Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  I was running into quite a few people, some of whom i knew and others whom i didn't: different collectives, members of different organizations, from different parts of the country. I was surprised at how disorganized many people were, and i was all for seeing them organize themselves in a much more disciplined manner. I was straining to understand some of the things i saw, but people were moving so fast it was hard to keep track of what they were dong. The whole situation was new to me and i guess all of us were trying to make heads or tails out of it, trying to get a good grip on what was happening and where we fit into it.

  I had heard it on the radio, had seen some of the reports on lV. My reaction was WOW! The tables were turning. As many Black people as the New York Police Department murdered every year, someone was finally paying them back. The media were filled with countless adjectives: senseless, brutal, vicious, deadly, bloody, etc. On May 19, Malcolm X's birthday, two police had been machine-gunned on Riverside Drive. I felt sorry for their families, sorry for their children, but i was relieved to see that somebody else besides Black folks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos was being shot at. I was sick and tired of us being the only victims, and i didn't care who knew it. As far as i was concerned, the police in the Black communities were nothing but a foreign, occupying army, beating, torturing, and murdering people at whim and without restraint. I despise violence, but i despise it even more when it's one-sided and used to oppress and repress poor people. But i was still in a state of shock, the shit was so real. I mean, it was happening. Somebody was doing what the rest of us merely had fantasies about.

  I had an early morning meeting. My friend went to the corner to pick up the papers and something to munch on. He came back, all excited.

  "Look at this, sister. I think you should look at this."

  "I don't want to look at anything right now. I want something to eat. What did you buy to eat?"

  "This is serious, sister. Will you come over and look at this?"

  "Man, i don't wanna read no paper, i'm starving," i said. Nevertheless, i went over and picked up the papers. "Oh shit. Oh shit!" was the only thing that would come out of my mouth. Hungrily, i read every word of the article. I stared down at my picture on the front page of the Daily News. The paper said i was wanted for questioning in relation to the machine-gunning. "Shit!" I walked aimlessly around in circles. I couldn't believe it, but i was looking at it.

  "You've got to get out of here, sister," my friend said.

  "Where am i supposed to go?”

  "I don't know, but we've got to get you out of here. Maybe you can go and hook up with the people.”

  I knew that i had to hook up with some people in the underground, but this was no time to go around hunting for people. Strangely enough, i felt calm and i wanted to stay that way. I asked my friend to go and get me a wig and some other things to enable me to move around a little bit. While he went to get the things i needed, i went though my address book and made mental notes of the people who the pigs could easily trace me to. I had to stifle the desire to call my mother and tell her that, at least for the moment, i was relatively safe and that i loved her.

  Once i got out into the street, i could feel the tension in my body. I walked down the street searching for signs on people's faces. I walked a few blocks before i realized that not a soul in the world was paying me any mind. I heard some feet running behind me and swung around, only to find it was a bunch of children. I had planned to go to my girlfriend's house and decided i'd still head that way. She lived alone, in a quiet neighborhood, and i knew that it would be damn near impossible for anyone to trace me to her. Her life consisted almost completely of working and going to school at night.

  I was a little nervous when i got to her door. Maybe i was doing the wrong thing, getting her hooked into all of this. Maybe she would be angry at me for coming at all. I decided that i wouldn't stay. I would just stop by to explain to her why i was late and to tell her good-bye. She answered the door with a towel wrapped around her head.

  "What the hell took you so long?"

  How did i begin? A funny thing happened to me on the way to your house? "There's something i've got to tell you," i began. "I just stopped by to say good-bye. The police are looking for me. My picture is plastered all over the Daily News. I don't believe this is happening, but it is."

  "I know. I know," she told me. "What I want to know is, what took you so long to get here?"

  I stared at her, completely surprised. I didn't understand. If she knew what happened, why was she expecting me? "I just dropped by for a minute to let you know what happened and to let you know that i'm okay."

  "Are you okay?”

  I told her that i was.

  "Where are you going?”

  I told her that i was going to try to hook up with some people i knew.

  "Where do you have to go? Do you have any money? Do you know how to contact these people? Do you need any help?”

  I told her that i had just found out what was happening and that i was just going to have to play it by ear, slipping and sliding for a while until i could make contact.

  "Girl, are you crazy? You militants ain't got no sense! Would you take that shit off your head and sit down so I can talk to you!" She always referred to me and my comrades as "you militants." She was a militant too, but at the moment she was not active, not out on Front Street, as she called it.

  "Do you have this address written down anywhere or this phone number?"

  "No, nobody even knows who you are or that we even know each other." Luckily, i had never made a habit of writing too much down, and since things had gotten so hot, i had put most of the numbers that i had for contacts in code. I knew all of my friend's numbers by heart, so that was no problem. I had never even called her from the 138th Street phone at my last place. I told her that as far as i knew there was no way i could be traced to her.

  "Then relax, fool. It don't make no sense for you to be out there in the street moving around right now. You've got to relax and get your head together.”

  "Look," i told her. "I don't want to impose on you. This is my thing, not yours, and i don't want to involve you in my stuff."

  "Woman, will you please shut up? This ain't your thing, this is our thing. You done involved me in it already, and if I didn't want to be bothered, I wouldn't have opened my door. I'm your friend and I trust you and love you. I'll hide you out any old time. Where did you think you were gonna hide out, anyway? On the moon?" I stared at her in amazement. I had never really known her. A real sister. Tough, critical, a bit too cynical, but a real stand-up woman.

  "Here," she said, handing me a knife and some onions and potatoes, "make yourself useful. Even y'all militants got to eat.”

  I just sat there grinning. Grinning and peeling potatoes. Talk ing and feeling really at home.

  It's early in the morning. I have to move. The move has got to be made with care since my picture has just been plastered all over the newspapers. Wanted posters of me are everywhere, and somebody had told me that the police have a photograph of me in the space over the glove compartments of their cars. Carefully, i arrange my disguise. It has been designed not to stand out, something that will help me blend in with the other people who will be on the subway early in the morning. I stare at myself in the mirror, debating whether to look like a secretary or a maid. It's too early in the morning for secretaries. I decide to look like a poor Black woman. Thick, ugly stockings, run-over black oxfords, beat-up plastic pocketbook, hand-me-down-looking plaid jacket, and, of course, lord-have-mercy-looking wig. My puffy morning face, smudged with a dab of awkward-looking eyebrow pencil and lipstick, are perfect for the look.

  I walk down to the subway, stopping to buy the paper. I stand on the platform waiting for the train. I thumb the news papers, making sure that no familiar photographs appear. I skim the headlines to find the usual assortment of right-wing half-lies, distortions, and scandal stories. The headlines, as usual, are offensive: "Commies Land in Outer Space
." "Cops Nab Lightbulb Bandit." "Hubby Ties Knot with Country Gal." Finally, the train comes. I scan the cars as they pass, looking for the transit cop. Seeing none, i move toward the front of the train. I plop down in a vacant seat and immediately stick my head into the newspaper. Carefully, i look around to see who is riding in the car with me. In an instant i'm reproaching myself for leaving too early in the morning. I have an eerie feeling that something is wrong, but i can't put my finger on it. The subway car has a twilight zone air to it. With the exception of a few white men who look like they are going to factory jobs, the rest are Black women. One has on a nurse's uniform, another looks like she is going to church, hat and all, and the rest of them look more or less like me. I keep staring at. them. And it registers. Without one exception, every one of these sisters is wearing a wig. It feels so spooky. I am hiding my beautiful, nappy hair under this wig and hating it, hiding my stuff to save my life. I, who have had to give up my headwraps and my big, beaded earrings, my dungaree jackets, my red, black, and green poncho, and my long African dresses in order to struggle on another level, look out from under my wig at my sisters. Maybe we are all running and hiding. Maybe we are all running from something, all living a clandestine existence. Surely we are all being oppressed and persecuted. I imagine the headlines: "Nigger Woman Nabbed for Nappy Hair." "Afro Gal Has Tangled Hair." "Militant Mom Bares All." It is really too much to comprehend. Such horrible things have been done to us. A whole generation of Black women hiding out under dead white people's hair. I have the urge to cry, but i don't. It would draw attention. I keep from getting up until my stop comes. I pray and struggle for the day when we can all come out from under these wigs.

  CURRENT EVENTS

  i understand that i am

  slightly out of fashion.

  The in-crowd wants no part of me.

  Someone said that i am too sixties

  Black.

  Someone else told me i had failed to mellow.

  It is true i have not

  straightened back my hair.

  Nor rediscovered maybelline.

  And it is also true

  that i still like African things,

  like statues and dresses

  and PEOPLE.

  And it is also true

  that struggle is foremost in my mind.

  And i still rap about discipline-

  my anger has not run away.

  And i still can't stand ole

  el dorado.

  And i still can't dig no

  one and one.

  And i still don't dig no

  roka fellas.

  And i call a pig a pig.

  And a party, to my thinking,

  happens only once in a while.

  Anyway, i'm really kind of happy

  being slightly out of style.

  Chapter 17

  Over the next few years, home became a lot of places. I traveled quite a bit and met up with some really beautiful people, people so beautiful they restored my faith in humanity each time i passed through their station. Like most of us back in those days, i was new at this, learning about clandestine struggle as i lived it. I didn't have many fixed ideas at first about what i thought armed struggle within the confines of amerika should be like. I had done a lot of reading about it in other places, but i had no concrete idea how to apply the lessons from those struggles to the struggle of Black people within the United States. It was clear that the Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a com mon leadership and chain of command. Instead, there were various organizations and collectives work ing out of different cities, and in some of the larger cities there were often several groups working independently of each other. Many members of the various groups had been forced into hiding as a result of the extreme police repression that took place during the late sixties and early seventies. Some had serious cases, some had minor ones, and others, like me, were just wanted for “questioning."

  Sisters and brothers joined these groups because they were committed to revolutionary struggle in general and armed struggle in particular and wanted to help build the armed movement in amerika. It was the strangest feeling. People i used to run into at rallies were now in hiding, sending messages that they wanted to hook up. Sisters and brothers from just about every revolutionary or militant group in the country were either rotting away in prison or had been forced underground. Everyone i talked to was interested in taking the struggle to a higher level. But the question was how. How to bring together all those people scattered around the country into an organized body that would be effective in struggling for Black liberation.

  It became evident, almost from the beginning, that consolidation was not a good idea. There were too many security problems, and different groups had different ideologies, different levels of political consciousness and different ideas about how armed struggle in amerika should be waged. On the whole, we were weak, inexperienced, disorganized, and seriously lacking in training. But the biggest problem was one of political development. There were sisters and brothers who had been so victimized by amerika that they were willing to fight to the death against their oppressors. They were intelligent, courageous and dedicated, willing to make any sacrifice. But we were to find out quickly that courage and dedication were not enough. To win any struggle for liberation, you have to have the way as well as the will, an overall ideology and strategy that stem from a scientific analysis of history and present conditions.

  Some of the groups thought they could just pick up arms and struggle and that, somehow, people would see what they were doing and begin to struggle themselves. They wanted to engage in a do-or-die battle with the power structure in amerika, even though they were weak and ill prepared for such a fight. But the most important factor is that armed struggle, by itself, can never bring about a revolution. Revolutionary war is a people's war. And no people's war can be won without the support of the masses of people. Armed struggle can never be successful by itself; it must be part of an overall strategy for winning, and the strategy must be political as well as military.

  Since we did not own the TV stations or newspapers, it was easy for the news media to portray us as monsters and terrorists. The police could terrorize the Black community daily, yet if one Black person successfully defended himself or herself against a police attack, they were called terrorists. It soon became clear to me that our most important battle was to help politically mobilize, educate, and organize the masses of Black people and to win their minds and hearts. It was inconceivable that we could survive, much less win anything, without their support.

  Every group fighting for freedom is bound to make mistakes, but unless you study the common, fundamental laws of armed revolutionary struggle you are bound to make unnecessary mistakes. Revolutionary war is protracted warfare. It is impossible for us to win quickly. To win we have got to wear down our oppressors, little by little, and, at the same time, strengthen our forces, slowly but surely. I understood some of my more impatient sisters and brothers. I knew that it was tempting to substitute military for political struggle, especially since all of our aboveground organizations were under vicious attack by the FBI, the CIA, and the local police agencies. All of us who saw our leaders murdered, our people shot down in cold blood, felt a need, a desire to fight back. One of the hardest lessons we had to learn is that revolutionary struggle is scientific rather than emotional. I'm not saying that we shouldn't feel anything, but decisions can't be based on love or on anger. They have to be based on the objective conditions and on what is the rational, unemotional thing to do.

  In 1857 the u.s. supreme kourt ruled that Blacks were only three-fifths of a man and had no rights that whites were bound to respect. Today, more than a hundred and twenty-five years later, we still earn less than three-fifths of what white people earn. It was plain to me that we couldn't look to the kourts for freedom and justice anymore than we could expect to gain our liberation by participating in the u.s. political system, and it was
pure fantasy to think we could gain them by begging. The only alternative left was to fight for them, and we are going to have to fight like any other people who have fought for liberation.

  I wasn't one who believed that we should wait until our political struggle had reached a high point before we began to organize the underground. I felt that it was important to start building underground structures as soon as possible. And although i felt that the major task of the underground should be organizing and building, i didn't feel that armed acts of resistance should be ruled out. As long as they didn't impede our long-range plans, guerrilla units should be able to carry out a few well-planned, well timed armed actions that were well coordinated with aboveground political objectives. Not any old kind of actions, but actions that Black people would clearly understand and support and actions that were well publicized in the Black community.

  Chapter 18

  After my acquittal in the Queens bank robbery case in Brooklyn Federal Court on January 16, 1976, i was brought back to new jersey, placed in the basement of the middlesex county jail for men, in solitary confinement, and held there for more than a year until the jersey trial was over. Lennox Hinds, then the head of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, together with the other members of the defense team, filed a civil suit against the state, charging that my conditions were cruel and inhuman. After a long, drawn-out court battle, both sides agreed that a hearing officer should review my jail conditions and make a ruling. The hearing officer was a man named Ploshnik, who was appointed by the state. We had no say whatsoever in who was appointed and, therefore, expected the decision to be favorable to the state. But he surprised everybody and ruled that my conditions of imprisonment were indeed inhuman and recommended that they be changed at once. But through a series of appeals and legal maneuvers, the state succeeded in keeping me confined in that base ment. When the government finds it convenient to follow its own laws and administrative procedures, it does. And when it finds that these same laws are inconvenient for their own purposes, it simply ignores them.