanded the case back to the state kourt. He hadn't even listened to our arguments. So we were right back where we had started: picking a jury in Morris County.

  Jury selection droned on tediously. Sundiata and i kept our selves from falling asleep or from having nervous breakdowns by laughing and talking. Just seeing Sundiata every day was such a comfort to me. We made up all kinds of little games and jokes, especially guessing the answers jurors would give to the trial judge's questions. We got to be pretty good at it. We could look at a person and pretty much know what he was going to say. Some glared at us hatefully while they waited to be called, as if they couldn't wait to give their opinion that we were guilty. They were so sure of exactly what happened. They recited detail after detail from newspapers and TV.

  "Where were you hiding that night on the turnpike?" i wanted to scream at them. "I didn't see you!"

  Others gave us crooked smiles in the hope that we would think they sympathized with us and would leave them on the jury. But there was not one bigot in the kourtroom. None of them said they had any prejudice against Black people.

  "Do you have any Black friends?" the judge asked.

  "Of course." But when asked if they had ever invited a Black person to their homes or been to the home of a Black person, the answer was, invariably, no. On one panel, the judge asked everybody if they had ever called a Black person a nigger. They all said no, except for one woman, who said, "Well, when I was a child, we used to say 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a nigger by the toe.' " After that, a whole bunch of them said the same thing. Sometimes their answers were so phony they were a joke. Except the joke was on us.

  One day, a man being questioned told the judge what he had read about the case in newspapers and what he had heard on radio and TV. He tried to make it seem that he had just incidentally come across the news stories and that he had not really followed the case or paid much attention to it. Further, he denied having been affected by any of it.

  "Have you ever read a book called Target Blue?"

  Only a day or two before, the defense team had asked that that question be included in the voir dire. Robert Daley, who at one time was the public relations and publicity director for the New York City Police Department, had written the book Target Blue. An excerpt from the book was "coincidentally" printed in New York magazine on almost the exact day our trial was to begin. One or two chapters were about the Black Liberation Army. The book was a collection of sensationalism, groundless accusations, and outright lies. The few facts that were in those two chapters were distorted beyond recognition. I was referred to by name. Daley implied that i had been responsible for the deaths of numerous policemen. He called me the "soul" of the Black Liberation Army, the "mother hen" that "kept them fighting and kept them moving." According to the book, i had also robbed numerous banks and blown up a police car with a hand grenade during a police chase.

  "Have you ever read Target Blue?" the judge asked.

  "Er, er, yes.”

  Immediately the defense team submitted requests to the judge that additional questions be asked.

  "When did you read this book?”

  "As a matter of fact, I'm reading it now." Not only had he been reading the book, but he had it upstairs in the jury room. Although the defense team asked for an investigation, the judge refused. It was obvious the man had brought the book to court to show to the other jurors and that they had discussed it. After a lot of arguments made by our lawyers, the judge agreed to dismiss that juror and others in the panel with whom he had been close.

  One day i was informed that the nazi party was demonstrating outside the court, marching up and down, complete with swastikas, brown uniforms, and helmets. They carried "White power," "Save our police," and "Death penalty" placards. Other signs were printed with racist statements. Rumor spread that a cross had been burned in front of the home of one of our support ers. At the end of the day the nazis almost got into a fight with some of the few Black residents in Morristown.

  A lot of people don't know it, but they've got more nazis and Ku Klux Klan in jersey than a little bit. Some of my friends call it "up South." Lou Myers, who was later one of my lawyers on this case, is from Mississippi. One day, in all earnestness, he told me he would rather try a case in Mississippi any day than try one in jersey.

  I couldn't understand it. I was growing weaker and weaker. My energy seemed to have gone down the drain. All i wanted to do was sleep. I chided myself for trying to escape from reality instead of facing it. I had seen women in jail sleep their whole time away. I was afraid that was happening to me. I was so easily upset and reacted to everything in an exaggerated manner. My nerves were terrible. Every little thing affected me. All i did, all day, when there was no kourt, was sleep, eat, watch television, and listen to the radio. I was eating like food was going out of style. This also convinced me my nerves were going bad. I have seen people in prison gain twenty, thirty, forty, fifty pounds eating out of nerves and boredom. It gets to the point when all you have to look forward to is the meals. And that in itself is pitiful, because anyone who has ever been in prison knows how terrible the food is. Yet i was gulping that stuff down just like it was Mom's home cooking.

  It wasn't until i sat down one day to do my exercises that i really suspected what could be wrong. I could barely get through ten sit-ups. Everything added up. I didn't dare hope, but, at the same time, down deep inside, i knew. As sure as i knew my own name, i knew that i was pregnant. But what was i to do next? I knew i had to see the doc
tor, but what in the world was i going to say? I had been in prison for eight months and it would really be weird to say, "Hey, i think i'm pregnant." I wanted to know for sure whether i was or not, but if i wasn't i didn't want the doctor to know my business. Because if i was, it would be only a matter of time before the whole world would know.

  First thing the next morning, i saw the prison doctor. I told him all my symptoms, dropping hint after hint. He told me there was nothing to worry about, that i was just constipated.

  As time wore on, it became harder and harder to wake up in the morning. When the guards came to wake me for kourt, i would simply roll over and continue sleeping. They did everything to get me out of bed. They called. They threatened. They banged on the bars and anything else they could think of.

  "Just don't come in this cell," i would tell them, feeling evil as the day is long. "You come in here and you put your hands on me and i'ma take your head right offa your shoulders." They must have known i meant it because they kept their distance until i was awake. I didn't care what they thought or said as long as they didn't put their hands on me. I wanted them to leave me alone. All i wanted to do was sleep.

  I walked into kourt whenever i got up, no matter what time it was. The judge would go on and on about my lateness and admonish my lawyers for not having me in kourt on time, but it was hopeless. I didn't care what the judge said, what the guards said, or what anybody said. All i wanted to do was sleep.

  I told Sundiata and one or two of the lawyers that i thought i was pregnant. They looked at me blankly, puzzled, as if i had an overactive imagination. Each day i felt more and more weird. I felt fragile and sick. I went back to the prison doctor, dropping more and more hints. I repeated my symptoms. Queasy stomach, stomach getting bigger, sick in the mornings, sleep all the time, etc. But he still didn't get the message and kept telling me this stuff about an intestinal disorder. I didn't know what to do next.