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black history
'She Died Free': Tributes Pour In for Revolutionary Icon Assata Shakur
"They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival," said one admirer.
Sep 27, 2025
Assata Shakur, a Black revolutionary who inspired generations of activists to struggle for a better world, passed away on Thursday in Havana, Cuba, where she had lived in exile from the US for over four decades.
Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced her death on Friday, saying it was caused by a combination of “health conditions and advanced age." She was reportedly 78 years old.
"At approximately 1:15 pm on September 25, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath," her daughter Kakuya Shakur wrote on Facebook on Friday. "Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time. I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this moment. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time."
Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Byron and was also known as Joanne Deborah Chesimard, spent the first three years of her life in Queens, New York before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina. She then returned to Queens for third grade.
"Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations."
"I spent my early childhood in the racist segregated South," she recalled in a 1998 letter to Pope John Paul II. "I later moved to the northern part of the country, where I realized that Black people were equally victimized by racism and oppression."
Shakur became active in the anti-Vietnam War, student, and Black liberation movements while attending Borough of Manhattan Community College and the City College of New York. After graduation, she joined first the Black Panther Party and then the Black Liberation Army (BLA).
"I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the US government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one," she wrote in 2013.
In 1973, she and two other BLA activists were stopped at the New Jersey Turnpike by two state troopers. By the end of the encounter, both Shakur's friend Zayd Malik Shakur and trooper Werner Foerster were shot dead. In 1977, Shakur was convicted of Foerster's murder in a trial she described as a "legal lynching." Throughout her life, she maintained her innocence.
"I was shot once with my arms held up in the air and then once again from the back," she wrote of the shootout.
She was sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years, but didn't long remain behind bars.
"In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case and who were also extremely fearful for my life," she wrote.
In 1984, she claimed asylum in Cuba. Throughout her life, she also remained staunchly committed to the cause of liberation for all oppressed peoples.
"I have advocated and I still advocate revolutionary changes in the structure and in the principles that govern the United States," she wrote to John Paul II. "I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty."
During her exile, her writings, including her 1987 autobiography, gained a wide audience and brought her story and voice to younger activists.
"It is our duty to fight for our freedom," she wrote in one of the book's most famous passages. "It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
She was also influential in the world of music and hip-hop, serving as godmother to Tupac Shakur and inspiring songs by Public Enemy and Common, among others.
The US government did not give up its pursuit of her. In 2013, under President Barack Obama, the Federal Bureau of Investigation named her the first woman on its "Most Wanted Terrorist" list. The FBI and the state of New Jersey also doubled the reward for information leading to her capture. That reward will now never be claimed.
"She died free!" one of her admirers, who uses the handle The Cake Lady, wrote on social media on Friday. "The US government, after decades of pursuit, never got the satisfaction of putting her in a cage. They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival."
News of her passing inspired tributes from social justice and anti-imperialist leaders and organizations, including former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
"We honor the life of comrade Assata Shakur, a revolutionary who inspires and pushes all of us in the struggle for a better world," wrote anti-war group CodePink on social media.
Community organizer Tanisha Long posted: "Assata Shakur joins the ancestors a free woman. She did not die bound by the carceral system and she did not pass away living in a land that never respected or accepted her. Assata taught us that liberation can not be bargained for, it must be taken."
The Revolutionary Blackout Network wrote, "Thank you for fighting to liberate us all, comrade."
The New York-based People's Forum said: "We honor Assata’s life and legacy as a tireless champion of the people and as a symbol of hope and resistance for millions around the world in urgent fight against racism, police brutality, US imperialism, and white supremacy. Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations."
The Democratic Socialists of America vowed to "honor her legacy by recognizing our duty to fight for our freedom, to win, to love, and protect one another because we have nothing to lose but our chains."
Black Lives Matter organizer Malkia Amala Cyril lamented to The Associated Press that Shakur died during a global rise of authoritarianism.
“The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love she practiced if we are going to survive it,” Cyril said.
Several tributes featured Shakur's own words.
"I believe in living," she wrote in a poem at the beginning of her autobiography.
"I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And i believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port."
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American History Is Black History: We Will Not Be Erased
We will become loud about who we are, what we have experienced, and how we have overcome the impossible.
Sep 21, 2025
The Trump-MAGA-white supremacist administration is ordering the removal from displays information and depictions of the era of slavery in the United States. One of the most emblematic images of enslavement is the graphic and soul-shocking image called "The Scourged Back" that depicts the back of Peter Gordon photographed circa 1863 in Louisiana. It shows graphically his healed but black keloid bareback. The photograph of his scarred back yells loudly the horrors and brutality of enslavement. The wounds on Peter Gordon's back were inflicted on him by his so-called owner.
To remove the histories and experiences of Black people in the US is part of the educational pogrom enacted to "whitewash" America's real history. To "whitewash" history is the political project to change the narrative of America and make that narrative into the blessings and triumphs of white people, while ignoring the blemishes, scars, and overcoming that is as great a part of America's history as any other.
The beginning and institution of slavery in North America's British colonies commences in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. It doesn't legally end until 1865. A Civil War had to be fought to settle the question and end the legal institution of slavery. And even when slavery had legally ended, new systems and schemes were developed, particularly in the Southern US, to reinstitute slavery de facto. This system called Jim Crow would continue through to its painstakingly dismantlement by courageous individuals and movements that exposed it and brought about its demise. This means that formal enslavement lasts for 246 years. Then the era of Jim Crow lasts for at least another 100 years, and its effects still persist for many today.
In 2026 the United States of America will celebrate its 250th birthday. In those 250 years of existence, in comparison, there are 89 years of enslavement. Then, there is de-facto enslavement, called Jim Crow or American Apartheid, that lasts for at least another 100 years. So, there is no way that America was born, existed, nor its story told without the story of Black people, and for most of us our saga from enslavement to liberation, and from hardships to overcoming. To remove the histories and narratives of Black people in North Americas is like removing the heart from a living body and along with its heart it also loses its soul. The body and its story without Black history is really a dead and empty narrative and will remain so until America has the courage to tell the whole story.
Not recognizing the presence and history of Black people is to render in perception, historical understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that the United States is a white Christian nation without blemish or scar.
The American narrative is the Statue of Liberty greeting scores of people arriving at Ellis Island. The words on a bronze plaque invites: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." And in the statute's left hand in the form of a tablet is the date July 4, 1776.
There is a limitation in knowing the full history of most Black people. This is because we were treated as property and given names for inventory—bought, sold, raped, and worked to death. Doing genealogies there is usually a brick wall that Black families encounter. What we do know exists through oral traditions that attempt to teach and convey to us experiences and history in a world where we live and work but never existed.
The other story for me is before Ellis Island. My family arrived on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. This was a major marketplace and auction block for the precious and enriching cargo of Black people. When talking to my family, it seems from the narrative, that they and their descendants were on the same plantation in South Carolina for at least 200 years—46 years, more or less, shy of the existence of this country.
There have been ludicrous reasons presented for removing images and memories of slavery. One is that it makes white people feel guilty. The Trump-MAGA-white supremacist administration says that it is "corrosive ideology," which means that a new ideology is being fomented. Evidently the current ideological narrative that includes slavery and overcoming that ordeal somehow eats away and corrodes the so-called American narrative.
But in reality, who is being bothered and feels corroded are the people who want to sanitize and de-color the real history of America. It is not that they are embarrassed by the brutal history of enslavement, but for them they embrace a politically racialized framework proffering that the history, experiences, and existence of Black people don't really exist. This administration has proven how racialized it is. Their efforts through the Department of Government Efficiency cost 350,000 Black women their jobs. Mobs called law enforcement, some in masks and with no identification, roam the streets removing brown and Black immigrants. They have succeeded in some circles in criminalizing immigrants so that they could carry out their agenda of removing non-whites from the population. And not recognizing the presence and history of Black people is to render in perception, historical understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that the United States is a white Christian nation without blemish or scar.
A scripture says that "you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk to them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up." Our story will be told despite this racist agenda of erasure. We will talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We will tell the story unto generations, and we will become loud about who we are, what we have experienced, how we have overcome the impossible with possibilities, and declared, no matter how hard we have been pressed down and ignored, in the spirit of Maya Angelou, "Still I rise!" And so will the history of our experiences rise to the heavens and invade all of American history, and we will not be erased.
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Trump Ed Dept. Partners With Right-Groups to Spread White-Washed Civics Lessons in 'Schools Across the Nation'
One civics education advocate said the program, which will push schools to teach history content written by PragerU, Hillsdale College, and Turning Point USA, "smacks of authoritarianism."
Sep 18, 2025
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education has announced that it will partner with right-wing think tanks and organizations to develop and spread what it claims is “patriotic education”—but which critics worry is nothing less than ahistorical propaganda—in American "schools across the nation."
Earlier this week, the Trump administration redirected $137 million initially meant for programs aimed at minority students toward what it described as "American history and civics education."
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Wednesday that the money will be directed toward discretionary grants aimed at K-12 schools alongside the announcement of new civics curriculum and programs being drawn up by the 250 Civics Education Coalition—a consortium of more than 40 right-wing groups. The goal, McMahon said, was to advance education that "emphasizes a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation's founding ideals" in advance of the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.
It is not Trump's first crack at instilling the nation's youth with a "patriotic education." In the waning days of his first term in office, Trump unveiled the 1776 Report, which, education columnist Jennifer Berkshire recently noted in The Baffler, "was widely panned by actual historians for its worshipful treatment of the Founding Fathers, its downplaying of slavery, and its portrayal of a century-old 'administrative state' controlled by leftist radicals."
While little has been publicized yet about what McMahon's new endeavor will look like in practice, it is known the kinds of people and organizations who will be crafting it. The civics initiative is being led by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has been responsible for staffing Trump's second administration and has received over $1 million from his political action committee, the Save America PAC. Until 2023, McMahon herself served on the board of AFPI.
In 2022, the group presented a piece of model legislation for a "Civics Course Act" to be introduced in states. It included requirements for students to spend ample time studying the nation's founding documents and figures while banning the teaching of what it called the "defamatory history of America’s founding," which suggests that slavery or inequality are in any way inherent to the nation's institutions.
It also banned the concepts of "systemic racism" and "gender fluidity" and forbade teachers from giving students course credit for engaging with "social or public policy advocacy."
Also included in the coalition is Hillsdale College, a private Christian liberal arts school in Michigan that has proposed its own K-12 curriculum, which Vanity Fair notes "has been criticized for revisionist history, including whitewashed accounts of US slavery and depictions of Jamestown as a failed communist colony."
Another participant is PragerU, the overtly partisan and often factually loose YouTube channel that has been tasked with creating children's educational content in nearly a dozen red states.
The group has produced content venerating figures notorious for practicing slavery, like colonist Christopher Columbus and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Its videos have argued, among other things, that climate change is a myth, that European fascism was a "far-left" ideology, and that Israel has "the world's most moral army."
The pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA will also be involved in crafting the curriculum. Its longtime leader, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah last week, went on a crusade last year to, in his words, "tell the truth" about Martin Luther King Jr., whom he described as "an awful person," while claiming his signature achievement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was a "huge mistake."
An offshoot of Kirk's group, Turning Point Education, said Kirk's assassination has increased its resolve to promote a "God-centered, virtuous education" in US public schools.
The 250 Civics Education Coalition has not yet published a curriculum. But according to the Department of Education, it will be rolling out "a robust programming agenda" over the next 12 months.
During Trump's second term, he has undertaken an effort to purge federal museums and national parks of what one executive order called "improper ideology," which has resulted in the erasure of exhibits and monuments to Black and Native American history. Last month, he lamented that the Smithsonian Museum focuses too much on "how bad slavery was" and ordered a review of the museum's content.
Federal websites, meanwhile, have systematically eliminated many pages that acknowledged the accomplishments of nonwhite historical figures or important events in women's and LGBTQ+ history.
Critics in the education world view Trump's effort to use grants to induce them to adopt his preferred curriculum as an illegal effort to propagandize children.
"The law is clear," said education historian Diane Ravitch in a blog post. "Federal officials are prohibited from seeking to influence or direct curriculum in any way."
Since 1970, the federal government has been barred by law from "any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum" of public schools.
"Civic education is and must be non-partisan," said Ted McConnell, the executive director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. "While the funding is long sought, this is the wrong approach and smacks of authoritarianism."
Update: This piece has been slightly updated to better clarify what is understood about the nature of the civics initiative.
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