Afeni Shakur is ready to fight.
She’s already spent eleven months in the Women’s House of Detention and, although she’s out on bail, she is not free. It’s September 8, 1970, and she’s waiting inside the New York County Criminal Court in Manhattan. Seventeen months ago, she was indicted on charges including attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to bomb buildings. A conviction threatens to send her behind bars for the remainder of her life.
And, to add to her troubles, she is pregnant with her first child — a boy.
To the jury who will decide her fate, Afeni looks like any other young member of the Black Panther Party — an average-size, dark-skinned, short-haired, twenty-three-year-old black woman. A group about whom the media had spent years conjuring up scare stories at this point.
Soon, she will stand before a white judge and face an all-white prosecution as the government of the country she lives in actively works to eradicate the organization she’s a part of, as they have effectively done with most of those they’ve deemed a credible threat.
However, Afeni can’t afford for her mind to be frazzled by her circumstances. She’s about to defend herself in the trial without the aid of a lawyer — a decision widely viewed as suicidal.
Afeni is not alone. In The People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur et al., there are twelve other defendants, all part of the “Panther 21,” who on April 2, 1969, were arrested and indicted on charges of attempted murder, arson, and bombing.
But proving Afeni’s innocence and earning her freedom is now her responsibility alone. If she’s found guilty, the penalty is a 350-year sentence. She has no experience in court, no legal background whatsoever.
“We didn’t know what we were dealing with,” Shakur said, looking back. “We were in over our heads.” And if she fails, her life — and her unborn child’s — is effectively over.
Both violently and nonviolently, in her time as a Panther and afterward, as an activist, Afeni Shakur sought to tear down the system of oppression that she had been born into. But ultimately, she believed that the Black Panther Party, and she herself, failed.
“Instead, we turned against God, and how you gonna win like that? You have to have a moral imperative to win,” Afeni said. “We didn’t understand that. We drew violence to ourselves. We drew bitterness to ourselves.”
But in this early life-and-death fight, Afeni unquestionably won. She would be jailed again, make bail again, and thrive as her own de facto lawyer, playing a key role in the acquittal of the Panther 21 on all charges in May 1971. A month later, she gave birth to her son.