Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a US prison where she’d been serving a life sentence for killing.
Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a US prison where she’d been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died at the age of 78. She was also the godmother to the late rapper Tupac Shakur. Born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, Shakur died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to „health conditions and advanced age“, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, per the AP. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, also confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.
Shakur’s case had long been a thorny issue in the fraught relations between the US and Cuba. American authorities, including President Trump during his first term in office, had demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.
