HAVANA, Cuba — Assata Shakur, the Black liberation activist and longtime U.S. fugitive who lived in Cuba after escaping a New Jersey prison, died Thursday, Cuban officials said. Her death instantly reopened a bitter American argument: Was Assata Shakur a convicted killer who outran justice, or a political exile whose prosecution symbolized state repression and racism, Sept. 25, 2025.
Shakur died of health complications and advanced age, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said, and her daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed the death on social media, according to the Associated Press. New Jersey officials said she was 78.
Born JoAnne Deborah Byron in Queens, New York, she later used the married name Joanne Chesimard in court records before taking the name Assata Shakur. She was associated with the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, and her writings later became a rallying cry for some activists. Few American figures carried such split-screen meaning: an emblem of resistance to admirers, and a symbol of unanswered loss to the family and colleagues of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster.
Assata Shakur: the turnpike shooting and the escape that wouldn’t fade
The story pivoted on a May 1973 traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. State police said troopers pulled over a car for a broken taillight and a gunfight erupted, leaving Foerster and one of Shakur’s companions dead and another trooper wounded.
Shakur was convicted in 1977 of killing Foerster and sentenced to life in prison. She maintained she did not shoot anyone, saying she was wounded and framed as a political target. In November 1979, armed accomplices broke her out of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women, a daring escape that made her a permanent name on law-enforcement wanted lists.
She surfaced in Cuba in 1984 and later received political asylum — a Cold War-era standoff that never thawed. Even decades later, ABC News reported, New Jersey continued to press for extradition.
Assata Shakur and a legacy that still splits the justice debate
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and State Police Superintendent Patrick Callahan said, “Sadly, it appears she has passed without being held fully accountable for her heinous crimes,” as state officials vowed to oppose any effort to return her remains to the United States.
Supporters, meanwhile, argued that Assata Shakur’s writings helped shape modern movements against police violence and mass incarceration. “The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love she practiced if we are going to survive it,” said Malkia Amala Cyril, an early Black Lives Matter organizer.
Tributes and condemnation ricocheted worldwide as her daughter said, “Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I’m feeling at this time,” according to The Guardian. The Washington Post noted how her name traveled from court transcripts to protest slogans and hip-hop lyrics in a Washington Post obituary.
The fight over her story had been building for years. In 2013, the FBI made Assata Shakur — listed under the name Joanne Chesimard — the first woman placed on its Most Wanted Terrorists list, a designation and reward package detailed in an FBI news story and a Newark division press release. BET, running an Associated Press account, highlighted the move’s political impact in a May 3, 2013, report.
Now, with Assata Shakur dead in exile, the question that followed her across borders remains: What does justice look like — and who gets to define it?
