Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

Whenever i tired of the verbal abuse of my captors, i would drown them out by reading the poetry out loud. “Invictus” and “If We Must Die” were the poems i usually read. I read them over and over, until i was sure the guards had heard every word. The poems were my message to them.

I was convinced then, and i’m still convinced, that in some things kids have a lot more sense than adults.

After slavery, many Black people refused to use the last names of their masters. They called themselves “Freeman” instead.

Anybody, no matter who they were, could come right off the boat and get more rights and respect than amerikan-born Blacks.

(When we learned history, we were never taught the real reasons for things. We were just taught useless trivia, simplistic facts, key phrases, and miscellaneous, meaningless dates.)

They made war sound so glorious in school, so heroic. But the wars we had on the way home from school and in the playground were anything but glorious.

We had been completely brainwashed and we didn’t even know it. We accepted white value systems and white standards of beauty and, at times, we accepted the white man’s view of ourselves.

Like all the other teachers, Mr. Trobawitz taught us “fairy-tale history,” but at least he made it interesting.

it really annoyed me when i took art history in school and the teacher referred to African art as primitive.

For every pig that is killed in the so-called line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the police.

He who runs when the sun is sleeping will stumble many times.

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

To be released on recognizance in the state of new jersey, one of the requirements is jersey residence. The woman lived in Vermont. But nobody was really shocked. She was white.

“I don’t remember joining your army,” i said. “When i join your army, then you can order me around.”

In prisons, it is not at all uncommon to find a prisoner hanged or burned to death in his cell. No matter how suspicious the circumstances, these deaths are always ruled “suicides.” They are usually Black inmates, considered to be a “threat to the orderly running of the prison.” They are usually among the most politically aware and socially conscious inmates in the prison.

The police patrol our communities just like the guards patrol here. I don’t have the faintest idea how it feels to be free.”

We aren’t free politically, economically, or socially. We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a Black person in amerika isn’t even free to walk down the street. Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night, and you know what happens.

When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.

My abrupt transfer from one jail to another, without either notice to my lawyers or explanation to me, was a scenario that would be repeated over and over again during the next few years.

That was one of the things that always happened to me after long periods of solitary confinement: i would forget how to talk.

“These people can lock us up, but they can’t stop life, just like they can’t stop freedom. This baby was meant to be born, to carry on. They murdered Homey, and so this baby, like all our children, is going to be our hope for the future.”

Because of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, the Muslim influence over our struggle has been very strong,

We found out later that a lone Black juror had refused to convict us. He had heard us.

One of the names given me was Flo (Florence) Kennedy. She was a Black lawyer who was very active in the women’s movement, well known on the speaking circuit from coast to coast and more renowned as a feminist and political activist than as a lawyer. She fit the bill perfectly. She was just what i wanted.

History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privileges, then they are “liberals.” But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you’re talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.

White people, whether they are from the North or from the South, whether it was in 1960 or 1980, benefit from the oppression of Black people.

It’s got to be one of the most basic principles of living: always decide who your enemies are for yourself, and never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

Everything is a lie in amerika, and the thing that keeps it going is that so many people believe the lie.

“If you’re smart enough to fool them, then you’re smart enough to play their game.”

Life was like a bus: you could either be a passenger and go along for the ride, or you could be the driver.

Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

Both the democratic party and the republican party are controlled by millionaires. They are interested in holding on to their power, while i was interested in taking it away. They were interested in supporting fascist dictatorships in South and Central America, while i wanted to see them overthrown. They were interested in supporting racist, fascist regimes in Africa while i was interested in seeing them overthrown. They were interested in defeating the Viet Cong and i was interested in seeing them win their liberation.

For a lot of people in this country, people who live in other places have no faces.

One little girl broke up the whole kourtroom when she asked out loud, “Is that the fascist pig, Mommy?” pointing up at the judge.

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.

We agreed that sexism, like racism, was generated by capitalist, imperialist governments, and that women would never be liberated as long as the institutions that controlled our lives existed.