Assata Olugbala Shakur ( ə-SAH-tə shə-KOOR; born JoAnne Deborah Byron, July 16, 1947 – September 25, 2025) was an American political activist, revolutionary, and fugitive who was a member of the Black Panther Party, and later the Black Liberation Army. In 1977, she was convicted of the first-degree murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and was wanted by the FBI, with a $1 million reward for information leading to her capture, and an additional $1 million reward offered by the New Jersey attorney general. She was never caught and remained a fugitive for 45 years.
Born in Flushing, Queens, Shakur grew up in New York City and Wilmington, North Carolina. After running away from home several times, she was taken in by an aunt, who later acted as one of her lawyers. Shakur became involved in political activism while attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College and the City College of New York. After graduation, she adopted the name Assata Shakur and briefly joined the Black Panther Party before becoming a member of the BLA.
Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur was charged with several crimes, leading to a multi-state manhunt. On May 2, 1973, Shakur, along with BLA members Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli, were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike. The incident escalated into a shootout with State Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper. Foerster was killed and Harper was wounded; Zayd Shakur was killed, and both Assata Shakur and Acoli were wounded. At her 1977 trial, Shakur was convicted on multiple charges, including the murder of Foerster and the assault of Harper, and was sentenced to life plus 26 to 33 years in prison. Shakur maintained that she could not have fired the shots that wounded Harper and killed Foerster, as her right arm had been injured by police gunfire early in the confrontation.
While serving her sentence at the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, Shakur escaped in 1979 with the assistance of members of the BLA and the May 19th Communist Organization. She was granted political asylum in Cuba in 1984, where she resided for the remainder of her life despite ongoing efforts by the U.S. government to secure her extradition. In 2013, the FBI added her to its FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list under the name Joanne Deborah Chesimard, making her the first woman to be listed. Shakur died on September 25, 2025, at the age of 78, according to the Cuban Foreign Ministry.
Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Deborah Byron, in Flushing, Queens, on July 16, 1947. She lived for three years with her mother, schoolteacher Doris E. Johnson, and retired grandparents, Lula and Frank Hill.
In 1950, Shakur's parents divorced, and she moved with her grandparents to Wilmington, North Carolina. After elementary school, Shakur moved back to Queens to live with her mother and stepfather (her mother had remarried); she attended Parsons Junior High School. Shakur still frequently visited her grandparents in the South. Her family struggled financially and argued frequently; Shakur spent little time at home.
She often ran away, staying with strangers and working for short periods of time, until she was taken in by her mother's sister, Evelyn A. Williams, a civil rights worker who lived in Manhattan. Shakur called her Aunt Evelyn the heroine of her childhood, as she was constantly introducing her to new areas of knowledge. She said her aunt was "very sophisticated and knew all kinds of things. She was right up my alley because i [sic] was forever asking all kinds of questions. I wanted to know everything. She would give me a book and say, 'Read this,' and i would eat up that book like it was ice cream." Williams often took her niece to museums, theaters, and art galleries.
Shakur converted to Catholicism as a child and attended the all-girls Cathedral High School for six months before transferring to public high school, which she attended for a while before dropping out. Her aunt helped her to later earn a General Educational Development (GED) degree.
Shakur later wrote that teachers seemed surprised when she answered a question in class, as if not expecting black people to be intelligent and engaged. She said she was taught a sugar-coated version of history that ignored the oppression suffered by people of color, especially in the United States. In her autobiography, she wrote: "I didn't know what a fool they had made out of me until i grew up and started to read real history."
Shakur attended Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) and then the City College of New York (CCNY) in the mid-1960s, where she became involved in many political activities, civil rights protests, and sit-ins.
She traced her interest in communism to a 1964 debate about the Vietnam War with several African students attending Columbia University:I continued saying the first thing that came into my head: that the U.S. was fighting communists because they wanted to take over everything. When someone asked me what communism was, i opened my mouth to answer, then realized i didn't have the faintest idea. My image of a communist came from a cartoon. It was a spy with a black trench coat and a black hat pulled down over his face, slinking around corners.... I felt like a bona fide clown.... I knew i didn't know what the hell communism was, and yet i'd been dead set against it.... I never forgot that day.... Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.
In 1967, she was arrested for the first time — with 100 other BMCC students — on charges of trespassing. The students had chained and locked the entrance to a college building to protest the low numbers of black faculty and the lack of a Black Studies program.
Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army
After attending CCNY, Shakur moved to Oakland, California, where she joined the Black Panther Party (BPP), and worked to organize protests and community education programs. After returning to New York City, she led the BPP chapter in Harlem, coordinating the Free Breakfast for Children program, free clinics, and community outreach. But she soon left the party, disliking the macho behavior of the men and believing that the BPP members and leaders lacked knowledge and understanding of African-American history.
Shakur joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an offshoot whose members were inspired by the Vietcong and the Algerian independence fighters of the Battle of Algiers. They mounted a campaign of guerilla activities against the U.S. government, using such tactics as planting bombs, holding up banks, and murdering drug dealers and police.
She began using the name Assata Olugbala Shakur in 1971, rejecting JoAnne Chesimard as a "slave name". Assata is a West African name, derived from Aisha, said to mean "she who struggles", while Shakur means "thankful one" in Arabic. Olugbala means "savior" in Yoruba. She identified as an African and felt her old name no longer fit: "It sounded so strange when people called me JoAnne. It really had nothing to do with me. I didn't feel like no JoAnne, or no Negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman."
On April 6, 1971, Shakur was shot in the stomach during a struggle with a guest at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. According to police, Shakur knocked on the door of a guest's room, asked "Is there a party going on here?", then displayed a revolver and demanded money. In 1987, Shakur confirmed to a journalist that there was a drug connection in this incident but refused to elaborate.
She was booked on charges of attempted robbery, assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of a deadly weapon, then released on bail. Shakur is alleged to have said that she was glad that she had been shot; afterward, she was no longer afraid to be shot again.