Assata Shakur, the former Black Liberation Army activist who lived in political exile in Cuba for more than four decades, has died in Havana at the age of 78, Cuba’s foreign ministry said Cape {town} Etc reports.
According to a Reuters report the ministry said she died on Thursday from health conditions related to advanced age.
Born JoAnne Deborah Byron in New York in 1947, Shakur rose to public prominence in the 1960s and 1970s through activism with the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army.
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According to The Guardian she was convicted in 1977 for the killing of a New Jersey state trooper after a 1973 shootout, a conviction she always denied and said followed an unfair trial.
Shakur escaped custody in 1979 with the help of fellow activists and surfaced in Cuba in 1984, where the government of Fidel Castro granted her asylum. US authorities long sought her return.
She became the first woman added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, with a reward offered for information leading to her arrest.
Her daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed the loss on social media, writing that words cannot describe the depth of the family’s grief.
The death prompted reaction across communities that remember Shakur both as a symbol of resistance and as a fugitive who avoided facing further US legal processes.
Shakur’s life and writing left a lasting mark on popular culture and protest movements and artists from hip hop to spoken word often referenced her name.
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