Afeni Shakur Davis (born Alice Faye Williams; January 10, 1947 – May 2, 2016) was an American political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. She was the mother of rapper Tupac Shakur and the executor of his estate. She founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and was the CEO of Amaru Entertainment, Inc., a record and film production company she founded.
Afeni Shakur was born Alice Williams on January 10, 1947, in Lumberton, North Carolina. She had an older sister, Gloria "Glo" Jean. At the age of eleven in 1958, Williams and her sister moved to the South Bronx with their mother, a factory worker.
Williams attended Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in the Bronx, where she demonstrated above average reading ability and her grades qualified her for honors. She wrote for the school newspaper, The Franklin Flash, and in the ninth grade, won a journalism award for which she received congratulations from Mayor Robert F. Wagner. In 1962, Williams passed the qualifying examinations for the Bronx High School of Science and High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. She chose the latter because she felt performers and actors were free spirited. However, Williams could not afford the school supplies and she felt like an outcast at the school, so she dropped out after one term. She began drifting and became a member of a Bronx street gang called the Disciples.
She briefly worked a postal job, becoming one of the first woman mail carriers in New York.
After hearing Bobby Seale speak, Williams joined the Black Panther Party when they opened an office in Harlem in 1968. There she met Lumumba Shakur (born Anthony Coston), a Sunni Muslim, whom she married in November 1968. Following their marriage, she changed her name to Afeni Shakur. She became a section leader of the Harlem chapter and a mentor to new members such as Jamal Joseph.
In April 1969, she and twenty other Black Panthers were arrested and charged with several counts of conspiracy to bomb police stations and other public places in New York. Bail was set at $100,000 (equivalent to $877,949 in 2025) for each of the 21 suspects. The Black Panthers decided to raise bail money for Joseph and Shakur first, so those two could work on raising bail for the remaining 19 members. The pre-trial started in February 1970 and the actual trial commenced on September 8, 1970. Charges brought against her and the other members of the Black Panther Party were attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to bomb buildings, and conspiracy. Shakur represented herself at trial, interviewing several witnesses and arguing in court. In her autobiography, Shakur wrote, "I was young. I was arrogant. And I was brilliant in court... because I thought this was the last time I could speak. The last time before they locked me up forever... I was writing my own obituary." Her statements and questioning of the government infiltrators during the trial are credited with helping to expose the FBI's corruption and help save the Panther 21.
One of the people Shakur cross-examined was Ralph White, a "suspect" who had, in fact, infiltrated the Black Panthers while working as an undercover policeman. Shakur had repeatedly denounced White as a cop because he was "a hothead ... too arrogant for a Panther." White testified it was retaliation for refusing to hire her to work in the Harlem Panther office. Shakur got White to admit under oath that he and two other agents had organized most of the unlawful activities. "She asked him if he'd ever seen her carry a gun or kill anyone or bomb anything and he answered no, no, no. Then she asked if he'd seen her doing Panther organizing in a school and a hospital and on the streets and he answered, yes, yes, yes."
She and the others in the "Panther 21" were acquitted in May 1971 after an eight-month trial. Altogether, Afeni Shakur spent two years in the New York Women's House of Detention before being acquitted. While in the House of Detention, Shakur says, she "began relating to the gay sisters in jail beginning to understand their oppression, their anger and the strength in them and in all gay people." After being released, she participated in a workshop organized by the Gay Liberation Front at the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention in 1970, and she continued to advocate against homophobia in the Black Panthers.
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
As a paralegal, Shakur often worked in New York's only women's prison at the time, the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
Shakur played a large role in the case Crooks v. Warne involving Bedford inmate, Carol Crooks. Shakur and Crooks met while they were both incarcerated at the Women's House of Detention, and (according to Crooks herself) began a romantic relationship with each other that continued after Shakur's release from prison, and into her son Tupac’s early infancy. Following the events of what would come to be known as the August Rebellion, Shakur helped connect Crooks to prisoners' rights attorney, Steven Latimer. The case was decided in Crooks' favor and won incarcerated women the right to due process prior to their being sent to segregated prison, or solitary confinement.
While working with the South Bronx Legal Services in 1973, Shakur helped organize a day of solidarity for families and friends of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.
After Shakur was acquitted, she did not return to the Black Panther Party. On June 16, 1971, she gave birth to her son, Parish Lesane Crooks, who was later renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur. Having miscarried "four or five" times prior to Tupac's birth, she had not anticipated a successful pregnancy. Shakur's marriage fell apart when it was discovered that Lumumba was not the biological father of her son. His biological father was Billy Garland.
In 1975, Shakur married Mutulu Shakur (born Jeral Williams) and had their daughter, Sekyiwa. They divorced in 1982. Shakur worked as a paralegal with Bronx Legal Services and was a union member of the Legal Services Staff Association for a decade before leaving the state and descending into a crack cocaine addiction in the early 1980s.
Shakur moved her son and daughter to Baltimore, Maryland in 1984. She relocated to a family friend's home in Marin County, California to manage her drug use. In 1989, her son left home because of her. The two later reconciled. She overcame her addiction after she moved back to New York in 1991 and started Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Nine months into her recovery program, Tupac sent her $5,000 even though their relationship was strained.
Although Tupac struggled in his relationship with his mother, he paid tribute to her in his song "Dear Mama". In the song, he reflects on his childhood, acknowledges Afeni's troubles with addiction, and expresses his love for her: "And even as a crack fiend mama, you always was a black queen mama, I finally understand for a woman it ain't easy tryin' to raise a man, you always was committed, a poor single mother on welfare tell me how you did it, there's no way I can pay you back, but the plan is to show you that I understand you are appreciated."
After Tupac died in Las Vegas on September 13, 1996, six days after being shot in a drive-by shooting, she had him cremated the next day. His close friends, actresses Jada Pinkett and Jasmine Guy, provided emotional support for Shakur and advised her to hire lawyers to sort out Tupac's assets.
In 2004, Shakur released her biography, Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary. In her biography, which was written by Jasmine Guy, Shakur reflected on her childhood experiences and her upbringing as well as her involvement in the Black Panther Party. In the book, she stated that the party educated and directed her to channel her anger. She described her experiences in jail and how together with other inmates, they organized a bail fund to get some of the women out of jail.