Assata Shakur Dies in Cuba at 78

Assata Shakur (born Joanne Deborah Byron/Chesimard), a former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member and godmother to Tupac Shakur, died in Havana on Sept. 25, 2025 at age 78, Cuban Foreign Ministry and her daughter Kakuya confirmed, citing health problems and advanced age. She had lived in political asylum in Cuba since resurfacing there in 1984 after escaping a New Jersey prison in 1979, where she was serving a life sentence following a 1977 conviction for the 1973 killing of state trooper Werner Foerster after a Turnpike shootout. Shakur and supporters long maintained her innocence and said she was targeted by FBI COINTELPRO, while U.S. authorities labeled her a fugitive and in 2013 placed her on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, with rewards later totaling about $2 million. In exile she published a memoir and essays and remained a polarizing figure, hailed by activists as a freedom fighter and denounced by officials as a convicted killer. Decades of U.S. efforts to extradite her from Cuba were unsuccessful, and her death is likely to revive longstanding debates over race, political repression and justice from the 1960s–70s era of U.S. domestic surveillance.