Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  When i heard on the radio that the New York Panthers had been busted, i was furious. The so-called conspiracy charges were so stupid that even a fool could see through them. The police actually had the audacity to charge them with plotting to blow up the flowers in the Botanical Garden. And the 21 were some of the baddest, most politically educated sisters and brothers in the Party. It was an insult. I thought about joining the Party right then, but i had some other things i wanted to do and i needed a low profile in order to do them.

  As much as i dug the Party, i also had some real differences with its style of work. As i opened the front gate of the Oakland headquarters, i felt just as nervous about going inside as i did about the Doberman pinschers running around the yard. A brother opened the door and i nervously blurted out that i was from New York and had come to check out the Party. He acted like he was glad to see me and brought me into a room to meet some of the other Panthers. A group of sisters and brothers were sitting around the room, laughing and talking. They greeted me casually, passing over a chair for me to sit in. Artie Seale was there and i had to control myself to keep from gawking at her. I wondered how she felt with her husband in jail, being railroaded and bound and gagged in kourt. I recognized the names of others. It was strange to be there in a room with those people. It was like sitting down on the pages of a history book.

  They asked me about New York, and i told them what was happening with the Black students at Manhattan Community College, CCNY, and the Black student movement in general, the antiwar movement, Black construction workers, and whatever other work i was involved in at the time. I told them i had done some work for the New York Panthers and ran off a list of the ones i knew. Somebody asked my why i had never joined the Party.

  Half stammering, i told them i had thought about it but had decided not to. "Why?" everybody wanted to know. It was hard for me to say it because i felt so much love and respect for the sisters and brothers seated there, but i knew i'd hate myself if i didn't say what was on my mind: that i had been turned off by the way spokesmen for the Party talked to people, that their attitude had often been arrogant, flippant, and disrespectful. I told them i preferred the polite and respectful manner in which civil rights work ers and Black Muslims talked to the people rather than the arrogant, fuck-you style that used to be popular in New York. I said they cursed too much and turned off a lot of Black people who would otherwise be responsive to what the Party was saying.

  When i had finished, i waited nervously, fully expecting them to jump all over what i had said. To my profound surprise, nobody did. Everybody agreed that if that was, in fact, how Party members were relating to the people, they should change at once. One of the sisters pointed out that there was a leadership crisis in the New York chapter caused by the arrest and imprisonment of the Panther 21. It was well known by everybody in the movement that the New York police had kidnapped the most experienced, able, and intelligent leaders of the New York branch and demanded $100,000 ransom for each one. One of the brothers explained that the Panthers were facing the same problem all over the country because of persecution by the pigs. We spent the rest of the afternoon rapping about the Black struggle in New York and in the u.s. in general. I was deep in a discussion about strategy and tactics when Emory Douglas came in. I was as happy as a bee in a pollen factory to meet him. I dug his artwork a lot and had even taped a piece he had written on revolutionary art to my closet door. We hit it off at once and, when everybody finished rapping, he took me up to see how the Black Panther newspaper was put together.

  I was truly impressed by the Panthers in Oakland. After my first visit, i dropped in at their offices regularly. I visited some of the other branches in the area, talking to the people and asking my usual ton of questions. I spent a couple of nights working at the distribution center for the Party paper, which was located in the Fulton district in San Francisco. It was a trip! The papers wouldn't get picked up from the printer until late in the evening, and people would work until the wee hours sorting them out and preparing them for distribution to the Panther offices all around the country. Panthers worked there, but the majority seemed to be sisters and brothers from the neighborhood who had just dropped in to give the Panthers a hand. A lot of young people were there and some elderly sisters and brothers. As we wrapped the papers in bundles, printed addresses, and counted out papers, we sang Panther songs and marching chants. Every now and then, a few stepped outside to sip a little bitter dog. This was supposedly a Panther invention made of red port and lemon juice. It wasn't too bad, once i got used to it, and by the time 1 A.M. came around, i loved it. Working on the paper distribution didn't even seem like work-it was more like a party. Somebody always gave me a lift home and i would fall into a happy sleep feeling refreshed and renewed.

  It was splashed across the papers, blaring on the radio, and yet i still couldn't believe it. The face of the serious young man with the gun refused to leave my thoughts. I must have picked up the same newspaper and put it down a hundred times. This shit was serious! Seventeen years old with a rifle under his raincoat. Seventeen years old and taking freedom into his own hands. Seventeen years old and defying the whole pig power structure in amerika. Seventeen years old and dead. Tears i didn't even know i had poured out. I got on the phone to find somebody who could explain it all. Who was Jonathan Jackson? Who was the young man who came to free a revolutionary Black prisoner, holding a district attorney and a pig judge hostage, shouting, "We are the revolutionaries! Free the Soledad Brothers by 12:30"? Who was he?"

  I had only vaguely heard of the Soledad Brothers. A brother who knew all about the case broke it down to me. Three unarmed Black prisoners were shot down in the yard by a white guard. A grand jury ruled it "justifiable homicide." After the verdict, a white guard was found dead. Three politically conscious Black prisoners were charged with the murder and thrown into solitary. They all faced the death penalty. John Clutchette, Fleeta Drumgo and George Jackson were the brothers charged with the murder. George Jackson, a brilliant revolutionary theorist and writer, was Jonathan Jackson's brother.

  I couldn't get the whole thing out of my head. Why were grown men and women living while Jonathan Jackson lay dead? What kind of rage, what kind of oppression, and what kind of country shaped that young man? I felt guilt for being alive and well. Where was my gun? And where was my courage?

  I was dry-eyed when i attended the funeral. There were hundreds of people. We could barely get into the church. They set up a loudspeaker outside so that people could hear the sermon. Black Panthers, solemn and determined, marched in military formation. I was so, so glad they were there. Black people need someone to stand up for us or we will always be victims. I held my arms real close to me, feeling a bit unraveled. Life for us gets so ugly. If i stay a victim it will kill me, I thought. It was time for me to get my shit together. I wanted to be one of the people who stood up. These were serious times.

  Angela Davis was running for her life. They had hooked her up with Jonathan Jackson, charged her with kidnapping and murder at the kourthouse, even though she was nowhere on the set. They charged her with murder because they claimed that some of the guns used belonged to her. She was one of the most beautiful women i had ever seen. Not physically, but spiritually. I knew who she was, because i had been keeping clippings of her in my file. She was the sister who got fired from her job teaching at a California college because she told everybody she was a communist and if they didn't like it, they could go to hell.

  But i wasn't surprised. They will charge Black people with anything, using any flimsy excuse. We were very glad they hadn't caught her. I hoped they never would. The air was charged, every thing was happening so fast, and i wasn't blind anymore. I was seeing things straight, seeing them more clearly than ever before. I had so many things to do. If you are deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing b
ut a punk.

  I tried to explain how i felt to some of the people i knew. I wanted to struggle on a full-time basis. They urged me to join the Panther Party. I went over in my mind all the criticisms i had of the party. They had said, "You'll be good for the Party, and the Party will be good for you. The Party is only as strong as its people." It made a lot of sense to me. For the first time in months i felt calm and sure of what i was going to do. I told them that the first thing i was going to do when i returned to New York was join the Party.

  I thought about it all the way home. Of all the things i had wanted to be when i was a little girl, a revolutionary certainly wasn't one of them. And now it was the only thing i wanted to do. Everything else was secondary. It occurred to me that even though i wanted to become a revolutionary more than anything else in the world, i still didn't have the slightest idea what i would have to do to become one.

  Chapter 14

  You're the property of the feds now," one of the marshals told me like he really believed it. "We're taking you to MCC [the federal prison, manhattan correctional center] where you'll stay while you stand trial for bank robbery." It was January 5, 1976, fifteen days after i had been acquitted on the kidnapping charge in Brooklyn supreme kourt; i was still on Rikers Island. He busied himself tying me up with what seemed an endless amount of chains and shackles. Another stupid-looking marshal told me how sorry he was to see me again. He said i'd given him hell the last time. I didn't even recognize him. He said he had worked on the last, other bank robbery trial and had gotten "chewed out" because i got pregnant. "You were framed," i told him. He looked at me all dumb, scratching his head. "Yeah, yeah. That's right." I started to laugh. Even the other marshals started to crack up. "It's not so funny," he said. "I lost my commendation that went down in my record." I laughed even harder.

  The only way i can describe MCC is modern gray, with dabs of colored paint here and there. It's one of those ugly inner-city fortress buildings, antinature, antihuman, and cold to all the senses. There was no fresh air because the entire building was air-conditioned, and the only natural light came in from narrow glass slits cut into the side of the building and wired with alarms. The guards looked like space age robotons, with blue blazers, gray pants, walkie-talkies, and beepers. After i had been issued the standard uniform for women (a yellow jumpsuit and tennis shoes), i was led up to the women's section. To my absolute surprise i was placed in "general population," given a key to my cage, and told that there was no "lock-in" time. We were supposed to stand by the cell doors at various times of the day to be counted. The women's section was a relatively small area, comprising a central area for eating and recreation, a TV room, and three split-level tiers. There were a few offices, one or two rooms that served as classrooms, and that was it. The only other place the women could go, once in a while, was to recreation on the roof, which was covered with huge metal antihelicopter bars.

  After spending more than a month in that confining little place, the women were climbing the walls, and i'm sure the men felt the same way. A few of the federal prisoners were big time, with money and connections; they'd been arrested for more "sophisticated" crimes than the average state prisoner. But the majority were poor, Black, or Third World, just like in the state jails. But just like in the street, money talks. A lot of the men on the honor floor, which was on the same floor as the women, had money, and rumor had it that they would send their favorite guards out to buy them Chinese or Italian food or send them to the Jewish delicatessen, depending on their mood. One drug dealer made frequent visits to the women's section in the wee small hours for conjugal visits with his wife. Since the men on the honor floor had contact with the women, many tried to buy them by sending them huge quantities of commissary items. Others tried to impress the women with tall tales about how much they had ripped off or how big they were on the street. I was sitting on the bench with this white guy, waiting for them to take me to kourt one morning, and he was steady talking one and two million dollar deals he had pulled off. He was some kind of con artist, busted for stock fraud. "You shouldn't be here," i told him. "You should be in the White House with all the other big-time con artists." "I was trying," he said, "I was trying like hell.'

  There were two sisters who i knew from Rikers. I was really happy to see them both. Skeets was a strong, stand-up sister who kept her mouth shut, minded her business, and didn't take any shit from anybody. She was a real warmhearted person, generous and open, and maintained a whole lot of humanity, even though she was facing a hunk of time on a bank robbery case. I was shocked when i ran into Charlie, who i had known on Rikers as Charlene. She had changed completely. She was no longer the thin, round-faced young sister i had known on the rock. It was as if she had aged overnight. She had written some dynamite poetry and had been part of our drama group. But this time she had been arrested for parole violation on a technicality and just didn't give a damn about anything anymore. She was bitter and tired and her whole attitude can be summed up in the two words that she frequently used: "Shove it." She told me that her freedom depended on whether or not she passed a high school equivalency test. Everybody encouraged her to study, but she just didn't seem to care anymore. She said she was tired of jumping through hoops and didn't give a damn what happened. I understood how she felt, but i hated to see her so bitter and so hurt and nowhere to go with it, nothing positive to apply it to. I wanted to help her, but i didn't know how, and i was only going to be there for a hot minute. The only thing that perked her up was the struggle the women got into to improve medical care at the jail.

  At the time, the health situation was horrible. Women came in off the street and were given no physical exam, no tests, no nothing. They had trouble seeing gynecologists and having their most basic needs met, medical or otherwise. Since we were a tiny minority of the prison population, our needs were ignored. The women got together and wrote complaints to the warden. Charlie was one of the women who worked the hardest to get better medical conditions. It's kind of ironic when i think about it now. A little more than a year later, i heard over the prison grapevine that Charlene had died from undiagnosed cancer of the uterus.

  The Queens bank robbery trial, which I was here for, was one of the wildest trials i ever went through. We had just finished with the Brooklyn kidnapping case and i was not at all looking forward to going to trial again so soon.

  For almost three years, now, Evelyn had worked on my cases continuously. She had quit her job as a professor at New York University Law School on the day I was arrested on the turnpike to become my lawyer. One of the few cases she had accepted since my arrest-mostly to earn some money-was ready for trial, and she couldn't postpone it any longer. So i had to get someone else for my trial. Some of the brothers and sisters recommended Stanley Cohen to me. They said he was a good lawyer and would do a good job on this kind of case. I was hesitant because i had always had Black lawyers representing me. I felt that they would probably be more understanding and more sensitive to the situation i was dealing with. I'm not talking about any old Black lawyer, because some of them make a whole lot of money and think like Richard Nixon. I'm talking about those who are concerned with the plight of Black people.

  I was especially sensitive to the issue after months of listening to some of the sisters at Rikers. They were so brainwashed they thought a white lawyer, any white lawyer, was better than a Black lawyer. They also felt the same way about white doctors, white dentists, white teachers, etc. "I ain't going to court with no Black lawyer," they'd say. "I want me a white lawyer who is friendly with the judge and ain't gonna make him mad." I tried to tell them that it didn't matter what color their lawyer was, if the lawyer went against the judge and really put up a fight for the client, the judge was gonna get mad. Few, if any, Black defendants have ever been freed because the judge liked their lawyer. If you had a dime for every time a judge and a defense lawyer sat down to lunch and discussed some Black client rotting away in jail, you'd be able to stop working and live on the in
terest.

  I decided to talk with Cohen and see whether i thought he would be good for the case. Stanley was a middle-aged, Jewish, fiesty-looking man who somehow reminded me of W. C. Fields. He had a dramatic streak in him and could change the tone and mood of his voice from indignant to pleading in a matter of seconds. He had a long list of acquittals in his record and told funny stories about the strategies he used in this or that trial. He had once been a member of the Communist party and continued to have progressive politics. "Why do you like being a criminal lawyer?" i asked him. "How can you stand to fight in the kourt system, knowing how much racism and injustice is involved?" It was a loaded question, put out there to see how he would answer it. I expected him to say something like somebody had to do it, somebody had to make the sacrifice. "I like to win," he said. "I do it because I like to win." I liked him and decided i wanted him to defend me on the bank robbery case.

  Evelyn gave Stanley the transcripts from the time i was beaten up in kourt by the u.s. marshals trying to photograph me, together with all of the other documents in her file, and worked with him on the trial strategy. Andrew Jackson had pled guilty, so i was on trial alone. Everything was rush, rush, rush. The railroad train was whistling and it could hardly wait to take me up the river. The new judge assigned to the case wanted the case over with and he wanted it over with fast. We wanted to question the prospective jurors about their opinions, what they had seen and heard in the media, etc. The judge was determined not to have a long voir dire, and so we compromised. A questionnaire was made up asking some of the questions we submitted and others that the prosecutor submitted. After we went through the answers we were to pick or eliminate jurors, asking additional questions as needed. Some of the answers were so contradictory and such a study on the level of racism in amerika that it would take a book just to report on them. In one hundred percent of the cases we were able to tell whether the prospective juror was Black, white, or "other," just by reading the answers.