Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  Eightieth Street, like many of the nearby streets, was changing. Most of the changing, however, had taken place before i got there. Most of the Germans had moved out and Blacks and Puerto Ricans were moving in. Evelyn told me that when she moved there it was so safe she had slept, in the summer, with the back door open and just the screen door latched. On 80th Street there might be three, four, five, or more people huddled into a one room apartment. Sometimes the apartments were rented furnished with nothing but an old saggy bed, a chest of drawers, and a beat up refrigerator and stove. You could usually tell them from the outside by the paper-thin plastic curtains shimmying in the wind. Most of the people on 80th Street were poor, although here and there were a few renovated apartments that catered to a clientele that was a little richer, usually "night people."

  Seventy-ninth Street was directly behind us, but there was a world of difference between the two. It was an upper-middle-class street. Doctors and lawyers and a lot of performers lived there. Every day after school, i would hear an opera singer practicing. Maybe that's why i developed a profound dislike for opera. The people on 79th Street wouldn't dream of socializing with the people on 80th Street. They recognized our existence with a mixture of amusement, fear, and dislike. Eighty-first Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue was even richer. The lobbies were elegant and the doormen were splendidly attired. They were, for the most part, all white and not even slightly aware of the people who lived only a block away.

  Farther over, toward the river, near West End Avenue or River side Drive, there was a middle-class neighborhood. The buildings were usually old, grandiose, and well kept. The people who lived there were mostly white, of course, with a few Blacks and mixed couples thrown in. The Upper West Side, as the neighborhood was called, was supposed to be a "liberal" stronghold. I have never really understood exactly what a "liberal" is, though, since i have heard "liberals" express every conceivable opinion on every conceivable subject. As far as i can tell, you have the extreme right, who are fascist, racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan, who come right out and let you know where they're coming from. And on the opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed to justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between those two points is the liberal. As far as i'm concerned, "liberal" is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privileges, then they are "liberals." But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you're talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.

  Sometimes i walked over to the East Side, on the other side of Central Park. If Riverside Drive was like another city, then the East Side was like another world. English nannies pushed fancy baby carriages (they called them trams) through the eastern side of Central Park. The only Black people you saw were servants or, like me, those just passing through. Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, chauffeur-driven cars, diamonds, and furs. The Upper East Side was for the sho nuff rich. When i'd walk through those streets, some looked at me as if i was an object from a museum or something. Once or twice, a doorman actually stopped me and asked where i was going. But i kept walking and looking. Sometimes, i'd have some fun and walk into one of the stores. I couldn't believe there were people who paid that kind of money for things. As soon as i'd step in, the salespeople were right on me. Sometimes i said i was just looking. Other times i would ask for outrageous things, like pickled feet. Usually, they would say, "What? What? What?" and i would burst out laughing. One time, i went into a grocery store and was asked who my mistress was.

  I was always crazy about art and made it a point to visit any art gallery i discovered. Sometimes they acted snooty or disgusted. At first, i felt uneasy and out of place. But after a while, whenever they acted disgusted, i made a point of asking the price of each piece. They would turn so red and swell up so much that it was comical. I remember hating some of those people, but at the same time i wanted to be rich like them. Back then, i thought being rich was the solution to everything.

  Four blocks from where we lived, there was still another world: 84th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus. Before it was torn down, it was voted the worst block in the city. When i was a kid, i never would have imagined that people could live so bad. Living in some of those apartments was like living in a coffin. I swear, there was one building that, when you walked past it in the summer, it stunk so bad it made you want to drop to your knees. Usually, i'd just sit on some stoop and watch the street. There was always something going on. Men standing around with do-rags"on their heads, covering greasy process hairdos, making deals, laughing and talking and looking at the women passing by. Drunks and fights and drunken fights. The street was always alive and swarming with people. Survival and life were hanging out in the open like laundry for everyone to see. Arguments, dirty deals, misery, and malice ran out into the streets like pus from open sores. There was something horrible and foreboding about the street, yet exciting at the same time.

  Lil-Bit, who went to my school, lived on 84th Street. Her nickname was Lil-Bit, but i called her Fruit-fly because she was crazy about fruit. I liked to hang out with her because she was a good walker; we could walk for hours without getting tired. One day she asked me to come with her to get something from her house. When we got there i couldn't believe it. I thought i had seen some messed-up cribs before, but hers took the cake. She lived in a tiny little pea-green closet of a room, covered with wall-to-wall roaches. I just kept staring at Lil-Bit. She walked around in that horror house like it was normal. She didn't even try to kill the roaches. She just brushed them aside if they got in her way. When i left, i itched and scratched for hours.

  When i met Lil-Bit's mother and started getting to know her and some of her neighbors, i got my first lesson in hopelessness. Lil-Bit's mother used to work in factories and laundries as a presser. But she burned her hand real bad and was on some kind of disability. She lived from day to day and from check to check. She was always sick, and sometimes her cough was so bad i thought she was going to die any minute. She acted like she was too tired or too weak to do much of anything. They had a hot plate, but most of the time they didn't even cook. They just ate sandwiches, usually lunch meat on white bread. Lil-Bit's mother never went anywhere except to the clinic or to the welfare office or to the bar on Amsterdam. Sometimes she would get drunk and start crying about some man she used to go with. She didn't know anything about what was going on in the world and she didn't seem to care. Eighty-fourth Street was her world and other worlds didn't really exist. When i was with Lil-bit and her mother i felt all kinds of things. Sometimes disgust and anger because they accepted anything and lived any old kind of way. Other times i felt sorry for them, and, still other times, i relaxed and enjoyed them because they were so easy and down to earth. But whenever i hung out with them it was down on the stoop. I would never go up into that house.

  Evelyn kept my excursions at a bare minimum, though. She was strict and didn't play around. Every day, after school, i had to be in the house by four o'clock, and she would call home just to see that i had arrived safely. Evelyn didn't want me in the street too much because she said the neighborhood was bad and she didn't want me to get in any trouble. And she also wanted me to stay at home and do my homework. After homework, i read. I have never been too fond of television and, besides, Evelyn had an excellent library. Those books were like food to me. Fiction and poetry were my favorites, although i liked history and psychology, too. I also liked to read about other countries and about all the different religions in the world. The only books i never touched were Evelyn's law books. They were dry and boring and Greek to me.

  Evelyn was a store of knowledge and she knew about a whole range of subjects. We were always discussing or debating some thin
g. Hanging out with Evelyn, i started to think that i was cool and sophisticated and grown up and that i knew it all. You couldn't tell me nothing. I was just too cool. Evelyn and i went to museums and art galleries and the theater. On Broadway, off Broadway, she was turning me on to so many things. I started to view movies as an art form instead of just entertainment. I was learning what and how to order at restaurants. And my vocabulary and control of the English language were expanding greatly.

  But life with Evelyn definitely had its ups and downs. Some times we got along famously and other times it was terrible. Evelyn was super-honest and she just could not tolerate my lying. I would try to tell the truth and try to be honest, but sometimes, especially if i was in a tight situation, i would lie. I had been in the habit of lying and it was easy for me to fall back into the old pattern. But it was futile to lie to Evelyn because she was a lawyer and would cross-examine me until i would inevitably trip myself up. Little by little, i got out of the habit, but it was a long and constant battle between us.

  Our financial situation also had its ups and downs. One week we were "rich" and the next week we were "poor." Evelyn was determined to be a trial lawyer and to be in private practice. Most of her clients were Black and poor and most of the time they didn't have money to pay her. But Evelyn would defend them anyway. She was always up in arms about some injustice or other. I used to call her the "last angry woman." But whenever somebody did pay her, we were "rich." We would go out and celebrate. For a week or so we ate steaks and lamb chops, went to restaurants, took taxis; the next week we would be right back to riding subways and eating hamburgers. Evelyn was generous and extravagant, and she had absolutely no head for business. I usually did the shopping for us since i was more tight-fisted and practical. Once in a while, i'd be tempted to give myself a "five-finger discount," but Evelyn was so honest that it rubbed off on me. I was becoming so goody-goody i couldn't stand myself. I really underwent a great change.

  Evelyn had great plans for my future. I was going to Junior High School 44, but Evelyn wasn't satisfied with the education i was receiving. J. H. S. 44 wasn't a bad school, but we were learning at a much slower pace than at my school in Queens. I don't remember too much about the school except for the music classes. Most of the class was Black or Puerto Rican and we all loved music. But we hated music class with a passion. The teacher talked to us as though we were inferior savages, incapable of appreciating the finer things in life. She lectured about symphonies and concertos and sonatas and the like in a snooty voice. A boy would mimic the gestures and expressions of the teacher and the rest of us would giggle and snicker as she played music. The teacher became more and more exasperated, saying, "Listen! Can't you listen? Don't you have ears? Can't you appreciate anything? I'm trying to get you to appreciate music and you all act as though you're deaf. I want you to stop talking! I want you to stop talking and listen! Do you hear me?" We got louder and louder and the teacher became more and more disgusted. She would scream at us and call us names like hooligans and ignoramuses. And we returned her insults.

  We hated her because she thought the music she liked was so superior. She didn't recognize that we had our own music and that we loved music. For her, there was no other music except Bach and Beethoven and Mozart. To her, we were uncultured and uncouth. For her, Latin music, jazz, rhythm and blues were trashy and we were trash. She was a racist who would have denied it to the bitter end. A lot of people don't know how many ways racism can manifest itself and in how many ways people fight against it. When i think of how racist, how Eurocentric our so-called education in amerika is, it staggers my mind. And when i think back to some of those kids who were labeled "troublemakers" and "problem students," i realize that many of them were unsung heroes who fought to maintain some sense of dignity and self-worth.

  Evelyn strongly "suggested" that i enter Cathedral High School in the ninth grade. I was not at all happy about the idea since i hated wearing a uniform and Catholic schools had a reputation for being so strict. But Evelyn kept on strongly suggesting and i got the message. I didn't mind the Catholic religious part of it, though, since i was going to mass regularly and i was kind of holy, holy that year. I took the test for Cathedral and passed, and it was firm that i was going to enter Cathedral the next September. I even started to feel happy about it. It was a change and i have always been a person who likes a change of scenery.

  I usually spent my weekends with one of my girlfriends or with my mother as much as possible. Toni was cool to hang out with and she knew where all the parties were. But we never had deep conversations so we never got really close. Bonnie and i met through Toni and began what was to be a best-friend relationship with an argument about Abraham Lincoln. We argued for hours until Bonnie's aunt told us to shut up and go to bed, since neither of us knew what we were talking about. Bonnie lived in the same building my mother lived in, and after that night we became close friends and talked about every subject on earth. Bonnie knew more than i did about what was happening in the world and we spent hours talking about Medgar Evers, sit-ins, freedom riders, etc. We began to write poetry about love and Black people, and sometimes we wrote morbid poetry about hate and death. As soon as we finished a poem we'd call each other and read it. After a while, we read poetry together. Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay were our idols. We read everything they wrote and even memorized their poems. After that, we read all different kinds of poets. We were "deep" and were forever in the library or a bookstore trying to find another poet who was "deep," too. The more we read, the more we wrote. And it came in handy in the street. If we didn't like somebody, or if we had some dispute with someone, we wrote a poem about them. We made up all kinds of "dozens" poems and laughed our heads off. We were young and old, happy and sad at the same time.

  Usually, every summer, i went down South to visit my grand parents. When they had the business on the beach, i loved it. But they had lost two different buildings on the beach, both destroyed by hurricanes. After the last one was leveled, they operated a restaurant on Red Cross Street. I liked working in the restaurant sometimes, but it wasn't as much fun as working on the beach.

  One of the last summers that i spent down South, the NAACP rented a building a few doors from my grandparents' restaurant, which was a great source of interest to me. I was forever walking by, standing in the doorway, or sliding discreetly into the building to see what was going on. I could hear them talk about integrating the South by sitting in, praying in, singing in, and about nonviolence. I was glad because i surely wanted segregation to end. I had grown up exposed to the degrading, dehumanizing side of segregation. I remember that when we traveled from North to South and vice versa we really felt the sting of segregation more acutely than at other times. We'd drive hours without being able to stop anywhere. Sometimes we would pull into a filthy old gas station, buy gas, and then be told that we were not permitted to use their filthy old bathroom because we were Black. I can remember clearly squatting in the bushes with mosquitoes biting my bare buttocks, and my grandmother handing me toilet paper, because we could not find a place with a "colored" bathroom. Sometimes we were hungry, but there was no place to eat. Other times we were sleepy and there was no hotel or motel that would admit us. If i sit and add up all the "colored" toilets and drinking fountains in my life and all of the back-of-the-buses or the Jim Crow railway cars or the places i couldn't go, it adds up to one great ball of anger.

  And so, when i saw these NAACP people, i was ready to do whatever it was that they were going to do. But they were very confusing. One day i was hanging around in the office and two men were talking about nonviolence and self-control. Then he walked around the room asking everybody questions.

  "What would you do if they pushed you?”

  "Nothing. I'd just keep on doing what i came to do.”

  "What would you do if they kicked you?”

  "I'd pray to the Lord to forgive them for their sins.”

  "What would you do if they spit on you?�
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  "I'd just go on singing.”

  Well, that was just too much for me. I could take someone pushing me, hitting me, kicking me, but to sit there and let some craka dog spit on me, well, just the idea of it made me want to fight. To me, if someone spit on you, it was worse than hitting you, especially if they spit in your face. I tried to tell myself that i would just sit there and take it, but every muscle in my body, every instinct i had, rebelled against it. The man continued around the room asking everybody the same questions. When he came to me, I answered the same, too, except for the spitting question.

  "I don't know," i told him.

  "What do you mean, you don't know?”

  "I just don't know.”

  "Well, little sister, we can see that you're just not ready. If you want your freedom, there's no sacrifice that's too big to make." Everybody looked at me as if i was some kind of stupid idiot. I felt bad, but i still couldn't get used to the idea of letting somebody spit on me. The man said i wasn't ready, and i had to agree with him.

  When i think back to those days, i feel such admiration and respect for the spirit of struggle and sacrifice that my people exhibited. They went up against white mobs, water hoses, vicious dogs, the Ku Klux Klan, trigger-happy nightstick-wielding police, armed only with their belief in justice and their desire for freedom.

  I remember how i felt in those days. I wanted to be an amerikan just like any other amerikan. I wanted a piece of amerika's apple pie. I believed we could get our freedom just by appealing to the consciences of white people. I believed that the North was really interested in integration and civil rights and equal rights. I used to go around saying "our country," "our president," "our govern ment." When the national anthem was played or the pledge of allegiance spoken, i stood at attention and felt proud. I don't know what in the hell i was feeling proud about, but i felt the juice of patriotism running through my blood.