“You Whisper to Us”: Racial Justice Activists and Artists Honor Assata’s Legacy

The recent passing of Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur unleashed more than a sense of loss. It sparked a sense of pride in her defiance, a sense of gratitude for the movements and organizations that sustained her and a flowering of hope that the freedom she fought for could one day be real for the rest of us.

The collective grief is still fresh following Assata’s passing in Havana, Cuba, on September 25. News of her death arrived amid a national conversation in the U.S. about violence and grief that had centered around the murder of far right activist Charlie Kirk, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the onslaught of a news cycle that delivers a steady stream of bad news daily about health care, education, the environment, and draconian immigration policies.

Despite widespread outrage and a growing resistance, grief, demoralization, and exhaustion are daily realities. There was already a lot to mourn.

After Assata’s passing, I spoke with Orisanmi Burton, author of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, to hear how he was processing the news. He told me:

The news was bittersweet. Bitter because Assata will never again walk among us, tell another story, or author another poem; bitter because no longer can we point to her as a living example of she who struggled for Black people with courage and dignity, she who remained steadfast in the face of such fierce opposition. But also, sweet. Sweet because although they hunted her, the forces of U.S. Empire — with all their monstrous technology, were unable to kill her, or put her back in a cage. Sweet because although she is no longer of the physical realm, Assata Shakur remains with us in spirit.

From podcasts to social media, the celebration of life for Assata catapulted her to the top of the news cycle. Assata had eluded capture and lived in freedom, sheltered by the Cuban government and people. In contrast, other political prisoners from the movements of the 1960s and ‘70s like Herman Bell, Jalil Muntaqim, Sundiata Acoli, and Mutulu Shakur had — after suffering through decades in prison — eventually been released after tireless advocacy and organizing by their supporters. Many others are still caged. Assata had died the way few revolutionaries did: in older age, from natural causes, and free.

Writer and activist adrienne maree brown emphasized this when I reached out for her reflections, saying:

Assata Shakur has always been a model to me of how to live a revolutionary poetic life, and how to live without compromise. I am so moved by her story — that she was the most wanted woman of the largest empire of this time, that she managed to live a long life on liberated land, and that she died free.

Meanwhile, when I asked Julia Wright — the veteran Black Panther, activist, and writer who is also the daughter of famous novelist Richard Wright — for her thoughts on Assata’s legacy, she responded with a spontaneous poem, writing:

you are the Mother

of all ancestors

you let us know

our dead

as many as they are

have lost their shackles

and

though we weep

we can let them sleep

you reminded us

that the living

those still chained

throughout the darkened dungeons

need all our energy

because they are alive

and

can still be saved

from tortuous pain

but you –

you are alive

in our hearts

but you –

you walk at our side

but you –

you whisper to us

that just as Love

eats away

all bars,

Love

eats away

your death

The upsurge of positive reflections on Assata was so threatening to the status quo that FBI Director Kash Patel re-branded her as a terrorist and warned the public that she should not be romanticized. Attempts to re-criminalize her posthumously in a climate of escalating political repression of dissent and domestic terrorism only confirmed the validity of Assata’s condemnation of the FBI’s campaign to “discredit, disrupt, and destroy” the Black freedom movement.

Assata’s death reminds a new generation of activists that organizing works and solidarity is life. Her liberation from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey on November 2, 1979, was the result of the organization of her comrades in radical social movements who delivered her into a clandestine network. This modern underground railroad sustained her until she was granted asylum in Cuba.

The recent passing of Assata Shakur unleashed more than a sense of loss. It sparked a flowering of hope that the freedom she fought for could one day be real for the rest of us.

We don’t know the name of the people or the location of the places where Assata hid, but we do know that sustaining the underground network involved faith, risk, audacity, and ingenuity. There is a lesson here about the kind of accomplice praxis needed to stand up and shield others from the onslaught of the state — and the kind of deep commitment to struggle and refusal that it took to escape the dragnets and bounties on her head.

We see this enacted every day as ordinary people stand up for those ensnared by ICE agents or attacked by the National Guard deployed in the Trump administration’s militaristic incursions into American cities. Assata called Cuba one of the “Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) That Has Ever Existed on the Face of This Planet” and called herself an escaped slave. Revisiting these plantation metaphors in 2025, when the history of slavery is being actively erased from museums, further connects the dots between past and present.

Assata Shakur had tremendous cultural impact on music. Hip Hop legend Tupac Shakur was her godson, a reflection of the familial bonds between members of the Black Panther Party. Assata’s name and story have been mentioned in at least 50 songs, reflecting the best of Hip Hop’s rebellious potential. In Cuba she was a supporter of Hip Hop music and a deep believer in the power of art. Reflections on her life as “revolutionary” and “poetic” speak to the power of art as language, expression, and compass. It is perhaps the most fitting reflection on what her legacy might be to movements of today.

Magia López Cabrera and Alexey Rodriguez — two musicians from the Cuban Hip Hop group Obsesión — shared with me their testimony on the profound ways in which Assata also shaped Cuban social movements during her years on the island, writing:

Assata Shakur had strong connections with the Cuban Hip Hop movement. She and Nehanda Abiodun were fundamental guides in understanding the need for strong political thought from the beginning. It became increasingly difficult to see her in public spaces. Her visits to specific places held a secretive atmosphere, which emanated a certain complicity between people. Almost at the end of activities or gatherings, when there were not many people left, she would appear. Deep conversations would ensue on certain topics. More than once we saw her give her opinion on issues arising in the movement. She was listened to and cared for. Many of us decided not to talk about her to protect her, to take care of her in her forced secrecy. She taught us the value of humility, of listening and stepping back when necessary. Her runaway story leaves great lessons for humanity.

That runaway story, partially told in Assata’s memoir (Assata, 1987) has been given new life after her death. Assata recounts her life using dialogue, poetry, and snippets from speeches alongside prose. Her life history unfolds in a nonlinear structure that moves readers across space and time, chapter by chapter, weaving a narrative of growing up and growing political consciousness. The book has gone viral and spread across social media with people taking photos of the book, buying or swapping it, and most of all, reading it in reading circles and book clubs.

More and more ordinary people are revisiting the freedom dreams of 1960s activists who imagined a just world order and the end of racism and imperialism. This is not nostalgia but a concerted effort to unearth the lessons and legacies of the Black Freedom movement. It is a turn to history and an embrace of reading, a powerful rebuke to censorship, book bans, attacks on education, and the attempt to erase history in textbooks and museums. With Assata as their inspiration, people are holding a mirror up to the part of themselves that dares to hope, to see beyond this moment and connect the past to the present.