Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  While i was going to CCNY, after i graduated from Manhattan Community College, i decided to get married. My husband was politically conscious, intelligent, and decent, and our affair was frantic, high-pitched, and charged with emotion. Somehow, i believed that our shared commitment to the Black Liberation struggle would result in a "marriage made in heaven." I spent most of my time at school, meetings, or demonstrations and whenever i was at home my head was usually stuck in some book. It was unthinkable to allow more than five minutes on mundane things like keeping house or washing dishes. To complicate matters, my husband's ideas about marriage stemmed mostly from his parents' life, where his mother was the homemaker and his father was the breadwinner. Spaghetti was about the only thing i could cook, and he was profoundly shocked to learn i had none of his mother's domestic skills. After a while, it became clear to me that i was about as ready to be married as i was to grow wings and fly. So after a confused and unhappy year, we decided we made much better friends than marriage partners and called it quits.

  I decided to go to California. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that, although it was important for students to participate in the struggle, no revolution had ever been won by students alone. Struggling around school issues had narrowed my perspective and i was getting bogged down. I wanted to expand that struggle to the Black community. At that time California, especially the Bay area, was where everything was happening. Some of my favorite professors were going out West for the summer and they offered to hook me up with a place to stay. As usual, i was flat broke, but a good friend gave me the money to make the trip, with a little spending change thrown in.

  My friends found a place for me in Berkeley, the most radical, progressive place i had ever been in. Revolutionary posters were plastered all over the walls, along with "people's murals." The fronts of banks and other official buildings were bricked up as a result of the demonstrations and street fighting that followed the People's Park struggles. Red stars and Mao's Red Book were sold on street corners, and food cooperatives sold health food at cheap prices. People's collectives were dedicated to surviving, struggling, and teaching. I was impressed with the kinds of informal solutions they had cooked up to deal with the problems they faced, and i enrolled in the practical skills classes they gave (printing and layout, first aid, etc.).

  There were books and pamphlets in the San Francisco and Berkeley bookstores i had never seen in New York, and for the first time i read the theory of urban guerrilla warfare as outlined by Che Guevara, Carlos Mariguella, and the Tupamaros. I had been more aware of imperialism in Vietnam or Cambodia, and the extent of u.s. imperialism in South and Central America surprised me. The u.s. government had invaded more than fifteen countries there, not once or twice but in some cases more than ten times, and the guerrilla movements were waging armed struggle in most of them. Reading about guerrilla warfare in South America and Vietnam was one thing, but thinking in terms of guerrilla war inside the u.s. was another.

  Back then, people used the word "revolution" just because it sounded hep. Half the time what they were really talking about was change or some kind of vague progress. Some meant a separate Black nation, and others dealt with Black revolution as part of an overall revolution waged by whites, Hispanics, Orientals, Native Americans, and Blacks. Malcolm said it meant bloodshed and land. To me, the revolutionary struggle of Black people had to be against racism, capitalism, imperialism, and sexism and for real freedom under a socialist government. But the reality of achieving it seemed a long way off.

  In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem too far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hardhats and the rednecks and the bible belt and the so-called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine the “new left" talking to those people, much less organizing them and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with some answers was to keep on studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in, but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it, because reading all that stuff probably has saved my life a million times.

  As part of my first aid skills class, i worked as an assistant to a doctor who volunteered once a week at Alcatraz. At the time, Alcatraz had been taken over by Native Americans who were protesting against a long series of broken treaties, genocidal policies, and racist exploitation. Alcatraz symbolized the strength and dignity of Indian people as well as their resolve to fight to preserve their cultural traditions. I enjoyed everything about going there except the trip. The doctor was a motorcycle fanatic who insisted on zooming across the Golden Gate Bridge on that thing, with me hanging on for dear life. Once on the other side we would jump into a rickety little boat with water in the bottom and limp across the bay to the island. By the time we got there i felt as if i had done a day's work.

  The first thing that hit me was the spirit of the people. I felt the tremendous pride, tremendous determination, and tremendous calm from the time i landed on the island until the time i left. They were Native Americans from all over North America, including Canada, from different tribes and backgrounds. They were young and old. Little babies wiggled in their mother's arms, and one old man who had spent many years in Alcatraz prison said that when he arrived on the island he had taken a sledgehammer and reduced the cell he had once been locked in to rubble. The prison, one of the most infamous and sadistic ever to exist, loomed in the back ground.

  There were many different Indian nations, each with its own rich culture, religious traditions, history, and folklore. Everybody was into learning and teaching each other their own history and culture. It was a surprise to find out how many Native Americans had been raised in cities and knew nothing about who they were. In that respect, they were very similar to Black people. Most of them were from the West Coast, and so i told them about the Indian Museum and the Museum of Natural History in New York. Suddenly, i stopped short. I wondered how i would feel going into some museum and seeing the houses and stolen artifacts of my people stuck away in some exhibition hall. As i spoke i realized that most of the "history" i had been taught about the Indians was probably lies invented by the white man.

  It wasn't until later, for instance, that i learned that scalping was an old European custom. In the 1700s, the state of Massachusetts was paying the equivalent of $60 for a scalp and Pennsylvania paid $134. It wasn't until more than a hundred years later, in response to the massive genocide at the hands of whites, that the Indians themselves started scalping. None of the little museum exhibits featuring tepees and feather headdresses had ever mentioned how men, women, and children were mowed down at Wounded Knee or how the u.s. army had purposely given the Indians smallpox-infected blankets. As i listened to those sisters and brothers at Alcatraz i realized that the true history of any oppressed people is impossible to find in history books.

  I will always be grateful for having had the opportunity to visit Alcatraz. I will never forget the quiet confidence of the Indians as they went about their lives calmly, even though they were under the constant threat of invasion by the FBI and the u.s. military. They didn't fit into any of my preconceived notions or the stereotyped images shown on TV and in the movies. They were really open with me and, after a while, we talked about the struggle in general. They had many of the same problems we had: education, organizing the people to struggle, and raising consciousness. They damn sure had the same enemy, and they were doing as bad as we were, if not worse. They told me to check out Akwasasne when i returned to New York. It was a territory they had liberated on the border between New York and Canada. I told them if they ever came to New York they should visit me and check out Harlem. "Sure. When are you going to liberate it?" they asked.

  There were a million groups in the Bay area i wanted to check out.
There was so much activity i would have had to spend twenty-eight hours a day just to keep up with it all. Someone i was studying with arranged for me to hook up with the Brown Berets, a Chicano group that had been started recently in California and Texas. It was a brief meeting since the brother with whom i had the appointment had to be on the move. He ran down to me some of the conditions they were dealing with and some of the work they were doing. I had always thought of the Chicano movement as a rural rather than an urban one. Most of the information we had received was about the Chicano farmworkers' struggle and people like Cesar Chavez fight ing to organize them and abolish the unbearable living conditions and slave wages they were forced to work for. I was not aware that Chicanos in the city were fighting against unemployment, police brutality, and inferior schools, just like Black people. In the same way that the Black Panther Party was trying to organize and politicize street gangs in Chicago, the Brown Berets wanted to politicize Chicano street gangs in Los Angeles. The brother also told me that they had been doing a lot of work around Los Siete de las Razas, seven Chicano brothers who had been accused of killing a San Francisco policeman. (They were later acquitted.) I wanted to rap some more about this case because i was seeing the same pattern everywhere-sisters and brothers being locked up all over the country, accused of killing pigs or of conspiring to. The brother had to run, though. We promised that we would hook up again, but it never happened.

  Next i wanted to check out the Red Guard, a group of young revolutionary brothers and sisters who were struggling in Chinatown, San Francisco. I was especially anxious to meet up with them because it was so hard to get information about them back East. The West Coast has the largest Asian population in the country and i really wanted to get a good idea about what was going on in the Asian communities. A lot of people think Asians do not experience racism, that they are professionals and business owners, unaware that many are poor and oppressed.

  Finding the Red Guard was not at all easy. Half the people i ran into had never heard of them, and the other half only had a minimal knowledge of who they were and what they were all about. Someone gave me an address and since i didn't have the faintest idea where it was, i got a brother to drive me over to Chinatown to look for their headquarters. We ended getting lost and never did find the address. Instead, we ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant and getting into a big debate. He couldn't understand why a Black woman wanted to hook up with Chinese revolutionaries in the first place: "ain't nobody gonna free Black folks but Black folks"; "those Chinese don't give a damn about you and me. All they care about is their own people and what's going on in China." I told him that i thought there were a whole lot of us in the same predicament and that the only way we were going to get out of it was to come together and break the chains. The brother looked at me as if i was spouting empty rhetoric. Some of the laws of revolution are so simple they seem impossible. People think that in order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice. The basis of any struggle is people coming together to fight against a common enemy.

  When i finally did get around to meeting some brothers from the Red Guard, it was quite by accident and somewhat embarrass ing. I was hanging out in the park with a sister and some brothers from the Black Students Union. We were exchanging experiences, talking politics, and smoking reefer. The day was blue and beautiful and we just sat there lazing in the sun without a care in the world, listening to some rock music that was playing in the back ground. I had brought a whole pile of leaflets and newspapers from New York to give to them. Everybody was feeling laid-back and mellow when all of a sudden a bunch of pigs descended on a group of hippies and proceeded to beat them mercilessly, kicking them and hitting them with clubs. We were all so high, we just sat there watching, like it was a movie or something. By the time we got our voices together to cry out in protest, the pigs were carrying the hippies off.

  Two Asian brothers came up to us and pointed to the news papers.

  "You'd better get rid of those before the pigs see them," one said. "More are on the way. If you've got any grass on you, you'd better get out of here fast. "

  We were a picture of confusion, stuffing sheets of paper under shirts and into pocketbooks. The Asian brother led our half-dazed procession out of the park.

  "You need a lift?”

  "Yeah, that's cool.”

  "To where?”

  "Oh, anywhere. Anywhere from here," one of us answered. We were too high to make any decisions. We piled into a rickety looking jeep. They told us they would drive us over to Shattuck Street and drop us off. As we were driving, everybody started to talk about the pigs beating up on the hippies. The image was burning in everyone's mind.

  "That was a trip," drawled one of the BSU brothers. "Did you see those pigs? I thought they were gonna kill those dudes."

  I was still high, feeling too stunned and eerie to talk.

  "That's why we need a revolution," the sister was saying. "They just think they can do anything they want to."

  "What started the shit?" somebody asked the Asian brothers.

  "It was some hassle about some ID or something. They just wanted to hassle somebody. You're lucky they didn't see you first."

  We were all silent for a minute, imagining ourselves being beaten and carted off to jail.

  "It's a good thing they didn't see those leaflets," the other Asian brother said. "They would have hassled you for sure."

  The sister, who was obviously angry, got off into a political rap. Everybody kind of jumped into the conversation, talking about the situation in the Black community, the Black students' struggle, and the overall piggishness of amerika. Everybody was into the rap, all of us presenting ourselves as political activists and revolutionaries.

  "Are you guys in the movement?" one of the Asian brothers asked us. Everybody jumped at the opportunity to say yes, giving credentials and naming organizations.

  "Right on," they said.

  They told us they were Red Guard cadre and that they were having some kind of forum on the revolution in China. In my tongue-tied, confused state of marijuana intoxication, i tried to communicate to them that i had been trying to get in touch with their organization to check it out. The brother who had been doing most of the talking reached down under the seat and handed me a leaflet which had the date and time of the forum.

  "Make sure you come and check us out," he said. "Put this somewhere where you won't lose it," making direct reference to my confused, disjointed state of consciousness. "You guys should really be careful with that grass, especially when you've got leaflets or newspapers on you. A lot of good comrades have been busted like that."

  "Yeah," said the other one. "You've got to be alert to deal with this situation. You've got to be disciplined and ready to deal with the enemy at all times."

  The Red Guard brothers dropped us off and we thanked them and said good-byes amid a hail of "Right ons" and "Power to the people." Carefully avoiding each other's eyes, we wandered aimlessly, looking for someplace where we could plop down and get our heads together. I was feeling guilty and stupid, silly and politically backward. I was embarrassed to be bumbling down the street in the middle of the day not in full control of my faculties, too high to deal with reality, much less change it. I wondered what the brothers from the Red Guard had thought of us, sitting there in a stupor, having to be virtually led out of the park. It was obvious my stuff was raggedy and that i needed to get my act together. If i wanted to call myself a revolutionary i was going to have to earn the title. I had heard somebody say that revolutionaries get high on revolution and that it was the best high in the world. "I'm gonna check out that high," i said aloud. "Huh? What did you say?" "Nothing," i answered. "I was just talking out loud." "Oh," some body said, "I can dig it."

  We stopped off at a coffee shop and had some tea. Everybody looked sheepish and lost in their own thoughts. Finally, we waved
our good-byes and made our separate ways. I walked back to where i was staying, wondering what i was going to have to do to become who i needed to become. Revolution is about change, and the first place the change begins is in yourself.

  The most important organization on my list to check out was the Black Panther Party headquarters in Oakland. I had a whole lot of respect for the Party and had been heavily influenced by it, as had almost everyone around my age that i knew. Every time we heard about Huey Newton and Bobby Seale standing up to the power structure, we slapped five and said, "Yeah!" As far as i was concerned, the Panthers were "baaaaaad." The Party was more than bad, it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them. And the more political i became, the more i appreciated them. Panthers didn't try to sound all intellectual, talking about the national bourgeoisie, the military industrial complex, the reactionary ruling class. They simply called a pig a pig. They didn't refer to the repressive domestic army or the state repressive apparatus. They called the racist police pigs and racist dogs.

  One of the most important things the Party did was to make it really clear who the enemy was: not the white people, but the capitalistic, imperialistic oppressors. They took the Black liberation struggle out of a national context and put it in an international context. The Party supported revolutionary struggles and governments all over the world and insisted the u.s. get out of Africa, out of Asia, out of Latin America, and out of the ghetto too. I had gotten to know some of the Panthers in New York when they spoke at the lectures we invited them to at Manhattan Community College. I made it my business to drop by some of the New York Black Panther Party offices and offered to help them with this or that, whatever needed to be done. I was happy to do it. I barely opened my mouth. I just looked, listened, and worked. Some of the com rades would ask why i didn't join. "I probably will, someday," i'd always answer.