Assata Shakur Documentary

Speaker 1: Fugitives from U.S. authorities has been living for the past several years. Assata Shakur, also known as Joan Chesimard, convicted and sentenced in the 1973 slaying of a New Jersey state trooper. 2 years into that prison sentence, he broke out of prison, eluded a massive police dragnet, and somehow got here to Cuba. I'm a member of the Black Panther Party. Cuba, where she's been granted political asylum. But even before that terrible shooting incident, Assata was being watched by police because of her deep involvement in the radical fringe of the civil rights era of the 1960s. She was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Yet her beginnings were far from radical. Attended a mostly white public school in Flushing, Queens. Attended a Catholic high school. Went out and got a job, then enrolled in a community college to enhance her earning power. Now, up to this point, most anyone would say, so far, so good. Then she became radicalized, and after 2 tumultuous decades, ends up here in Cuba with U.S. authorities itching to get to her. How did this woman move to this from such modest beginnings? In this 90-minute special edition, You'll see our exclusive interview with Ms. Shakur in Cuba, followed by a discussion about Ms. Shakur with persons who were also active in the black struggle of that period, although in different ways. We'll get started in just a moment. —during our short stay in Havana. At the site of the old fort overlooking Havana's main harbor that offers a commanding view of Havana's waterfront, And on the campus of the University of Havana. Over a period of several days, she unwound her story that we have edited for continuity. She told us that her given name was Joanne Deborah Byron, and, as stated, her early life was pretty much average, right through her late teens, where she graduated from high school and got a job. But then she enrolled in college and underwent a major change here.

Assata Shakur: I was in Manhattan Community College about Maybe 2 weeks before I discovered the Golden Drum Society, which was the Black organization on cancer. And it was like an awakening. Here were these Black people, and they were talking about dashikis in Africa and the richness of Africa. And I was like, huh? You know, I had just come out of this office. And you were a young woman. This mentality of, you know, of feeling like a servant and feeling that that was my role, to, you know, type the papers. And I mean, and I went back to school basically so I could make more money. That was really why I went back. I didn't go back with any desire to learn or to explore. I went back to survive. And when I got there and I saw that there was another— that life was Way beyond the file cabinets and the typewriters, that there was more. And that here were these, these Black people who were into studying, who were into just talking about what was happening, talking about the war, talking about Watts, talking about what all of this meant, trying to analyze it with a kind of energy that was good, that was strong, that was rich. And I just got into it. I mean— I mean, It just was like— sucked me in like a vacuum cleaner. I was there, and it was good. It was— it made me feel alive.

Speaker 1: We're talking about the civil rights era of the 1960s now, where the black struggle against injustice was in full swing. The old order of segregation and bias was being subjected to a massive and varied challenge. Dr. King's tactics of passive resistance were viewed as radical at the time. And then Black students formed their own faction, which was similar to Dr. King's approach initially, with the special aggressive energy of youth.

Speaker 3: We were the troops. We were the people who went to Selma 2 years before Dr. King ever saw that town. We were the people who went into rural Mississippi when the NAACP told us it was too dangerous, that you had to attack Mississippi from the outside, not from the inside. We were the people who, working for $10 a week, Went all over the rural South in extremely dangerous circumstances, risking life and limb, going to jail, being beaten, harassed by policemen, not eating right, not having any clothes to wear. And I think, without trying to be too modest, that we were the glue that held all of this movement together. Dr. King was the articulator and the spokesman. The SCLC workers became the instant organizers. Go into a town, spend a couple of weeks, Stir up emotion and passion, bring in Dr. King, makes a speech, have a march out the next day. We were there for the long haul.

Speaker 1: There was the NAACP fighting the battle through the courts, the Urban League fighting the fight with corporate America, and a host of other civil rights groups.

Assata Shakur: The thing that influenced me the most was history, reading and understanding that black people struggle in history from Africa all the way up to the time that I was living in. It was not a process where people were enslaved and went through that whole thing as victims. That our people had a long, rich, strong history, an intellectual history, a history of struggling from taking over slave ships to strikes to building organizations. And he said that that was a history that was not just a matter of George Washington Carver inventing things with peanuts. And I don't mean to push him down because I think he made a great contribution, but I'm saying that that was all that I had learned before that, the only figure who had stood out was Harriet Tubman, you know, and it was Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, and Booker T. Washington. That was my whole concept, my whole understanding of Black history up until that time. And I really thought that Lincoln freed the slaves. I really thought that the Civil War was fought for slavery. And when I started to see the real picture of what happened to us as a people and really started to analyze what American history was all about, I began to look at things in a whole other way and to see that it was a systemized— that this place called America has— the US of A has systematically wiped out Indians had systematically enslaved Black people, and then after slavery was officially abolished, that the oppression didn't, didn't end. It just changed form.

Speaker 1: Joanne, as she was then known, underwent an awakening that thousands of young Americans, Black and white, underwent at the time. As she became more informed, she became a highly charged young person. The next logical step was to become active.

Assata Shakur: We formed a Third World coalition, and we ran for— in the student council elections. I was one of the student representatives. That was one part of it. And then I started to be one— to just participate in the movement. Whether it— anything. If it, you know, I mean, we would just get these groups, and if somebody's got a strike on 116th Street, and a whole pile of us would just go and we'd help the people that were on strike, or we'd— and we supported all kinds of things, from construction workers who were struggling to break that—

Speaker 4: Union.

Assata Shakur: Racist structure.

Speaker 1: Fight back.

Assata Shakur: Fight back. We did housing stuff. We participated in housing demonstrations and struggles around Morningside Heights. There were welfare Strikes. There were not strikes, but welfare movements and rallies, and there was the anti-war movement, which was an important phase in my development because I began to understand not just What was going on in the States is something that just stayed in the States, but the kind of homegrown oppression that Black people and Third World people in the U.S. experienced was being exported, and was exported to Vietnam, was exported to Central America, that was exported to Africa, that this was all part and parcel of the same, the same ballgame, the same deal. That it was like a kind of concerted effort to just, you know, maintain a status quo that kept a small group of people in the jet set and a huge A huge number of people in a state of perpetual crash, of perpetual hunger, of perpetual unemployment, of perpetual misery. And I don't say that I got all of that together at that time in one piece, but it started to really change my picture of the world.

Speaker 1: The student faction of the movement was now moving beyond desegregating lunch counters and public facilities They were now challenging this nation's political process, for example, by attempting to include blacks in the Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. Young people were challenging U.S. businesses operating in black areas. The challenge was to give jobs to blacks and ancillary business to blacks. Operation Breadbasket had heavy student involvement, and young Jesse Jackson, He headed up the Chicago chapter and began attracting media attention.

Speaker 5: We're militarily occupied by white police. We— the economic order is controlled by the whites, the chain stores, the private stores. We are colonized people. That's the real violence to us. By the time you see riots, which is considered violence in the streets, that is a reaction. That is a consequence.

Assata Shakur: To the causes of the deeper violence done upon our persons every day that we exist.

Speaker 1: Assata expanded her scope of activities in the civil rights movement beyond her campus affiliations.

Assata Shakur: And at that time, it was easy, because there was so much activity going on. I mean, in the black community, there was so much happening, you know. Each day, you could plug into something. You could check something out. And what I did at first was to really try to check out different organizations. I checked out Garvey organizations. I checked out so many little community organizations, looking for, you know, a way that I could contribute, and looking for— What was your first contribution? Some way to participate in our struggle on a long-term basis.

Speaker 1: Assata went on to tell me that she shopped around for an activist organization to join and selected one of the most radical, as you'll learn in a moment. Some quarters encountered countless incidents of brutal white resistance.

Speaker 6: What you're really trying to do is intimidate these people, and by making them stand in the Keep them from registering to vote. And this, this is a kind of violation of the Constitution, a violation of the court order, the violation of decent citizenship. You can turn your back on me, but you cannot turn your back upon the idea of justice.

Speaker 5: Thank you.

Speaker 6: Get out of here! You don't have to beat us. Arrest us. Arrest us if we're wrong. Don't beat us. Get out of here! If we're wrong, arrest us, but don't beat us.

Speaker 1: Some in the North began saying that it wasn't fair to ask black people not to defend themselves when attacked.

Speaker 7: We are faced with a racialistic society, a society in which they are deceitful, And the only way we can bring about a change is to talk the kind of language, speak the language that they understand. The racialist never understands a peaceful language. The racialist never understands the nonviolent language. The racialist, we have— he's spoken his language to us for 400 years. We have been the victim of his brutality. We are the ones who face his dogs that tear the flesh from our limbs only because we want to enforce the We are the ones who have our skulls crushed, not by the Ku Klux Klan, but by policemen, only because we want to enforce what they call the Supreme Court decision. We are the ones upon whom water hoses are turned with pressure so hard that it rips the clothes from our backs— not men, but the clothes from the backs of women and children. You've seen it yourself. Only because we want to enforce what they call the law. Well, anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon If the government is based upon law and it doesn't enforce its own law because the color of a man's skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice where the government can't give them justice.

Speaker 1: The struggle for inclusion of Mississippi blacks in the political process at the Democratic National Convention was rebuffed, and Mississippi police in many instances exacted heavy He said, you're from Rule.

Speaker 4: And he called me an awful name. And he said, get up, fatso, and we're going to make you wish you was dead. And I was led out of that cell into another cell where they had 2 black prisoners. The state highway patrolman gave the first prisoner a warning, and he said, you better get out of here. A blackjack. A blackjack, and it was loaded with some kind of metal. And they ordered me to lay down on my face. State Highway Patrolman did. The prisoner asked him, said, do you want me to beat this woman with this? And he told him, said, you damn right. If you don't beat her, said, you know what we'll do for you. So, The first prisoner, you know, started beating, and I was really beaten because he had to do what they told him to do.

Speaker 5: From there, when we came back to Mississippi, SNCC had a staff meeting. We had to decide clearly that the organization was at a juncture. We certainly couldn't follow this because we couldn't come back to the people and tell them, try again next 4 years to be seated in the Democratic Party. We certainly couldn't do that. We couldn't do that. So we had to find new approaches. There was only one: organize the people into their own independent political party, struggle for the right to vote, get the right to vote, coalesce the political power, use this political power to move to make economic gains for the people, fight against the Democratic Party. That was all. So while I went alone, I had the support of a lot of our brothers and sisters who took this position and recognized that inside of SNCC some people were trying to make sure that the project was a failure. So we had to fight We had to fight against the Democratic Party, which did everything possible to sabotage it. We had to fight against Wallace. We had to fight against the Ku Klux Klan. We had to fight against all the liberals who were once liberals but now were telling us, don't get out of the Democratic Party, this is the stupidest thing you could do, and who did everything possible.

Speaker 1: And though they tried, they crushed, they did everything they could, they stopped the people.

Speaker 5: They organized an independent political party.

Assata Shakur: I joined the Black Panther Party. That was what I decided to do, and I thought that was important.

Speaker 1: Well, now, there are those, if they had the opportunity to talk with you, might say, well, my heavens, why wouldn't you pick the NAACP or some other organization? SNCC or CORE or the League, Urban League, or— why go for the Black Panther Party? What was it about the Panthers that drew you?

Assata Shakur: Well, I think, first of all, because I had already— by the time I joined the Black Panther Party, I had already begun to To see that it was not a question of reform, that the whole— I basically had come to the conclusion that on every level the U.S. government was an oppressive system run by and for rich people, and that there was no way that that was going to change because the whole system was based on oppression. That was how I felt, so that I was not interested in joining an organization that was interested in reforms, that was struggling for reforms. I wanted to I wanted to join an organization, number one, that believed that the whole thing had to be changed, because that was what I believed. Number two, the Black Panther Party—

Speaker 1: Not reformed, but replaced.

Assata Shakur: Yeah, that a whole, a complete change, which is a revolution, had to occur, that you That you could not be free under a system based on racism, based on oppression, based on capitalism, based on imperialism, that nobody in the world can reform a system like that. It's never been done in history, and I don't think it will ever be done in history.

Speaker 4: So that—

Assata Shakur: To me, that was the most important reason why I joined the Black Panther Party.

Speaker 1: Did you find that membership in the Panther Party helped you realize—

Speaker 6: Well—

Speaker 1: Or was it moving in the direction that you perceived that it was?

Assata Shakur: Well, actually, I had worked with the Black Panther Party before I joined them. And I had some problems with the style of work. I had problems with the type of rhetoric, with a kind of like macho, with, you don't relate to the Black Panther Party style. Well, you know, I mean, it was that kind of thing. And I really liked another kind of style. I, although I, I like a respectful, quiet way of relating to our people, of explaining things. And I didn't like that style, and I thought that sometimes it conspired against things that we were doing. And that I felt that that kind of, I guess, arrogant, macho kind of style was not good for Dave. I think that's a very important point. day-to-day organizing in the Black community. And, but at the same time, some, some events happened that made me really feel that, number one, the party, or any party, was as strong as the people that are in it, and that I felt that even though I had Different problems with different things, but essentially I agreed with the 10-point program and platform.

Speaker 8: Better housing, better education, a better dispensation of justice, better medical attention. We wanted Black men to be exempted from the draft, military service in the war in Indochina. We wanted Uh, an end to the exploitation of the Black community by white capitalists. Later on we just said capitalists, right? We, um, wanted an end to police brutality and the murder of Black people by the police. That was point number 7. It turned out that we really didn't have time for anything but point number 7, because once we, uh, we implemented that At a particular point by patrolling the community. And when the cops would come in in their cars, then we would get behind them in our cars, and we would be armed. And when they stopped someone, we'd stop and get out of our car. And the law said that you had to stand 10 feet away, and we would stand 10 feet away. And if the cops got out of line, then we got out of line. And if they started shooting, then we started shooting. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Because we didn't feel that there was any more room for playing around with the situation.

Speaker 1: The willingness of some Panther Party members to confront the police and engage in other shocking acts, such as walking in on the California State Legislative session carrying rifles, negated everything else the group was trying to do. The Panthers were kept under police surveillance, and members like Assata Shakur Found it increasingly difficult to conduct their other community programs.

Assata Shakur: Strange things began to happen around me that I couldn't put my hand on. I couldn't touch, you know, um—

Speaker 1: Like?

Assata Shakur: Look, so many strange things would happen. We would get strange phone calls, strange packages. Strange people would come into the office and have nervous breakdowns. I mean, it was one thing after another. There was— the leadership was under such pressure, because at that time, you have to remember that the FBI had made the Black Panther Party the number one target of the COINTELPRO program. We didn't know anything about COINTELPRO. I'm not a COINTELPRO per se, but it was obvious that the government was attacking the Party in every way possible. It was obvious that it was just something strange. You couldn't— I mean, for example, you could not— work became difficult. To go and sell the paper, for example, we would send people out and they would They would stand on the corner and be selling papers, and 5 minutes later they would be at the police station. Why are you at the police station? For threatening a police officer. How did you threaten the police officer? We didn't do anything. We sold the paper. It was the cop's word against the Panther's word, and the cops would always win. So it was like in every aspect it became difficult. The Brecht O'Shea program came under attack for supposedly showing little kids cartoons that were racist, that said all white people are horrible or something to that effect. Basically, that was the general idea. Later we found out that those same cartoons were manufactured manufactured by the FBI were inserted in Panther papers and distributed. I mean, that was the kind of thing that went on. But we, at that time, we were up against something. It's like you're up against this wall, but you can't see it. You can't touch it. You, you know that you're a target of the government's repression, but you don't know to the extent. We didn't realize That's the extent. I decided that I would leave the Party. And I had not spent, I think, maybe, maybe a month outside, you know, Outside of the Party, when it began to be obvious that I was the target of, like, the most extreme kind of surveillance that one could imagine. I mean, I would look— I lived on 138th Street. I'd look down in front of the building, and there would be 2 white guys reading the paper. One would read the paper for 15 minutes.

Speaker 4: That's right.

Assata Shakur: 15 minutes, then the other one read the paper for 15 minutes. I decided that I would try to concentrate on my studies. I would just try to go on with normal life, and that I would move. The reason that I was— wanted to move, because my whole house was bugged. And how I knew that it was bugged was that I was making Practicing on a tape recorder or something one day, and the phone rings. So I put the tape recorder down and I go answer the phone, and a voice says, stop making tapes, and hangs up. That was the kind of day-to-day thing I was dealing with. So the next thing, I mean, there was a big jump. The next thing I know, I'm walking Down the street, and one of my comrades comes up and says, don't go home. What do you mean, don't go home? Do not go home. They just raided your house, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They just raided my house. Do not go home. And, like, I was, like, paralyzed for some hours. You know, you just— it was real. And then I'm faced with a decision.

Speaker 6: What decision?

Assata Shakur: What would you do if the police raided your house? Go home, find out what it's all about, go down to the precinct and say, I heard you just raided my house, and I want to discuss that. But I wasn't prepared to do that. I wasn't prepared to do that because of what was happening at that time. For example, the entire leadership Of the Black Panther Party, 21 people were charged with conspiracy and were arrested and were put in prison. They were charged, and that's— they were the New York Panther 21.

Speaker 1: Conspiracy to—

Assata Shakur: Well, it was— the charges were insane. They were like conspiracy to blow up department stores on Eastern, at times when the stores are filled with Black people. I mean, the charges were so insane that it got to the point that they were actually charged with blowing up, or conspiring to blow up, a botanical garden. The Bronx Botanical Gardens. I mean, that was the nature of the charges. And even though, after one of the longest trials in New York City history, a jury found them guilty in like an hour or something like that. I mean, selling napkins.

Speaker 6: Excuse me.

Assata Shakur: In an hour or less. They spent 2 years of their lives in prison. They had a bail of $100,000 each.

Speaker 6: And at that time, the whole—

Assata Shakur: one of the most common tools of repression that the government used was the Conspiracy trials. They used a whole lot of other things, it later came out. But at that time it was obvious that if you breathe wrong, you get charged with conspiracy, or you get charged with inciting a riot, and then they give you another charge of inciting a riot. I mean, and it happened not just to Bobby Seale, not just to It happened to so many people.

Speaker 1: So all of this was swirling around the raid on your house. So what option did you take? You said you had a couple of options. What did you decide to do?

Assata Shakur: I decided to make myself unavailable. I decided to disappear. They said that they were looking for me. For the charge of harboring a fugitive. And that was what I thought was the charge outstanding against me. And I never got charged with that, in fact, officially.

Speaker 1: Why did you make yourself scarce? Because you thought that they were going to arrest you?

Assata Shakur: Well, they wanted to—

Speaker 3: yes, I thought they were going to arrest me.

Assata Shakur: And I— not only was I afraid that they were going to arrest me, I was afraid of what else— more, much more afraid of what else they would do.

Speaker 1: Be specific. What do you mean?

Assata Shakur: Well, I was afraid that they would torture me, beat me. For example, Joan Byrd, who was my coworker A woman in the medical cadre had been beaten brutally. She was one of the Panther 21, hung outside of a window. If you see any of the pictures of her at that time, I mean, she was unrecognizable. The woman had been beaten beyond belief. And there was no guarantee that they would do— would not do the same thing to me. And given the way that they were following me, all the things that were happening to me, I assumed that that was definitely, if not a possibility, a probability.

Speaker 1: So you hid out. When was this?

Assata Shakur: This was in '77. '71. I believe that this happened in about the end of '70, '71.

Speaker 8: You changed your appearance?

Assata Shakur: Somewhat, yeah.

Speaker 1: You left town or you stayed in town? Okay, no comment.

Speaker 8: No comment.

Speaker 1: How long did this continue?

Assata Shakur: Well, I— this continued That continued for about 2 years. And—

Speaker 1: Was a warrant issued for your arrest?

Assata Shakur: Well, let me tell you. What started to happen was that the government became more and more and more desperate in terms of their search for me. I think that they were under the impression that I had this wealth of information that they could beat out of me or torture out of me.

Speaker 6: I—

Assata Shakur: What they did was they started a campaign to try me in the newspapers. And they set up a scenario which gave me very little possibility of remaining alive for much time. What they did? They began to charge me with everything and anything that any woman in the New York area was involved in. They began to charge me for things that only men had been involved in. And if they could not— if there was no stretch of the imagination that they could say I had been involved, what they would do is say, well, she planned it. Let me just clarify something. There were some charges. There was one charge The first charge that was out against me, I was accused of— in 1971, there was a charge of attempted robbery that was out against me. That was one that I was formally charged with that. It was later dismissed. But that was— there was a charge against me. I don't want to give a— What was the charge? False impression. But all of those charges that were the front pages of the Daily News, all of those day-to-day scandal sheet charges, I was never charged with officially. Just imagine you. Tomorrow someone says, you're wanted for murder. What do you do? How do you deal with that? Either you turn yourself in and subject yourself to whatever may —happen to you, or you run the risk of any cop, anywhere, any— coming and just blowing you away, because once an accusation is made, then your life is worth 2 cents. I mean, and in my case, they set up a series of events that Pushed me into the reality of that. I knew that I had to leave the country. I had to do something, because, you know, they were setting up the circumstances to just blow me away.

Speaker 1: While she was underground, Assata Shakur became involved in the fateful incident on the New Jersey Turnpike, resulting in the killing of New Jersey State Trooper Assata Shakur left New York with 2 men, Messrs. Clark Squire, who would be wounded in the shootout, and Zayd Shakur, also known as James Colston, who would be killed in that shootout. They all headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Assata Shakur: We stopped to eat at a Howard Johnson's restaurant. We ate. We got back into the car, and shortly after, we were stopped by the police, by the New Jersey State Police.

Speaker 1: There must have been some dialogue between the 3 of you in the car, because you were, for lack of a better word, on the lam.

Assata Shakur: Yeah. Between the 3 of us? Well, yeah.

Speaker 1: So you must have said, Something, you know.

Assata Shakur: Well, actually, I mean, we stopped, but we, I mean, we did not think that there was, you know, we thought it was maybe some little thing and that Sundiata was going to go back and show him some ID and that it was a question of maybe a ticket. We didn't really know. I mean, so Sundiata decided to go out and present the ID so that, you know, we can go Right. And that was basically what was in our heads, although that— I mean, there were all the other considerations that registered in the back, but I don't think that we really were alerted that, you know, this is a situation where they're going to start shooting in the car. I wasn't— I was not thinking that, really. I said, well, this is— you know, I was nervous. I was like, okay, you know. But I didn't think that it was going to be all that.

Speaker 1: Can you tell me what he said to you as best you can recall?

Assata Shakur: I can't.

Speaker 1: Was it something— did he call you by name?

Speaker 6: Did he talk about—

Assata Shakur: Um—

Speaker 1: You weren't driving.

Assata Shakur: No. The driver had gotten out of the car. He came to the car and Started to question me, and where were we going, what, you know, that kind of stuff. And then he said, put your hands, you know, in front of you where I can see them.

Speaker 1: Which would have been the dashboard, I guess, inside the car.

Assata Shakur: No, I was facing him, you know, and he had a gun in in my face, and I put my hands out like this. And in a matter of seconds, I was shot. I mean, it was just— it was like a nightmare. It was like, you know, it's like when you dream. I mean, it didn't seem real, but it happened.

Speaker 1: There are many, however, who disagree with Ms. Shakur's account. Among them, The jury who heard the case against her and found her and Charles Squire, her surviving companion in the car, guilty of murder. The superintendent of New Jersey State Police also differs with Ms. Shakur. He agreed to be interviewed, where the prosecutor of the case, the presiding judge, the FBI, and the U.S. State Department did not.

Colonel Pagano: Our troopers were on patrol, Verna Foerster and Jim Harper. They saw An automobile, and I may be wrong on some of my details because it's been some time.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Colonel Pagano: But the inspection sticker on that automobile did not match the license plate. They saw the sticker, they recognized it, they knew that the origin of the car was not the same as the origin of the license plate. They stopped the car. As they were questioning them, there were 3 people in the car: Joanne Chesimard, Clark Squire, and James Costin. A gun battle ensued. We charged Joanne with shooting and causing the death, being part of the group that caused the death of Trooper Verna Forster, who was murdered at the scene. James Costin was killed at the scene. Clark Squire escaped. We caught him locally about 3 and a half days later. Joanne Chesimard was shot in the car. Trooper Harper was wounded. There was a violent exchange. And then what happened?

Assata Shakur: I was shot once under my arm and once from the back.

Speaker 1: The bullet under your arm, where'd the bullet come out?

Assata Shakur: It didn't. The bullet is still there.

Speaker 1: It's still in you?

Assata Shakur: Mm-hmm. It went through here. It broke this bone, and it's still in my chest.

Colonel Pagano: Harper stopped the car. Forster came up behind. But Werner was completely removed from this kind of mix that would give rise to the argument that this was a racial confrontation. It wasn't a racial confrontation. Joanne Chesimard was one of the most sought-after fugitives in this nation. Every policeman in New York or Los Angeles was, in one way or another, looking for Joanne Chesimard. And now I'm convinced they were doing their job and doing their job properly.

Assata Shakur: The first week was the most difficult week. I mean, if you can imagine what— when they found— what they did when they found out who I was. They wanted information. They thought I had it. And they did everything that They could shoot. I mean, to get it out of me, to, you know, they didn't just beat me any old kind of way. I mean, they had a constraint. That was probably what saved my life. And it was what was taking place was in a hospital. They took me to a suite of a hospital. It was The Johnson Johnson suite is where executives go. And in order to get into the hospital room, you had to go into a living room, which was attached next door. So they controlled who came in, who didn't. And I was accused of killing a state trooper. And state troopers, for 2 weeks, guarded me, quote-unquote.

Speaker 4: And—

Assata Shakur: You can imagine, you know. They did everything they could. Every day was going to be my last day on earth. When they get next to the bed, they cuffed my— me to the bed, and the cuffs were sticking in my legs until, you know, they started to swell. You know, where does it hurt? Does it hurt here? Does it hurt here? I mean, that was part of what happened.

Colonel Pagano: Bill, let me tell you something. I've been working with offenders for 35 years, and I can't think of an offender who would have been better guarded or an offender against whom we would have guarded against any kind of improper activity than Joan Chesimard. I think that it would have been foolhardy for anyone to have done things like that. I'm certain that the troopers who guarded her were not in love with her, but I'm also certain that those troopers were clear in their minds that if they didn't watch what they were doing, someone was going to take her away from them. And I'm— I've listened to all the reasoning. I've listened to all the accusations. I don't believe them, to be very candid.

Assata Shakur: I opened my eyes, and I was trying to adjust to the light, and I kept I was looking at something that was next to me, and I realized what it was. I was looking at a plastic bag, and that inside that plastic bag was Zayd. And then I heard a voice say, if you don't tell us what we want to know, this is what's going to happen to you.

Speaker 1: Assata Shakur was tried and convicted of murder by an all-white jury. She was issued a mandatory life sentence. Clark Squire, who was also in the car with Ms. Shakur, had been similarly convicted and sentenced in an earlier trial.

Assata Shakur: I was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, which is a state offense. They transferred me under an agreement called the Interstate Compact Agreement, which says They can take any prisoner in the U.S. and transfer them anywhere they want to. So they transferred me to a prison in Alderson, West Virginia, which is the federal prison for women, to a prison within a prison, the maximum security unit or something it was called. In that prison, I found that it was the exact It was the opposite of all the experiences that I had seen in prison. In my whole time in prison, most of the women are Black or Puerto Rican. I was the only Black woman in the maximum-security prison at Alderson, West Virginia. In a prison with the Aryan Sisterhood, about 11 or 12 members.

Speaker 6: Who?

Assata Shakur: People who wore swastikas on their jeans, who took pictures in giving the Hitler salute. I was in prison with them and with the Manson Family, women— they called themselves Red and Blue. One was Squeaky Fromme, and the other one was Sandra Good.

Speaker 4: And I.

Assata Shakur: The Aryan Sisterhood, a few hillbillies, the Manson Family, and one other woman who— Rita, Rita Brown, who was not a— she was a revolutionary woman. But wait, that was where I was put.

Speaker 1: Who threatened you against you?

Speaker 6: Of course.

Colonel Pagano: She wasn't being set up. She was setting up. She wanted to come back to a Jersey jail that she could get out of. That's what she wanted to do. And she did it very skillfully.

Speaker 1: Is it true what she claims, that she was incarcerated with the woman who shot Gerald Ford, some Manson women, and some female white Nazis?

Colonel Pagano: I'm not sure about the others, but she certainly was incarcerated with— was it Streaky Fromme? Some name such as that, who tried to assassinate President Ford. But it doesn't make any difference, does it? She was incarcerated with all kinds of murderers when she once got to Clinton Farms here in New Jersey.

Assata Shakur: This— fortunately, this unit Was closed down, not because of any kindness on the part of the federal bureau, but these women were all white women, so that their considerations were taken into account, and they decided that that unit would be closed. I was then sent— first I was put in the hole for a while. In the hole? So they figured out what they were going to do with me. And after that, they sent me to New Jersey, to Clinton Prison for Women. They sent me to the maximum security section of Clinton. But what they did was they told all the women, nobody from now on will be able to work in population, in the prison population. So all the women who were Had jobs or went to school in— with the other prison population, now had no jobs, no school, no programs, and were just locked down in that little area. And of course, you know, the cause of it— who—

Speaker 5: what was the cause?

Speaker 4: Her.

Assata Shakur: They moved women out of that area who they thought might be somewhat sympathetic and flooded the area with women who were notorious rats for the prison administration. So I'm looking at all this, and I said, well, I think that They're going to try to kill me, you know? And the prison was constantly instigating things, you know? Well, if it wasn't for her, you'd, you know— I decided.

Speaker 8: You decided?

Assata Shakur: Yeah. It was time.

Speaker 1: It was time. To?

Assata Shakur: To escape, to try to escape. And that's what I did.

Colonel Pagano: When she was sent to Clinton, we knew that at some point in time she'd be rescued, and she was.

Speaker 1: It happened on November 2nd, 1979. Ms. Shakur broke out of the maximum security facility for women in Clinton, New Jersey.

Colonel Pagano: And I say it wasn't an escape, it was a rescue, because people came in from the outside, assaulted that facility, and took her out. They took her from there to East Orange. We know that from East Orange she eventually found her way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and/or went out of the country and came back to Pittsburgh. I'm not quite sure. But if you are to listen to the testimony of James Costin, who was a witness, a cooperating witness in the NIAC trial, he put her on an airplane in an airport, probably JFK, and she was bound somewhere for the Mediterranean.

Speaker 6: Okay.

Assata Shakur: I escaped. It was a clean escape. No one was hurt. I planned it as well as I could plan it, and that's all I got to say about it.

Speaker 1: How did you end up here? How can you— what can you tell us about that?

Assata Shakur: Well, I got, um, I wanted to find somewhere where I would have a chance to be with my daughter, where I would have a chance to normalize my life, where I would have a chance to grow, to work. To contribute in some ways to what's happening in this planet and try to keep up, to keep struggling on some level and to keep active to, you know. So I decided that I would come to Cuba. I came and I said, well, here I am.

Speaker 6: Now y'all got to make a Wow.

Assata Shakur: And what y'all gonna do? Because that was— I mean, you know, there was no way. You know, you can't call them up, hi, can I come down? That was impossible.

Colonel Pagano: My reaction is just the same as the reaction I'd have on any other criminal type that's found refuge in a safe haven nation, a communist nation. I think we've got to pursue that individual. We've got to We have tried to exhaust every avenue possible to get her back here. She has been tried under our system of murdering a member of the New Jersey State Police who was in the performance of his duties, and she, she deserves to be incarcerated and to pay the penalty.

Speaker 1: Do you ever think you'll come back to the States?

Assata Shakur: I think that would be difficult at this time.

Speaker 1: Assata Shakur attends the university in Havana and says that she will continue her activism. She's written a book that was recently published in the U.S., much to the consternation of some.

Colonel Pagano: I think that it's offensive that a fugitive of this type, who really pledged, whether she meant it or not or could have accomplished it or not, to overthrow the government in the United States by violent means— I think it's offensive to see that she's accessing the capitalist system, that she has downtrodden, writing a book to profit from sales of something like this. So yeah, I'm offended by it. I think that if anything, the people of this nation ought to take that book and leave it right on the bookshelf.

Speaker 1: Further, Colonel Pagano has written Fidel Castro requesting Ms. Shakur's extradition. While Assata Shakur pursues her life in Cuba, some in the U.S. are outraged about a number of points in I'm here to talk about the facts involving her case, namely her political posture, her role in the shootout in the New Jersey Turnpike that cost a state trooper his life, her escape from prison and clean getaway, and currently residing in political asylum in a nation greatly disliked by the Reagan administration. Regrettably, neither the U.S. State Department nor the FBI would grant Like It Is any interviews. On the other side of the coin, many have Both races in the United States rejoice at her having escaped to Cuba, feeling that she was set upon by U.S. authorities for her political views.