Tag Archives: Maroon

Assata’s Victory is Our Victory

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On the afternoon of November 5, 1979, Bronx activist Muntu Matsimela took to the stage in front of U.N. headquarters in New York for Black Solidarity Day. He announced that “comrade-Sister Assata Shakur was freed from racist captivity” just three days prior by members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). (Holley, 2023, pp. 159-160) This news was celebrated in Black media at the time and remained a legendary moment in the minds of many conscious African Americans ever since. Her passing on September 25, 2025 marks another major victory for the Black Liberation struggle in the U.S. The fact that she was able to die a free woman under political asylum in Cuba is a defeat to the FBI, the Fraternal Order of the Police, the state of New Jersey, and several American presidents who were unable to extradite her and return her to an American prison. Her life and death should be a reminder to the world that resistance to oppression can and will lead to victory.

Poster for Black Solidarity Day 1979 (Golden Age Posters)

First, one might ask: in what way is Assata’s death in exile a victory? To answer this, we must consider Assata in her historical context. She follows in a long history of Maroons and resistance fighters who refused to accept life under oppressive conditions in the Americas. In his book, the Counterrevolution of 1776, Gerald Horne cites the Maroon communities of Jamaica as a prime example of African resistance to imperial powers. According to Horne, these Maroon fighters were able to attain a type of autonomy, fear, and respect in the Western Hemisphere because they resisted imperial oppression. For instance, under the leadership of Cudjoe, the Maroons of Jamaica (known as the “Madagascars”) staged a series of attacks on the British just as they had on the Spanish before them. This campaign led to a 1738 treaty with the Brits, thus recognizing their sovereignty. Such a treaty was deemed a humiliation for London and a victory for the Africans of Jamaica.(Horne, 2014, pp. 100-101) Resistance to slavery was a continuous campaign that lasted lifetimes but it was overcome. Assata’s revolutionary acts were only a moment, but her movement against racist imperialism will overcome.

Secondly, it is important to know that Assata, like Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells before her, belonged to a later iteration of those earlier movements. The New York Black Panther Party, Young Lords, and the BLA of the 1970’s forced the US government entities to respond to their actions. For instance, their activism at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx led to the Patient’s Bill of Rights.(Holley, 2023, p. 99) Afeni Shakur’s work with the Black Panthers and Bronx Legal Services led to reforms to tenant’s rights and eviction laws.(Holley, 2023, pp. 83-84) Similarly, the targeted retribution of police guilty of extrajudicial corporal and capital punishments made police forces think twice about molesting the Black community. Additionally, they began to hire Black police officers to improve their image. In all of these examples and more, the movement to which Assata belonged forced the state to respond. The lesson in this is that the many protections we enjoy in the U.S. in health, housing, education, employment, roadways, and other areas comes from the activism of regular people and not the kind hearts of the capitalist and ruling class.

It must also be mentioned that Assata Shakur was a Black Nationalist in the true meaning of the term. That is to say, she was part of a movement towards nationhood outside of the constructs of the United States. She answered the call of Martin Delany, who wrote in 1852, that African populations within the US are “a nation within a nation.” This was exemplified by Maroon societies of Jamaica, the Seminoles of Florida, and various attempts in the piedmont and swamps of Virginia before him. And subsequently, the call for statehood was the position of every radical black political movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. They had different iterations, from Edward McCabe’s call for Black people to move en mass to the Oklahoma Territory to the Chicago-based National Movement for the Establishment of the 49th State, which aimed to establish an autonomous Black state in the South. African American Communists of the 1920’s and 30’s would imagine the “Black Belt Republic.” Likewise, the Nation of Islam would also advocate for a similar state to be established in the South. The movement that Assata Shakur was most closely associated with was the Republic of New Afrika whose modus operandi was to operate as a sovereign government until they achieved their goal of acquiring land. Assata and her comrades in the BLA were part of its armed wing.(Holley, 2023, pp. 91-94)

“Assata Shakur is Welcome Here” Poster (Red Bubble)

Concluding Thoughts

Every time I learn that another luminary of the revolution has passed away, my resolve strengthens for the renewed education about these individuals and the accurate preservation of their legacies. While we can never hope for fair treatment by corporate media outlets, I have watched more informed independent media like Marc Lamont Hill, Democracy Now!, and Willie D make Assata’s importance about her innocence. We should be clear that she was not simply a “leader by victimhood,” as her comrade Dhoruba Bin-Wahad would say. She was not like the many people who are convicted of a crime that she did not commit and was subsequently rescued and desperately fled to Cuba. Rather, she was an active member in a group that was dedicated to relieving Black communities of some of the pressure of police brutality in the 1970’s. Her service in the BLA as not only a soldier, but a theorist and a strategist, cannot go overlooked by history. Therefore, the central issues in Assata’s case was about the human right of the Black community to organize to defend itself and its human right of self-determination.

This does not mean that the actions of the BLA should not be analyzed and scrutinized or repeated. Indeed, Assata and surviving BLA members were able to reflect on their actions as they matured. But the world could use their bravery, audacity, and fortitude to combat the forces of genocide and imperialism today, just as we see in the Global Sumud Flotillas to Gaza. The BLA were aware of the consequences, repercussions, and sacrifices of their actions. Many did not survive, many remain in prison, and many remained in prison several decades before being released. Assata was unique because she was able to break free and remain free. In this people can find strength, inspiration, and hope, whether in Gaza or Chicago. In the infamous words of Assata:

And, if i know anything at all,

it’s that a wall is just a wall

and nothing more at all.

It can be broken down.(Shakur, 1987, p. 2)

In some instances, a wall can be climbed and burrowed underneath. Occasionally it can be restored or rebuilt. But to anyone paying attention it is obvious that the wall is crumbling.

References

Holley, Santi Elijah. 2023. An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created. First edition. Mariner Books.

Horne, Gerald. 2014. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and The Origins of the United States of America. New York University Press.
Shakur, Assata. 1987. Assata: An Autobiography. With Angela Davis. Zed Books / Lawrence Hill and Company.

Soul On Ice Cube

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Recently, the rapper and actor Ice Cube has stirred quite a commotion by his association with the Trump campaign, who contacted him to discuss his Contract With Black America. Many African Americans on the left have attacked him or belittled him on grounds that he was attempting to split the Black vote, he was being used by the Trump campaign, that his plan was misogynistic, that he was oblivious to the work of other activists as well as Biden’s Lift Every Voice Plan, not being articulate enough, etc.

While it is possible that these critiques are true, they serve to divert attention to the merits of Ice Cube’s content and strategy. Anyone who has followed him on Twitter since July (or the 1990’s) is aware of his political positions. He has unequivocally expressed his disillusionment with both the Republican and Democratic parties, while maintaining a pragmatic view of political engagement. One that allows him to work with whichever party wins the election.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJQJ4foP8RY
Ice Cube in his own words.

This political pragmatism is not new. In fact, Ice Cube’s strategy is reminiscent of that of Floyd McKissick during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. McKissick was a lawyer from North Carolina and a Civil Rights leader. He was one of the first four African American students to desegregate the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Although he was renown in Civil Rights circles ascending to the head of CORE in 1966, he was part of the contingent who advocated for Black Power. He hosted Malcolm X at UNC after he was rejected to speak at the predominantly Black North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University). He also associated with the likes of Kwame Toure (Stokely Charmichael), Ron Karenga, and Martin Luther King Jr.

In the spirit of African resistance in the Americas, he revised the notion of Maroonage in the post-Civil Rights Era with his establishment of Soul City in rural North Carolina. The city was to be a model of how African-Americans can circumvent the struggles of acquiring political and economic power in existing urban areas where the odds are already stacked against them by establishing their own cities from scratch. In order to achieve this goal, he sought the help of the federal government to pass the Urban Growth and Community Development Act, which would secure funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for this and similar projects. He and those that followed him made a strategic alliance to support the election and re-election of Republican president Nixon.

This was a controversial move even in his time. We know that the Democratic Party, prior to the 1960’s, was the party of the Ku Klux Klan and White segregationists. However, it was the policies of presidents Kennedy and Johnson that caused them to shift to the Republican Party. Yet, this shift was still new and tenuous by the 1970’s and African Americans overall were more politically conscious than ever. Party loyalty rhetoric was at a minimum because many African Americans in the South had just overcome the Democratic and Republican parties’ Jim Crow restrictions to their right to vote.

P-4930/6 , in the Floyd B. McKissick Papers #4930, Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the African American Resources Collection of North Carolina Central University.

The Democratic Party later became known as the party of Civil Rights because they passed a series of Civil Rights bills. Nonetheless, politically conscious Black people knew that the bills were the death knell of the movement or at the very least an amicable diversion from the goals they sought to attain. Integration was not the same as desegregation. Integration allowed for Black people to join the White economic, social, and political establishment – at the bottom of course. However, desegregation was aimed at releasing the yolk of Jim Crow and post-Reconstruction Era measures to suppress Black economic, social, and political power. In other words, they aimed at restoring the Black power that would have naturally existed without racist intervention to suppress it.

Floyd McKissick speaks on Black Power in 1966.

I see the Contract With Black America as a means to revive the spirit of Black Power that has lain dormant since at least the 1990’s. Ice Cube has been vocal that his plan for Black American descendants of enslaved people and not broader categories such as “people of color” or “minorities” that could divert funds from them. He has explicitly criticized the Republican and Democratic parties, while being open to work with whichever party wins the election. Furthermore, he has called for Black people not to depend on campaign promises and lip service, but to put political pressure on the victors well after the elections. I personally do not see anything wrong with this perspective. Rather, it sounds like a plan.

One characteristic of the Trump Years has been the stark polarization that his presidency has forced the American public to take. This has clearly taken place within the Muslim community with the rise of the “Akh-Right” and “Social Justice Warriors.” Likewise, this has taken place within the African American community with more aggressive Black conservatives and more staunch Black liberals. As they mudsling during the election season and attempt to recuperate in its aftermath, I commend those Black Muslims with major platforms like Ice Cube and Dave Chappelle who are still thinking clearly in the mist of hysteria.