A recent billboard in New Jersey.
I know you’ve all been wondering, what do Assata Shakur and Jackie Robinson have in common? No, Assata Shakur is not a lefthanded pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds. Born JoAnne Deborah Bryan in 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier in major league baseball, by the early 1970s Shakur was a member of the Black Freedom Movement, the most militant wing of the group known as the Black Liberation Army. 1973 found her involved in a deadly shootout in which a New Jersey state trooper was killed. When the charges stemming from the shooting finally came to trial four years later, Shakur’s defense team included William Kunstler of “Chicago Seven” fame. The shootout alongside the New Jersey Turnpike involved two troopers and two other individuals in the car in which Shakur was a passenger. Shakur maintained that she was not involved in any of the violence because she had been shot twice while holding her hands above her head in compliance with one of the trooper’s orders. Nevertheless, in March, 1977, an all white New Jersey jury convicted her of murder and several assault charges.
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