Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  "I know," i told her, "and i know you're doing the best that you can."

  "At any rate," Evelyn said, "if worse comes to worst, you'll have a solid issue for appeal."

  It was a depressing picture. We clearly were being railroaded. We went before the judge. Again, he was arrogant and belligerent, determined to force us to go to trial right away. Again, she asked the judge for a postponement, but her arguments fell on deaf ears. He ruled that we could have a joint conference later, but the trial would begin immediately.

  As we left the courtroom, Akilah was standing in the hallway with Ksissay, Kamau's two-year-old daughter. As he walked near her, she held out her arms to him. Kamau took about two steps toward her and the marshals jumped him and began beating him. I jumped on the marshals and tried to pull them off. In an instant there was one hell of a fight in the hallway. Finally, the marshals drew their guns and forced us to lie down on the floor with our arms spread apart. We lay there while they stomped our backs and kicked us as they handcuffed our hands behind our backs. Akilah ran to tell everybody what was going on as Ksissay screamed hysterically. I will never forget the haunting scream of that child as she watched her father being brutally beaten.

  After the fight, the marshals were vicious and vindictive. They did everything they could to provoke and harass us. Newspapers reported that we had attacked the marshals.

  Kamau and i decided that we weren't just going to let ourselves be railroaded quietly. This so-called trial was such a blatant miscarriage of justice that we weren't even going to participate in it. And we didn't want Evelyn and Bob Bloom to participate in it either.

  "Just sit there and don't say anything," we told them. "We'll do the talking." And do the talking we did.

  At the next kourt session, gagliardi asked the lawyers if they were prepared to begin picking the jury. Both of them made statements to the effect that since it was impossible for them to represent us adequately, we had requested that they remain “mute."

  "All right, then, we'll proceed with you or without you," the judge roared. "Bring in the panel.”

  As soon as the jury panel entered the kourtroom, Kamau and i began to tell them what was going on. We told the jury that he had been appointed by Nixon and that he was persecuting us because of our political beliefs, that he was the same judge who had just given Mitchell and Stans, the Watergate defendants, who did not have one fraction of the valid reasons for an adjournment that we had, an extended postponement. After a while, the judge ordered us removed from the courtroom. Jury selection continued with only the judge and the prosecutor participating. Every so often the judge would send the marshals back to ask us if we were going to "behave."

  "Of course," we would tell the marshals.

  Once returned to the courtroom, we "behaved." Again we told the jury what was happening and that the judge was trying to railroad us. As soon as we began to talk, the judge ordered us from the kourt. "Whenever we were about to be thrown out, the marshals vied for positions closest to us and for the opportunity to grab us, twist our hands behind our backs, and get their licks in. To avoid being manhandled, as soon as the judge said, "Remove the defend ant from the courtroom," i would say, "The defendant will remove herself." Most of the time it worked, but one day the marshals were so gung ho they jumped on me and started brutalizing me in open kourt. Evelyn jumped up like she was ready to fight and stood between me and them, holding them away with an outstretched arm.

  She complained to the judge. My arm and hand had not yet fully recovered and i was still partially paralyzed. Evelyn's remarks made the marshals more vicious. They became so brutal that all of the spectators began to cry out. As the marshals carried me out of the kourtroom, the spectators chanted, "Railroad, railroad." The judge ordered them removed. As i was being taken downstairs, i could hear the commotion. People were chanting and yelling and screaming. The marshals, i later found out, had beaten some of them. I sat in the bull pen, lost in my thoughts, when they brought a white woman and man down the hallway and put the woman in the cell with me. I looked at her without much interest.

  "Assata," she said, "I'm go glad to have finally met you. But I never thought it would be this way."

  I looked at her blankly.

  "My name is Natalie Rosenstein. I was upstairs. I was one of the spectators in the courtroom when they started pushing and shoving and beating people."

  "What?" i said. "You're kidding!"

  "No. We didn't move fast enough, so they arrested us," she said, referring to herself and the white man.

  ""What did they charge you with?”

  "Obstructing justice.”

  After that, Kamau and i were banned from the kourtroom. We were put into a freezing room next to the kourtroom where a loudspeaker had been installed so we could listen to the trial. In the beginning, they slammed the door shut. At first, we wanted the door open because it was so cold and the warmth from the rest of the building helped. Then we began to enjoy the privacy. It was good to be able to talk to each other without someone looking down our throats. Because we knew that sooner or later they would open the door and stare at us, we would open it.

  "Let some heat in. It's freezing in here.”

  "The door stays closed." After a while, they locked it.

  One of the first things that Kamau and i had discussed was Islam. He had been a Muslim for some time and was deep into it. He was seriously trying to convince me to convert and become a practicing, active Muslim. I had always said that if i had any religion, it was Islam, but i had never practiced it. Because of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, the Muslim influence over our struggle has been very strong, but it had always been difficult for me to accept the idea of an all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing god. And, i reasoned, how could i be expected to love and worship a god whose "master plan" included the enslavement, torture, and murder of Black people?

  Kamau argued that Islam was a just religion, opposed to oppression. "Oppression is worse than slaughter," he quoted from the Holy Koran. "A true Muslim is a true revolutionary. There is no contradiction between being a Muslim and being a revolutionary." I didn't know much about it, but i agreed to seriously check it out. Muslim services were held regularly on Rikers Island, and Simba and i began to attend.

  Talking to Kamau was so good for me. Solitary had affected me really badly. I had closed up inside myself and had forgotten how to relate in an open way with people. We spent whole days laughing and talking and listening to the kourtroom madness in between. Each day we grew closer until, one day, it was clear to both of us that our relationship was changing. It was growing physical. We began to touch and to hold each other and each of us was like an oasis to the other. For a few days the question of sex was there. Then, one day, we talked about it. Surely, it was possible. But, i thought, the consequences! Pregnancy was certainly a possibility. I was facing life in prison. Kamau would also be in prison for a long time. The child would have no mother and no father.

  Kamau said, "If you become pregnant and you have a child, the child will be taken care of. Our people will not let the child grow up like a weed." I thought about it. That was true, but the child would suffer. "All our children suffer," Kamau said. "We can't guarantee our children a future in a world like this. Struggling is the only guarantee our children will ever have for a future. You may never have another chance to have a child."

  "I have to think," i told him. My mind was screaming. Who would take care of my baby? I thought about what Simba had said about our children being our hope for the future. I had never wanted a child. Since i was a teenager i had always said that the world was too horrible to bring another human being into. And a Black child. We see our children frustrated at best. Noses pressed against windows, looking in. And, at worst, we see them die from drugs or oppression, shot down by police, or wasted away in jail. My head was swimming. What had my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother thought when they brought their babies into this world? What had my ancestors thought when they brou
ght their babies into this world, only to see them flogged and raped, bought and sold. I thought and thought. How many Black children are separated from their parents? How many grow up with their grandmothers and grandfathers? Didn't i stay with my grand parents until my mother had finished school and was on her feet? I remembered all the discussions i had had. "I'm a revolutionary," i had said. "I don't have time to sit at home and make no babies."

  "Do you think that you're a machine?" a brother had asked me. "Do you think you were put on this earth to fight and nothing else?"

  I thought about what Zayd had always told me. "While you're alive, girl, you betta live."

  "I am about life," i said to myself. "I'm gonna live as hard as i can and as full as i can until i die. And i'm not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born. I'm going to live and i'm going to love Kamau, and, if a child comes from that union, i'm going to rejoice. Because our children are our futures and i believe in the future and in the strength and rightness of our struggle." I was ready for whatever happened. I relaxed and let nature take its course.

  When something important was happening in the kourtroom, we listened. But, usually, whatever was happening droned on in boring chatter that amounted to nothing. Lawyers have the habit of turning ten words into a hundred and saying nothing more in the process. The trial was like something out of some playwright's imagination. We called it the "vaudeville show." Evelyn and Bob, after registering their daily protests, sat mute. The judge raved and ranted. The pigs barked like vicious dogs. The "witnesses" lied like crazy. The jurors (who had been picked solely by the prosecution) looked and listened expressionlessly. There were a couple of Black jurors, and although we held little hope we would be acquitted, we placed the microscopic hope we did have in the Black jurors. Even though we had presented no defense, had not participated in the trial, we thought that there was a slim chance they might not go along with the program. Black people are generally not as brain-washed as white people when it comes to the so-called system of justice.

  The whole kourt process began to take its toll on me. Half the time i wasn't eating because they usually served pork for lunch and, sometimes, they had pork for dinner. Breakfast was out of the question. I could never figure out what they gave us. I called it "monster stew." I was always freezing and i didn't have a coat. My mother had brought me one, but i had given it to Simba. She was pregnant and needed it more than i did. One night, when i returned from kourt, i began to feel awful, like a knife was stabbing me in my side. I could hardly breathe. I went to the prison doctor and the diagnosis was plueurisy. When the judge learned i was sick and unable to come to kourt, he had a fit. He acted like i had gotten sick just to delay the trial. The next time i saw the prison doctor, he was nervous and shook up.

  "They keep calling me about you," he said. "They want you back in court right away. They want to know how fast I can have you back in the courtroom."

  "Who keeps calling you?" i asked.

  "Everybody. People. I've got to get you back in court as soon as possible. "

  And that's exactly what he did.

  Every day they brought us into the kourtroom. And, every day, as soon as the jury came in, we began to tell them what was happening, that we were being forced to trial without being given time to prepare a defense. And every day, the judge ordered us removed from the kourtroom and cited us for contempt. It was comical.

  "What are you going to do?" i would ask him, after i had been cited for contempt for the hundredth time. "Put me in jail? Lock me up?"

  One day, when the judge had been particularly crazy and the marshals had been particularly brutal, Evelyn just couldn't take it anymore.

  "I'm not going to sit here and watch this spectacle," she said. "If you won't permit me to defend my client, there is no purpose in my being here." And with that, she got up and started to leave.

  "Get back in here," the judge yelled. "I order you to get back here and sit down."

  Evelyn kept walking.

  "If you don't come back and sit down, I'm citing you for contempt."

  Evelyn walked out of the kourtroom. The judge cited her for contempt. (In 1975, after all appeals, including the supreme kourt of the united states, were denied, she served the ten-day sentence in maximum security at the westchester county jail for women.)

  The trial soon ended and we waited patiently for the verdict. Evelyn and Bob gave us lectures. "Expect nothing but the worst. There's a chance, but it's slim." Kamau and i waited for the conviction. One day of jury deliberation passed. Two days passed. The jury seemed to be taking forever. We wondered what was taking them so long. It was an open-and-shut case. We had cross-examined no witnesses, presented no defense. Kamau and i spent the time tenderly, savoring our last few moments together.

  The next morning Evelyn and Bob came in, grinning. "It's a hung jury," they giggled. "gagliardi is fit to be tied. They're going to call us into court in a few minutes. We just thought we'd come in and give you the good news." Ten minutes later we were in the kourtroom. The judge was grimly thanking and dismissing the jury. The marshals looked like they wanted to fight. The prosecutor looked like he wanted to cry. We found out later that a lone Black juror had refused to convict us. He had heard us. The look on gagliardi's face gave me great pleasure. I looked at him and gave him my most meaningful smile. His face turned red and he looked away.

  Afterward, we met with the lawyers. We were still giddy and in a state of shock. "What does this mean? Are they going to try us again?"

  "They're going to try you again, and right away," Evelyn told us. "The new trial will begin on Monday."

  Kamau and i looked at each other. We were sick of this case but were ecstatic that we were going to have more time together.

  "Are we going to have the same judge?”

  "No," Bob said. "They've got to assign a new judge.”

  Evelyn was caught up in our gleeful mood, but, as usual, she was business first. "We've got to come up with a trial strategy." Sitting in that courtroom day after day and watching that fiasco enabled us to do one thing. We were able to see and analyze their case. "I feel that now we are ready to go to trial."

  "They don't have a case," Bob said. "I don't even know how they got an indictment."

  "We know," Kamau and i said.

  "Their case is utterly absurd," Evelyn said.

  "We know," Kamau and i droned again.

  "Their witnesses are as phony as three-dollar bills," Evelyn said.

  "We know."

  "They don't have one piece of physical evidence," Evelyn ranted. "No photographs, no fingerprints, no witnesses, no nothing."

  "We know," Kamau and i chanted in unison.

  "They couldn't possibly have any evidence," i said. "We weren't there."

  "Well, I know that," Evelyn said indignantly. "That's not the point. "

  Bob and Kamau looked perplexed. Evelyn and i just looked at each other and smiled knowingly. We had found out in new jersey how "evidence" could appear out of nowhere and other evidence disappear.

  Evelyn and i have a very close relationship. We love each other intensely and we get along wonderfully. Usually! But when we argue or disagree, it's awful. We are both outraged that the other one doesn't agree or see our point and we feel betrayed and furious. And neither of us has the mildest temper in the world. Add to that the tremendous pressure we were both under, and you have the recipe for fireworks.

  During one of our strategy meetings, Evelyn and i locked horns. Try as we might, we couldn't reach any kind of agreement. After a while, we weren't even communicating. It became a matter of who had the last word and the final decision.

  "I'm the lawyer," she yelled. "I know what I'm doing! If you aren't going to listen to me, then what's the point of having me defend you?"

  "I'm the client," i yelled back. "I'm the one who's gonna do the twenty-five years in prison if you're wrong."

  "What you're
saying is that you don't trust me or my judgment." Evelyn said. Our argument went from bad to worse. After a while we were saying all kinds of things we didn't mean to each other.

  "I don't need this shit," Evelyn stormed. "What the hell do I need to defend you for? You haven't got an ounce of sense."

  "You don't have to defend me if your don't want to," i responded. "Don't do me any favors."

  "You need all the favors you can get," Evelyn countered.

  "Well, i don't need them from you. I can defend my damn self as well as you can."

  "I'd like to see you try it. I don't need this mess." "I will. I don't need you either."

  "Well, go ahead and defend your stupid self then." Evelyn screamed.

  "I will."

  After the argument i was tired and blank. All the tension had been drained out of my body. I was still mad, but i was sorry, too. Evelyn was probably right, and i was probably crazy. It's so hard working with someone who is so close to you. It's like having your mother or your wife or husband as your lawyer. It's real hard to be objective. Personal stuff sometimes gets in the way. I didn't know whether i was being a sane adult or a rebellious child.

  The next time we came to kourt, i could see right away that Evelyn was still angry with me. I fully intended to try and make up, but her cold manner made me draw back and get mad all over again.

  "Is your decision still the same?" she asked coldly.

  "Yes," i responded icily.

  "Judge," she told the new judge, "I wish to be relieved from the case. Ms. Shakur wishes to retain another lawyer.”

  "Is this true?" the judge asked me.

  "Yes. I want to defend myself." A little while later she was off the case.

  As i sat in the bull pen feeling stupid and stubborn, the guard brought in a public defender. Gagliardi had assigned him because he didn't like the way Evelyn was behaving. I told him i didn't want him to represent me, that i was representing myself, the judge had assigned him to my case.

  "What did you do before you were a public defender?"

  He told me that "once upon a time" he had been a prosecutor. That was the end of the conversation. I would rather have had an alligator for a lawyer. I don't even remember his name, but he sat through both trials as my supposed lawyer, even though i refused to even speak to him.