Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  The trial had a lighthearted feel to it. Everyone had kind of decided that we would enjoy the fight and fight as hard as we could, without worrying about whether we were gonna win or lose. I don't think that there was a single one of us, with the possible exception of Afeni Shakur, who really thought we were going to win. Afeni, who was working as a legal assistant, kept telling me, "We're going to win this one, Assata." But i sure as hell didn't believe it. They had taken a bank picture of a woman robbing a bank, printed my name under it as being positively identified, and then placed that picture in newspapers, subway stations, and, i think, even on the sides of buses. They had this picture posted in every bank in New York. There was not a person in New York who went to the bank, rode the subway, or walked the streets who had not seen that photograph with my name printed under it a thou sand times. There was no way of even counting how many times that picture had been flashed on television, with the announcer calling out my name. The public had been so saturated with that image that i felt it was crazy to take this trial seriously. After Stanley was familiar with some of the facts, i had asked him what he thought my chances were. "I'd be lying if I told you that they looked good. In reality, they look pretty lousy. But, I believe you, and I'm going to fight for you. And, believe me, I like to fight." We agreed that i would act as co-counsel on the case. "You're a lousy lawyer," he would tell me every time we got into an argument over some strategy, "but you're better than a lotta lawyers I know who passed the bar."

  The atmosphere was electric. The kourtroom was packed every day with sisters and brothers who had come to watch the circus. I couldn't stop staring. I have always said that the best thing about being on trial is getting to see and smile at the spectators. Seeing so many beautiful people in the kourtroom gave us the push.we needed to get down and take care of business. I felt that way during all of my trials, but this trial had an atmosphere that made it even more special. People from all over the Black community dropped by. The Muslim sisters and brothers brought their prayer rugs and broke out into prayer in the hallway of the kourthouse. People brought their children, explaining what was happening. One little girl broke up the whole kourtroom when she asked out loud, "Is that the fascist pig, Mommy?" pointing up at the judge. It was as if Black folks had just taken over the kourtroom, letting everybody know that they were watching what was going down.

  The first thing we did was ask for a lineup. The way i had been "identified" was from a photo. The FBI had selected my photograph from the "militant casebook." This book contained the photographs of all the "militants" the FBI wanted to send to prison. After they had gotten my photograph out of the "militant case book," they put it in with a few other photographs of women. Of course, mine, a mug shot, was the only one with numbers across the front of it. The rest were normal. The FBI then showed this group of pictures to the robbery witnesses and asked them to identify someone who "somewhat resembled" or "bore a likeness" to the woman who robbed the bank. Two of the people who were in the bank signed affidavits saying that the photograph with the numbers across it, my mug shot, looked somewhat like the woman. The rest who had been in the bank at the time of the robbery made no such identification. We told the judge we wanted a lineup because we thought the initial identification of me as the bank robber was suggestive and tainted. But before the judge had arranged for the lineup, the prosecutor called one of the so-called witnesses to testify. Since i was the only Black woman sitting in the defendant's chair, of course he identified me. We protested the procedure, but the judge admitted his testimony anyway. We finally did arrange for a lineup, and, of course, the other so-called witnesses picked out another woman.

  Since the photo identification part of the case was based on nothing more than "all niggers look alike," the FBI tried to use "scientific" evidence to gain a conviction. Their plan to superimpose the bank surveillance photo over my photograph failed be cause they had only one photo of me that was taken at the same angle as the bank robbery picture. It was one of the photographs taken when they assaulted me in the kourtroom before the trial began when I refused to let them take my picture. The FBI had blocked out the faces and hands of the marshals and FBI agents choking and assaulting me. They had cropped the picture so that the only thing the jury could see was my face. But my facial expression in the photograph was one of such agony that it was hard for them to convince the jury of anything else.

  So the FBI came up with a brilliant idea. They brought in some dude from the FBI who said he was an expert on identifying photographs by examining them under a microscope. He was a real pro, slick as grease. He had charts and diagrams and whatnot, and i was worried to death that the jury would go for that crap. He sounded real good, until it came time for cross-examination. It turned out that he was a specialist in paleontology and had spent a lot of time studying rocks. He tried to claim that his expertise at examining rocks made him able to identify people. Under cross examination, all his carefully constructed "expertise" turned into a pile of rocks, and this new technical breakthrough in crime fighting proved to be nothing but a fraud. Because the prosecution had been allowed to introduce this new, "scientific" evidence, the judge said we had the right to find a photographic expert to rebut the testimony. Since i didn't have a dime, the kourt agreed to pay for it. The day our photograph expert testified i slumped down in the seat. He was a real straight-looking white guy who looked like he sub scribed to Reader's Digest. But the guy had credentials in photography a mile long, and you could tell from the way he talked that he loved photography and that he was incensed over what the FBI was trying to do. He explained to the jury the chemical process of photography and that what the FBI agent said was absolutely impossible. He said that if you look at a photograph under a microscope all you will see is little dots. His testimony was so correct and his facts so together that the prosecutor barely bothered to cross-examine him.

  The capper came when the manager of the bank came forward to testify in my behalf. He said that i was definitely not the woman who robbed the bank and that the robber was a different height and weight from mine. We could see the prosecutor quietly creep under his table. His last hope was the summation.

  In his closing statement, he tried to make up for everything he had not proved with the evidence. He painted me as an evil, conniving monster. He told the jury that i was hiding the fact that i had big fat arms like the woman who was shown robbing the bank, that i was concealing my arms because i had not worn a sleeveless dress in kourt (the trial was held in the middle of January). As he was talking, i politely rolled up my sleeves right there in the kourtroom, exposing my very thin arms. When he got to the final part of his closing, he grew strangely confident. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this woman is very clever, very conniving. She has tried to deceive this jury in every way. But she made one mistake, ladies and gentlemen, she made one fatal error." He then held up a picture of the woman robbing the bank and, in the other hand, he held up my mug shot picture. "She made one mistake," he kept repeating. "She forgot to change her earrings. She has the same earrings on."

  The prosecutor was so dramatic. The scene was straight out of the movies. You could tell he had been watching the late show. Both the woman in the bank and i had on hoop earrings. When Stanley summed up, he just said, "Will all the women in the courtroom who have on hoop earrings, please stand up?" Half the women rose to their feet.

  While the jury was out deliberating i paced back and forth in the holding pen. "They're gonna convict me anyway," i told Afeni. "They probably weren't even listening. "That jury isn't going to convict you, Assata," Afeni replied. "Didn't you see the faces of those jurors, especially the Black ones?" It was true, i had seen them look at me differently after the truth started coming out. And i knew that the Black jurors in the deliberating room would make all the difference in the world. If nothing else, they remind some of the more racist whites that Black people are human beings. It's a shame that too many Black people try to avoid jury duty, instead of trying to slow d
own the railroad. A lot of times it's a matter of simple economics. Black people often feel they can't afford to sit on a jury, that the money they would lose would mean a sacrifice for their family. And they are probably right. But their sitting on a jury might mean that their neighbor's son or daughter doesn't end up frying in the electric chair or rotting away behind bars.

  A verdict had been reached. I could tell what it was before we even entered the kourtroom. The pigs were upset, to put it mildly. The female guard who escorted me to kourt every day seemed glad. The jury read the verdict. Acquittal. The kourtroom broke into a loud cheer. The judge just gave up calling for order. He had to wait for the shouting to die down. It was a long time coming. All the spectators were jumping around hugging each other. The marshals led me out of the courtroom and handcuffed me. They brought me back to Rikers Island where i was put into solitary confinement.

  Chapter 15

  A bundle of energy walked into the Black Panther Party office on Seventh Avenue. If a light had been plugged into me, i'm sure i would have lit up half of Harlem. I was fired up and raring to go. When i joined the BPP, i was determined to give it everything i had.

  The officer of the day gave me a form to fill out.

  He couldn't find the second sheet so i went back with him to look for it. He was searching through a file cabinet which was in a state of anti-order. It was a complete mess. I offered to arrange it for him and the brother consented. In a minute i was knee-deep in paper, indexing and putting everything in alphabetical order. After everybody's "security files" were filed, i cut index markers out of a manila folder, thinking about how lax security was. I had just walked in off the street and they let me go through all the files. I explained the new system to the brother, happy at least that the experience gained from all those boring office jobs was put to some revolutionary use.

  That same evening i was on the bus to Philadelphia. The Party had called for a constitutional convention to write a new constitution that would guarantee the rights of the poor and oppressed and would be antiracist and antifascist. We were attending the plenary session for the convention to be held later in D.C. This session was a definite up. Everybody's spirits were soaring. It took my breath away to see all those revolutionaries get up and tell it like it was. I was happy as a dog in boneville. My "hotel room" was a pool table in the basement of a church. I slept better than a princess on twenty mattresses.

  When i got back to New York, i was assigned to the medical cadre. Joan Bird was my immediate supervisor. She had been a nursing student and was one of the defendants in the New York Panther 21 case. She was out on $100,000 bail and busy working on the trial. She had been beaten, tortured, and hung upside down out of a police station window. She had big, soft eyes, nervous lips, and the face of someone who had been forced to grow up too soon. She reminded me of someone who had led a very sheltered life and then, all of a sudden, found herself in the cold, cruel world. She was sort of shy, and i felt sorry for her because she seemed to be under so much pressure. She took everything to heart; nothing seemed to slide off her back. She worried about everything and everyone. She was facing thirty years in prison, so i had to do most of the medical cadre work, and she worried herself sick about that.

  The medical cadre was responsible for the health care of the Panthers. We made medical and dental appointments for them and taught them basic first aid so that they could help the people in emergencies. Periodically, we set up a table on the street corner and gave free TB tests or gave out information on sickle-cell anemia. It was also my job to work with the Black medical students and doctors who we were counting on to help us set up a free clinic in Harlem. The Panther Party had bought a brownstone on 127th Street, and as soon as it was renovated we planned to open a free clinic there.

  Every week all the medical cadre members from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, Jamaica, and Corona branches met at the Bronx Ministry of Information. On my first trip to the Ministry, i carried a big stack of Panther newspapers. I was a lousy paper seller, and most of the time i got some of my doing-good friends to chip in and buy them. Then we'd give them away to the people.

  The head of the medical cadre was Alaywa, and from the first moment she gained my respect and admiration. She was serious about everything that concerned Black people, but when it came to their health she was a fanatic. She demanded that we take our jobs seriously, and woe be to the medical cadre who showed up at the weekly meeting with nothing on their progress reports. Alaywa had a young daughter, but she nevertheless did the work of two people.

  I got expelled from the Party, though, that first night after the medical cadre meeting. When i came out of the meeting, my stack of Panther papers was gone. I asked around, but no one had seen them. Finally, Robert Bey, the head of the whole East Coast branch of the Party, said that he had seen them.

  "Where are they?" i asked.

  "I threw them away."

  "What do you mean, you threw them away?" i asked, thinking it was some kind of joke.

  "I threw them away," he insisted. "Ya'll know that you're not supposed to leave the papers out here on the desk. This will teach you to put the papers up on the rack where they belong."

  I explained that it was my first time coming up to the Ministry and that i had no way of knowing the procedure.

  "You should have asked," he replied arrogantly. "I threw them away and that's that."

  I was losing my patience. "Look, man, why don't you just give me my papers so that i can get out of here. I don't have time to stand here all night."

  "I told you i threw the papers away, and that's that."

  "Then you're either a liar or a fool," i shot back. He had made me mad, gone and stepped on my last nerve. Then he tried to get all bad, getting all up in my face, trying to defend his stupid arrogance. I was in no mood for fooling around. I cursed him out royally and walked out of the office.

  The next day, when i walked into the Harlem office, Bashir, the officer of the day, told me i would have to leave. "What do you mean, leave?" i asked. He said that he was sorry, but Robert Bey had called and told him that i was no longer in the Party. I was burnt. I got the Bronx Ministry and told them to put Bey on the phone and proceeded to call him the unprincipled, arrogant idiot he was. In addition to being cowardly, he hadn't even told me to my face that i was expelled. I was so warm i wasn't even surprised when he apologized and told me i was reinstated. I hate arrogance whether it's white or purple or Black. Some people let power go to their heads. They think that just because they have some kind of title in front of their name you're supposed to bend over and kiss them on the ass. The only great people i have met have been modest and humble. You can't claim that you love people when you don't respect them, and you can't call for political unity unless you practice it in your relationships. And that doesn't happen out of nowhere. That's something that has got to be put into practice every day.

  The first day i was assigned to the breakfast program i over slept. To get there on time i had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I was the picture of shame and remorse as i came plodding into the office. "Fancy meeting you here," the sister who i was supposed to be helping said. "So nice of you to come." Later on that evening i criticized myself for being late. "That's all right, sister," the brother who was leading the meeting said. "you can do penance by working on the breakfast program for life."

  "For life?" i repeated.

  "Yep, you can show your sincerity to the hungry children of Harlem by working on the breakfast for as long as you're in the Party. "

  I have always hated to get up in the morning, and the sheer idea of getting up every day at 4:30 made me groan. But i thought about the children i'd let down. Getting up early should be an easy thing for a revolutionary. I thought about those who had given their lives for our struggle and decided it wasn't so hard after all. Later, one of the sisters told me, "Don't worry. They'll just assign you to the breakfast program every day until you're used to it and they can count on you to be disciplin
ed. The same thing happened to me."

  I was glad it had happened to others because i felt like such a dumbbell. Got to try harder, i told myself.

  Working on the breakfast program turned out to be an absolute delight. The work was so fulfilling. The Harlem branch had breakfast programs in three different churches, and i rotated among all three. From the first day i saw those kids, my heart went out to them. They were such bright, open little people, each with his or her own personality. I spent the first two weeks or so just getting my cooking act together. One little girl came over to me and tapped me on the back.

  "There's something wrong with your pancakes.”

  "What's wrong with them?”

  "They don't taste good.”

  Making breakfast for a whole bunch of hungry kids in the morning is no easy task, especially when you don't know how many are coming or how much they're going to eat. There was one little boy who i was convinced had a tapeworm. He put away so much food it was unbelievable. One day i saw him stuff some food into his pockets.

  "Would you like some paper to wrap that in?" i asked him, tearing off a piece of foil.

  "I wasn't stealing." Tears welled up in his eyes.

  "Of course you weren't. Everything is free here and you can take as much as you want. But don't you want to wrap it up so your pockets don't get all greasy?"

  "It's for my mother. We don't have no food and the stove is broke."