The Revolutionary Family Who Inspired the Black Liberation Movement
……and the Repressive, Institutional Forces that Produced Them
By Guest Columnist Marc S. Friedman
Let me begin by saying that this is an important book. Not just for Black Americans but for all who want to understand a critical part of American history.
What I’m referring to here is the emergence of the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960’s, the brave revolutionary people who stepped forward, and institutional forces that inspired them to act.
In “An Amerikan Family: the Shakurs and the Nation They Created,” author Santi Elijah Holley takes the reader on a gripping journey through the history of the Black Liberation Movement, starting with the 1965 birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which was led by the charismatic Stokely Carmichael.
The book then follows the escalation and expansion of the Black Liberation Movement with the founding of the Black Panthers in Oakland and other groups. Included here is a radical offshoot known as the Black Liberation Army. This group was formed by a handful of Black Panthers in 1978, to engage in a violent revolution instead of reforms being advanced by the Panthers and other more moderate groups.
According to the author, the “K” in “Amerika” has been used at least as early as the 1970’s by many anti-imperialist and anti-racist communities to condemn America’s racist conduct like the KKK’s.
The Black Liberation Movement had its undoing in October 1981, when members of the Black Liberation Army stole $1.6 million in cash from a Brink’s armored car in Nanuet, New York, killing a guard and seriously injuring two others.
Mr. Holley’s writing is clear, crisp and compelling. The book opens with the following quote from the late Manning Marable, who while a Professor of African-American studies at Columbia University in New York City, set the table for all that follows:
“History’s greatest dangers are waiting for those who fail to learn its lessons. Any oppressed people who abandon the knowledge of their own protest history, or who fail to analyze its lessons, will only perpetuate their domination by others.”
In writing this powerful book, Mr. Holley conducted a prodigious amount of research, including 14 interviews with those still living who participated in the movement’s history. In many instances their direct words add invaluable texture and color to their stories.
The author reveals that he read many books, periodicals and contemporaneous news articles, and watched newsreels from those years. Mr. Holley also studied very disturbing FBI and other government documents relating to its notorious COINTELPRO program. These materials detailed the efforts of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and others to infiltrate and destroy the Black Liberation Movement, and, especially, the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army.
Central to the birth and growth of the Black Liberation Movement – from SNCC and the Black Panthers to the Black Liberation Army - was the Shakur family, which included not just blood relatives but other allies in the Movement who adopted the surname Shakur, which is Arabic for “thankful.” Their stories are inextricably intertwined with America’s Black Liberation Movement history.
The book is divided into three parts. The last part describes the rise and fall of the famous artist Tupac Shakur, the multi-talented and passionate American rapper who was killed in 1996 at age 25 in a drive-by shooting. While his assailants were never caught, some speculated they were from law enforcement while others believed they were just thugs.
It is important to note that “An Amerikan Family” is much more than a biography of Tupac. The major contribution of “The Amerikan Family” is its very careful tracing of the increasing radicalization of the Black Liberation Movement from the conciliatory approach of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and his associates, to Stokely Carmichael and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Included here are the Black Panthers, the Black Separatists, the violent Black Liberation Army and, finally, a small breakaway group labeled by the press and law enforcement as “the Family”.
This “Family” contains not only Shakurs but also White radicals, including women from the Weather Underground, another group of revolutionaries. It was this small, violent “Family” who staged the infamous Brink’s armored car robbery where three innocent victims were gunned down. Throughout the evolution of the Black Liberation Movement the extended Shakur family made its presence felt at every turn.
Many episodes of cop-killings, explosions and other acts of violence are recounted in “An Amerikan Family.” However, quite a few members of the Black Liberation Movement made positive and lasting contributions to society.
For example, the Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African-American community. In addition, the Black Panthers offered important educational programs and operated free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics. The Panthers also had a large number of initiatives, including prison programs that were designed to restore Black dignity, pride, and sobriety.
Of particular note was Mutulu Shakur’s development of a landmark method of treating addiction and drug detoxification that included acupuncture. These techniques, developed in the 1970’s, are now standardized as the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) protocol and are used by 25,000 healthcare providers in 40 countries. Mutulu Shakur founded and directed the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA) and the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture.
There are many more admirable and courageous people who participated in the Black Liberation Movement. For this reviewer the most impressive, and certainly the most interesting, is Afeni Shakur, a member of the Black Panther Party and the mother of Tupac Shakur. The book opens with the highly-publicized 1969 New York City trial of “Panther 21,” a proceeding that received international attention. It was attended by reporters for all the major newspapers.
Afeni was a defendant in the “Panther 21” trial. Twenty-one Black Panthers were indicted for conspiracy to shoot police officers and bomb police stations, railroad tracks, department stores and the New York City Botanical Gardens. Coincidently, she was pregnant with Tupac during the trial.
Although she had no legal training, Afeni refused to be defended by a lawyer and, instead, defended herself. While the old adage is that “a person who represents herself has a fool for a client,” Afeni surely was no fool. Although she was not a lawyer, Afeni effectively cross-examined the police officers and other witnesses who testified for the prosecution. Her summation to the jury at the conclusion of the trial was brilliant and compelling. All defendants were acquitted, some say largely as a result of Afeni’s riveting summation.
Afeni was not fighting only for her own life. She was also fighting for the life of her unborn child, Shakur. At the end of her jury summation, Afeni concluded:
“So why are we here? Why are any of us here? I don’t know. But I would appreciate it if you would end this nightmare, because I’m tired of it and I can’t justify it in my mind. There’s no logical reason for us to have gone through the last two years as we have. So do what you have to do. But please don’t forget what you saw and heard in this courtroom…Let history record you as a jury that would not kneel to the outrageous bidding of the state. Show us that we were not wrong in assuming you would judge us fairly and remember that that’s all we’re asking of you. All we ask of you is to judge us fairly. Please judge us according to the way that you want to be judged.”
After an eight-month trial, the longest in New York history, the jury spent only 45 minutes deliberating before announcing all defendants were acquitted on all counts. Later that day an elderly Black man said to Afeni, “where’d you find out how to talk like that, child?” Afeni replied, “Fear, Mr. Giles. Plain fear.”
“An Amerikan Family” also describes the violence, bombings and shootings of police and others, fueled by the immense frustration by the militant Black community resulting from centuries of deprivation, repression, violence, lynchings and other forms of injustice. They would wait no longer for equality and justice.
Sekou Odinga, a highly influential member of the smaller revolutionary “Family,” described the armed robberies as acts of “expropriation” intended ”to take back some of the wealth that was robbed through the slave labor that was forced on them and their ancestors.”
Many of the militant members of the Black Liberation Movement and the Shakur Family went to prison for long periods of time, including acupuncturist Mutulu Shakur for his alleged involvement in planning the Brink’s armored car robbery. These events hastened the demise of the Movement.
However, the most significant cause of the Black Liberation Movement’s undoing, which occurred in the 1980’s, was the emergence of crack cocaine. As the author wrote, “…by the start of the 1980’s, however, cocaine use among certain members of the Family had gotten out of control contributing to its eventual undoing.”
While this reviewer remembers a few of the events such as the Brink’s armored car robbery, this book presents a wealth of detailed information that helped me understand, for the first time, the sordid history of racism, discrimination and oppression. The book captures the violence against the African-American community, that caused the Black Liberation Movement to take hold in 1966 and then develop over a relatively short period of time.
Its members such as the Shakurs and their allies, including the infamous Assata Shakur (formerly JoAnne Chesimard), now living in exile in Cuba after her escape from a New Jersey prison, were no longer willing to abide by the advice of Dr. King that gradualism is the way to end the centuries of oppression. The Shakurs rejected this and, instead, opted for revolution. While the Shakurs did not succeed in their quest for freedom, they no doubt raised the consciousness level of a nation that continues to struggle with the same challenges the Shakurs sought to overcome.
The stories of the Shakur family and others, exquisitely detailed in “An Amerikan Family,” should inspire all of us, Black and White, to fight hard on behalf of Black Americans and other oppressed peoples seeking to gain their rightful places in American society.
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