Straight Ahead: The Life of Resistance of Dr. Mutulu Shakur

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

Straight Ahead: The Life of Resistance of Dr. Mutulu Shakur

By:  Sheikh Akinyele Umoja

Keywords: acupuncture, Herman Ferguson, international solidarity, internationalism,
Malcolm X, May 19th Communist Organization, Mutulu Shakur, Nehanda Abiodun,
New Afrikan Independence Movement, political prisoners, Republic of New Afrika,
resistance, revolutionary nationalism, social movements, Sonny Carson,
Yuri Kochiyama

Who is Dr. Mutulu Shakur? He is known by some as the “stepfather” of rapper
Tupac Shakur. This explanation diminishes the significance of a human being who
has fought for the liberation of Black people and humanity for nearly six decades.
Dr. Shakur is a grassroots organizer, teacher, and defender, anti-repression activist,
healer, and unifier of the youth and street forces (whether in the community or
inside prison walls) currently living in incarceration. Shakur defines himself as a
revolutionary nationalist who struggles for the liberation of the Black nation,
which he calls “New Afrika” and is opposed to the oppression of all people in the

United States around the globe. He is a resilient spirit who embodies Black peo-
ples’ fight for freedom and human rights. He is a freedom fighter who joins hands

with young and old, privileged and poor, academics and “gangstas,” and people of
a variety ethnic backgrounds and nationalities. Fighting cancer and a series of
other ailments while incarnated, Dr. Shakur is literally fighting for his life. This
essay is a brief biography of the activism and political journey of Dr.
Mutulu Shakur.

Origins of a Freedom Fighter

Dr. Mutulu Shakur was born Jeral Williams in Baltimore, Maryland in 1950. Many
transitions occurred in his early childhood that impacted his political and social
development. His mother, Delores Porter became a single parent when he was
three-years-old, raising him and his younger sister Sharon. Ms. Porter lost her
vision when Jeral was four-years-old. When he was seven, the household moved to
the South Jamaica section of the borough of Queens, New York City. As a child,

ISSN 1099-9949 print/1548-3843 online # 2022 University of Illinois at Chicago
DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2022.2097570
Souls
Vol. 23, Nos. 1–2, January–June 2022, pp. 4–35

Jeral assumed responsibility as an advocate for his household visual impaired
mother to navigate social services. This experience educated him that the system
did not work in the interests of poor, working class, and oppressed Black people.
Like many in his generation, the political developments in New York’s Black
community, as well as the United States, and globally had a tremendous impact on
his social consciousness. African peoples were fighting for their independence
from European colonialism on the African continent. The murder of 14-year-old
Emmett Till by white supremacists in Mississippi occurred when, young Jeral was
five-years-old and heightened the awareness of the reality of white terrorism to his
generation and the world. While the Till murder raised public consciousness of
white terrorism, the Montgomery Bus Boycott signaled the possibility of collective
struggle as a Black community stood in solidarity against segregation for over a

year. By the time Jeral was nine-years-old, Black college students launched a mas-
sive campaign of civil disobedience that exploded in the system of apartheid in the

southern United States (U.S.).
The Nation of Islam (NOI) and its charismatic spokesperson Malcolm X had an
impact on New York’s Black neighborhoods, including the thinking of young Jeral

Williams. The NOI offered a different response to white supremacy and oppres-
sion than the Civil Rights movement demand for full integration and first-class

U.S. citizenship. The NOI’s call for a “land of our own” or separate territory from

the “white devils” provided an alternative vision for thousands of Black people dis-
enchanted with the hypocrisy of living with state violence and structural racism in

the “land of the free.” The NOI had a distribution center for its newspaper
Muhammad Speaks in Jerel’s neighborhood. When he was in junior high, the NOI
members used their van to transport Jeral and his friends to Harlem’s Temple
Number 7 to hear Minister Malcolm, which had a profound impact on
their thinking.1
Malcolm X was assassinated when Jeral was 15 years old. Three years previous,
Jeral was welcomed into the home of Aba Saluudin Shakur, an associate of
Malcolm X. Aba Shakur was the father of two of Jeral’s friends, Anthony and
James Coston (later known as Lumumba and Zayd Shakur).2 Jeral and his friends
also attended the gatherings of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths (aka

the Five Percenters) to hear the group’s interpretation of Black freedom and cul-
ture. The Five Percenters were formed by a member of the NOI, Clarence 13X

Smith, who initiated the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earth, which had appeal
to the Black youth of New York streets. He also participated in the activities of
some of his teen-aged peers who organized the Grassroot Advisory Council in
South Jamaica, Queens and advocated for resources for youth programs from the
government-funded poverty programs.

Jeral Williams made his formal connection with revolutionary nationalist polit-
ics at 16 years old after meeting Herman Ferguson, another associate of Malcolm

X. Ferguson was a Vice Principal at New York’s P.S. 40 high school and member
of Malcolm’s groups: the Muslim Mosque Incorporated3 and Organization of

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Afro-American Unity (OAAU). He was also responsible for organizing the
OAAU’s Liberation School. Ferguson was also the first African American school
administrator in South Jamaica Queens. The activist educator worked on the staff
at the Evening Center at the Shimer Junior High School where he met Jeral and
other South Jamaica youth who were receptive to Black nationalism.

Ferguson exposed the 16-year-old Jeral Williams to a network of newly formed
Black Power organizations in the borough of Queens after the assassination of
Malcolm X. The first was the Black Brotherhood Improvement Association (BBIA)
formed based upon the philosophy of Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. The BBIA
affiliated with the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) by 1967. RAM was a
national network of revolutionary nationalists, headed by Philadelphia radical
intellectual Max Stanford. RAM’s international chairman was Robert F. Williams,
the foremost advocate of armed self-defense in the Black freedom struggle.
Williams fled the U.S. after trumped-up charges were manufactured against him
in North Carolina and received political asylum initially in Cuba and later China.
Ferguson also organized the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club to provide Black
Queens residents training with weapons. He noticed that the white residents of the
suburbs surrounding South Jamaica and other Black majority neighborhoods were

well-armed and had formed gun clubs.4 Ferguson’s organizing of the Jamaica-
Queens gun club was putting into practice a program advocated by Malcolm X

and practiced by Robert Williams in Monroe, North Carolina.

As a teenager, Jeral joined the BBIA, RAM, and the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol
Club. Ferguson would also emphasize the importance of Jeral and other youth to
study history and revolutionary theory. According to Shakur, Ferguson,
“introduced me to the works of Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Mao Tse-tung
and the teachings of Marcus Garvey and Malcolm.”

5 Jeral’s political consciousness
was not only Black nationalist, but internationalist, given his mentor’s political

education grounded in global anti-colonial and anti-imperialist revolution-
ary traditions.

Jeral learned the importance of organizing a legal defense and mobilizing to
fight political repression early in political activism. The revolutionary nationalist
network organized by Herman Ferguson came under attack as a New York Police
Department (NYPD) agent provocateur, Edward Howlette, infiltrated the BBIA
and became the key witness in a conspiracy case against its members. On June 21,
1967, sixteen BBIA and RAM members, including Max Stanford,6 were charged
with conspiracy to commit criminal anarchy. Both Ferguson and BBIA and RAM
member Arthur Harris were charged with conspiracy to murder integrationist
leaders Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. Wilkins was the Executive Director and
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and
Young in the same role for the National Urban League.
Jeral Williams’ responsibility and leadership in the revolutionary nationalist
movement in Queens increased during this crisis. He and his friend Anthony
Laborde organized a massive rally of 200 in support of Ferguson and Harris in
6 Souls January–June 2022

response to their arrests.7 Jeral and Laborde also provided security for leaders of
the Friends of the Seventeen, particularly Connie Hicks. Another New York public
school teacher and BBIA member, Hicks was the coordinator of the Friends of the
17, developed to raise funds for the BBIA/RAM defendants. Jeral also organized
the Committee to Defend Herman Ferguson and Arthur Harris. In October of
1968, Ferguson and Harris would ultimately be convicted of the conspiracy to
murder charges by an all-white jury and sentenced to three and half to seven years
in prison. His work to free Ferguson and Harris set the foundation for much of
his political work he engaged in to free the political prisoners of the Black
Liberation Movement.

Allegiance to the Republic of New Afrika

Jeral attended a gathering of 500 Black nationalists in Detroit on March 30-31,
1968, along with Herman Ferguson and Connie Hicks. This gathering, titled the
Black Government Conference, was organized by the Detroit-based Malcolm X
Society. The Malcolm X Society was organized by associates of Malcolm X,
Attorney Milton Henry and his brother Richard Henry. The Henry brothers had
hosted Malcolm X on three occasions to address audiences in Detroit and formed
the Malcolm X Society after the Black nationalist spokesperson’s assassination to
carry out his aims and political vision of human rights, self-determination and
self-defense. The African anti-colonial independence movements, the Chinese and
Cuban revolutions, and the resistance of the Vietnamese against French and U.S.

imperialism also inspired Malcolm, the growing insurgent Black nationalist move-
ment. This internationalism was also embraced and central to the thinking of the

Henry brothers.
Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, was an honored participant in the Black
Government Conference. Other prominent Black Power and Black nationalist

leaders were present at this Black nationalist gathering including reparations advo-
cate Queen Mother Moore, Nana Oserjiman Adefumi of New York’s Yoruba

Temple, Maulana Karenga of the Us Organization of Los Angeles, Leroi Jones of
Newark, New Jersey’s Spirit House, and Hakim Jamal of the Malcolm X

Foundation of Compton, California. One hundred of the attendees signed a declar-
ation of independence from the U.S. and proclaimed their allegiance to a new

nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). The conference identified five

deep South states as the RNA national territory and elected a provisional govern-
ment and accepted Queen Mother Moore’s proposal to name the nation “New

Africa.” Ferguson and Hicks were two of the signers of the New Afrikan
Declaration of Independence. Ferguson was appointed Minister of Education of
the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PGRNA).
Ferguson, Hicks, and young Jeral Williams returned to Queens to help build
the Republic of New Afrika. Jeral pledged his allegiance to the RNA, becoming a
declared citizen of New Afrika. The political objective of a Republic of New Afrika
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 7

provided a vision and goal for his developing revolutionary nationalist perspective.
He was already familiar with Attorney Milton Henry who he heard making
addresses at the Black Power Convention in Newark, New Jersey in 1967. He

found Henry and his brother Richard to be “passionate speakers for self-determi-
nation” and was convinced their perspective of achieving Black power was a more

effective strategy for liberation than the 10-point program of the Black Panther
Party for Self-defense or community control advocacy of other Black nationalists.8
Jeral Williams not only decided to choose the national identity of “New

Afrikan” but ultimately adopted a new name that reflected his New Afrikan polit-
ical consciousness. Many members of the New Afrikan Independence Movement

(NAIM) adopted African and Arabic names as a symbol of personal and cultural
self-determination. For example, Milton Henry became “Gaidi Obadele’’ and his
brother Richard “Imari Obadele.” Connie Hicks was re-named the Yoruba name
“Iyaluua Akinwole.” Arthur Harris selected an Arabic name “Umar Sharrief.” Jeral
Williams too would choose a “New Afrikan” identity by adopting a new name as
an RNA citizen—Mutulu Shakur. His first name “Mutulu” was from the Kwa Zulu
of South Africa, meaning “someone who helps you get where you are going.” The
name “Mutulu” was selected for Jeral by Robert “Sonny” Carson (also known as
Mwlina Imiri Abubadika), another of his mentors and leader in the New York
Black nationalist and activist community and RNA citizen.9 Jeral also chose the

Arabic name “Shakur” (as his last name) from the family name of two of his child-
hood friends, Lumumba and Zayd, whose father Aba Saladin Shakur was a

respected elder in the Black nationalist and Islamic communities. Aba Shakur was
Mutulu’s “spiritual father.” The name “Shakur” in Arabic means “thankful.”
Mutulu refers to the former street organization (aka gang leader) Carson as his
“street father.” Carson, through his organization the School of Common Sense,
provided leadership to Shakur and other PGRNA workers, Black Panthers, Five
Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, and other nationalist youth to bring unity to
the street organizations (aka youth gangs) in each of New York’s five boroughs,
including Brooklyn’s Tomahawks and the Bronx’s Savage Skulls. Part of this work
was to develop treaties between the various street organizations and vehicles to
resolve conflict.10

Ferguson for U.S. Senate: A Vote for National Liberation

Mutulu Shakur’s opportunity to participate in an advocacy for New Afrikan
national liberation was the campaign to elect his mentor and elder Herman
Ferguson to the U.S. Senate as candidate for New York’s Freedom and Peace Party
in 1968. The Freedom and Peace Party (FPP) was a left-oriented, third-party effort

in the 1968 national and New York state elections. The FPP New York state con-
vention took place in June 1968. Over 500 attended the conference with 97

African American participants, who formed a Black caucus within the state FPP
convention. The Black caucus advocated and introduced into FPP platform

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language concerning opposition to the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam
including declaring the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia as “racist,” demand for
immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and end to aerial bombing, and a statement
of solidarity with the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. The platform

also possessed other anti-imperialist demands including condemnation of the mili-
tary activities of Israel in the “Middle East” and white settler minority rule in

Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), South Africa, and Portuguese colonialism in Guinea Bissau,
Angola, and Mozambique, as well as ending the U.S. blockade of Cuba. The FPP
also called for reforms in welfare rights, repeal of repressive legislation like the
McCarran and Smith Acts, community control of police, and amnesty for political
prisoners and draft resisters.
The convention named Dr. Benjamin Spock as the FPP candidate for U.S.
President and Coretta Scott King as the Vice-Presidential candidate. Herman
Ferguson was selected as the candidate for U.S. Senate. Ferguson outlined a Black

Power agenda in his acceptance speech including a call for independent Black edu-
cation, the formation of Black trade unions to represent the interest of Black labor,

and bringing home Black troops from Vietnam. Ferguson also used his candidacy

as an opportunity to advocate for an independent Black nation-state. He articu-
lated “this is the only viable way to bring able freedom, justice, and equality for

the former slaves.”

11 Shakur actively participated as an organizer in Ferguson’s
campaign as a vehicle to promote the politics of national liberation as an option
for Black freedom. The campaign won 10,000 votes in the November 1968.12
Shakur saw the importance of raising the question of Black self-determination
throughout New York state speaking to white people about “supporting right to
separate and Black people supporting the need to separate.”
13

One notable development of the campaign was the support of New York’s
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense for the Ferguson’s campaign. The national
BPP supported the Peace and Freedom Party’s candidacy of Eldridge Cleaver for
U.S. President. Ferguson was an elder and comrade of many key leaders of the
New York BPP, who also supported his advocacy for New Afrikan independence.
The New York BPP’s support for Ferguson’s campaign helped build a bond
between the Panthers and the PGRNA in New York.14

Ocean Hill-Brownsville: From Community Control to Sovereignty

Shakur and other PGRNA workers in NYC also promoted the politics of national

liberation in the struggle for community control of schools in the Ocean Hill-
Brownsville neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. Ocean Hill and Brownsville

were predominately Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods that became the center
of a community fight for Black power with national attention. The Ford
Foundation proposed a decentralization plan to the New York City Board of
Education in response of Black challenges to de facto segregation in the 1960s. The
New York public school board adopted the Ford Foundation plan in 1967 to
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 9

decentralize its massive bureaucracy and create three autonomous districts, one
included Ocean Hill and Brownsville. Activists and Black parents and educators in
New York viewed decentralization in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville District as an
opportunity for community control to challenge disparities and educational
inequality and to institute a culturally relevant curriculum for Black students.
Veteran educator Rhody McCoy was appointed the administrator of the Ocean
Hill-Brownsville district. McCoy, another associate of Malcolm X, sought to make

decisions in accordance with the concerns and demands of Black parents, educa-
tors, and activists. On May 8, 1968, the Board ordered reassignment of thirteen

teachers and six administrators thought to be undermining the experiment. The

predominately white American Federation of Teachers (AFT) protested the reas-
signments with a walkout of 350 teachers. This conflict mushroomed into a strug-
gle of the Black community asserting its right to control the education of its youth

versus the white-controlled and led teachers’ union.

Mutulu Shakur became active in the Black community’s response to the pre-
dominantly white teachers’ strike. The community mobilized to keep the schools

open and block the striking teachers from returning to the schools. As a worker in
the PGRNA, Shakur was active in a broad activist coalition formed to demand
Black Community Control and support the local board administrating the Ocean

Hill-Brownsville district. The coalition included traditional Civil Rights organiza-
tions like the NAACP and the Urban League and Black Power organizations like

Sonny Carson’s independent CORE, the Black Panther Party, and the Provisional
Government of the Republic of New Afrika. Several Black teachers, particularly
members of the activist African American Teachers Association, supported the
Ocean Hill-Brownsville board. Shakur and his comrade Black Panther Abdul

Majid (formerly Anthony Laborde) worked together to speak to classes and pre-
sent history, politics, and culture during the teacher’s strike. McCoy spoke of the

role of young activists like Shakur and Majid to support the strike:
They’d pick up all of the young people who were late coming to school or
trying to play to hook—and kept the drugs out and came into the schools and
talked to the youngsters about staying in school, the value of education.15
Ultimately, New York City Mayor John Lindsay sent municipal police to occupy
the schools under the jurisdiction of the local board and by November of 1968,

the New York state seized control and abolished the Ocean Hill-
Brownsville district.

PGRNA leaders and workers viewed the Ocean Hill-Brownsville struggle in the

context of a national liberation struggle and raised the question of Black self-deter-
mination and sovereignty. They argued Mayor Lindsay and the New York state

takeover of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district was evidence that “(Black) commu-
nity control within the U.S. system is impossible. The larger white community will

take that away that ‘control’ whenever it pleases them” (Riots, Crimes, and Civil

Disorders, 4255). One New Afrikan citizen offered, “If people in Ocean Hill-
Brownsville or anywhere else want local control ... . the only way to do it is

10 Souls January–June 2022

outside the U.S. federal system and as part of the Republic of New Africa.”
16 New
Afrikan leaders, like PGRNA founder and Minister of the Interior Imari Obadele
and Minister of Education Herman Ferguson, argued that the process involving

Black parents, students, and residents for community control and grassroots par-
ticipation prepared the Black neighborhoods of Ocean Hill-Brownsville to take a

step toward self-determination. They argued state power was necessary if Black
people desired to have control of their schools and any other of the affairs of their
community. Independence was essential for Black power.
After the state takeover of Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Imari Obadele and Herman
Ferguson lobbied Black educators and activists in Brooklyn about the possibility of
organizing a United Nations plebiscite in Ocean Hill-Brownsville to declare it as a
territory of the Republic of New Afrika. “Limited sovereignty” for Black people in

Ocean Hill-Brownsville would be a forerunner to the campaign to establish inde-
pendent statehood in the RNA in the southeastern U.S. Independent CORE leader

Sonny Carson collaborated with Obadele and Ferguson in developing the Ocean
Hill-Brownsville plebiscite proposal. Community meetings for the plebiscite proposal
took place at Carson’s School of Common Sense in Brooklyn (Riots, Crimes, and
Civil Disorders, 4366). The proposal was based on the thought that a significant
number of Black Ocean Hill-Brownsville residents might vote for sovereignty in a

United Nations supervised plebiscite, particularly after their demands for commu-
nity control of their schools were thwarted by the state of New York. The hope was

that the international community, through the United Nations, would be obligated
to protect the right of self-determination after the people of the predominantly
African descendant Brooklyn neighborhoods democratically choose Republic of
New Afrika citizenship. The plan included a public safety and defense component,

including declaring Ocean Hill-Brownsville an “open city” with no “arms or defen-
sive troops.” It also proposed a health service, hospital, court-system, day care and

capacity for print and electronic media, cinema and television production, a public
school system, and government-controlled manufacturing industry.17
A planning meeting was hosted on January 18–19, 1969 in Detroit with national
officers on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville project. The PGRNA hosted a March 21
(1969) special election to select ten representatives from Ocean Hill-Brownsville

neighborhood to attend its national conference to further discuss the independ-
ence project. In spite of police harassment, hundreds of Ocean Hill-Brownsville

residents participated in a PGRNA organized special election (with only two
weeks’ notice), demonstrating some local support for the project.18 Shakur traveled
with this contingent of New Yorkers who attended the national PGRNA National
Council of Representatives (or legislature) in Detroit on March 28–30, 1969.

New Bethel: War in America

The conference was held at the historic New Bethel Baptist Church pastored by
Reverend C.L. Franklin (father of legendary singer Aretha Franklin). Mutulu
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 11

Shakur was excited to attend the national gathering and participate in building the

PGRNA with other conscious citizens of the New Afrikan independence move-
ment. This was an opportunity for him to experience the PGRNA national leader-
ship and build relationships with government workers from other cities toward

freedom, independence and freeing the land of New Afrika. He also worked with
the security for the events during the weekend as a part of the PGRNA’s defense
force, the Black Legion.19
An incident occurred at the culmination of the conference that greatly impacted
his work in the movement. A conflict ensued after the evening’s activities adjourned

around midnight of March 29. Shooting was set in motion after Detroit police offi-
cers, Michael Czapski and Richard Worobec, with guns drawn, attempted to inter-
vene with New Afrikans outside New Bethel as PGRNA Vice-President Gaidi

Obadele and Queen Mother Moore were leaving. The New Afrikan security
responded to what they perceived as a threat from the Detroit police officers.
Czapski was immediately killed. Worobec, wounded, fled the scene and signaled for
reinforcements. Detroit police responded to news of the shootings by invading the
gathering, breaking down the door of the sanctuary, despite sniper fire from an
armed clandestine unit in solidarity with the Black Legion. Shakur remembered; “We
had retreated to the basement of the New Bethel Church in an effort to hold off the
armed assault by the Detroit Police Department. We had run out of means to defend
ourselves and were ordered to surrender as we emerged from the basement.”
20
The police utilized overwhelming force to take military control of the church.

While police discharged over 800 rounds of ammunition, no New Afrikans or par-
ticipants in the conference were killed, but four were wounded. Several of the

RNA citizens, defense forces, and conference attendees were brutalized and tor-
tured by the raiding Detroit police fueled by violence, revenge, and retaliatory ter-
ror. Police particularly concentrated much of their brutality on the RNA security,

many of whom were “beaten severely” during the arrests.21 In the midst of the
gun battle and police invasion of New Bethel, 18-year-old Mutulu placed Iyaluua
Akinwole on the ground and put his body over hers to protect her from harm.
According to Shakur the police invasion of the church and violent assault left
many of the conference participants “in shock, wounded, and traumatized.”
22
Over 142 conference participants, including Shakur, Herman Ferguson and
Umar Sharrief, were arrested after the police invasion overwhelmed the resistance
of the New Afrikan security forces. Reverend Franklin and local political activists
contacted Wayne County Recorder’s Court Judge George Crockett. Crockett
immediately set up temporary court at the police headquarters and released 130 of

the arrested New Afrikans, including Shakur, Ferguson, and Sharief. Three mem-
bers of the New Afrikan security forces, Chaka Fuller, Rafael Viera, and Alfred 2X

Hibbits, were charged and tried with murder of Officer Czapski, but acquitted by
a majority Black Detroit jury. Viera traveled to Detroit from New York for the
gathering. He was a Vietnam-veteran, Puerto Rican Nationalist and member of the
pro-independence Young Lords Party, as well as a pledged RNA citizen.23

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The assault at New Bethel served as a critical event in the political development
of Mutulu Shakur. He traveled to Detroit to discuss peaceful political processes to
achieve Black power and self-determination. The invasion by the Detroit police or
what his PGRNA comrade Chokwe Lumumba called “soldier-cops” reinforced the

necessity of having a defense capacity to protect the leaders, movement partici-
pants, and Black community from state violence and terrorism. Shakur stated in

an interview, “I became very clear that question of separating Black people from
America ... was one of the most dangerous things you could do.” The assault of
Detroit soldier cops on the New Afrikan gathering, “crystallized in me that we
could not have a movement if we were not prepared to defend ourselves from
attack.”
24 He returned to New York committed to building New Afrikan security
and defense forces to support organizing political action and protecting the
Black community.
Internal conflict within the PGRNA suspended the independence movement’s
drive for a plebiscite in Brooklyn.25 The PGRNA benefited from the campaign by

expanding its activity and growth in Brooklyn in spite of not achieving a UN pleb-
iscite for Black sovereignty and independence in Ocean Hill-Brownsville.

Abubadika Carson pledged allegiance to the RNA and worked with Ferguson and
Mutulu to build the PGRNA’s Brooklyn’s Consulate. Working closely with Carson,
Mutulu significantly contributed to the development of PGRNA work and growth
in Brooklyn. Another key recruit in Brooklyn was another associate of Malcolm X,
Japanese American activist Mary Kochiyama, who took the New Afrikan oath of
allegiance from Herman Ferguson in 1969. The Asian-American Kochiyama was

considered a “naturalized” RNA citizen and consistent with her New Afrikan com-
rades she dropped her “slave name” (Mary) and was identified by her Japanese

name “Yuri.”

26 Kochiyama and Shakur become coworkers in the New Afrikan

independence movement.
Shakur taught nation-building and gun safety classes in Brooklyn and recruited
RNA citizens and government workers in the borough and also organized the

Black Legion, the provisional government’s defense force. He offered PGRNA pol-
itical education classes in the East Cultural Center in Brooklyn, an institution

established by the African American Teachers Association and Black students in
1969 after the conclusion of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville struggle.27 Shakur viewed
his nation-building and political education courses as an extension of the Ocean

Hill-Brownsville education struggle, the building of independent Black instruc-
tional institutions.

Herman Ferguson and Umar Sharrief both decided to seek political asylum out-
side of U.S. jurisdiction after unsuccessful appeals to their convictions and senten-
ces. Ferguson proclaimed himself a political exile in the Cooperative Republic of

Guyana in July 1970.
With Ferguson’s exodus from the U.S., Shakur assumed greater responsibility

for the direction of the Queens and Brooklyn PGRNA consulates. He was respon-
sible for political education classes-New Afrikan Political Science- in both

Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 13

locations. In Jamaica-Queens, Shakur conducted political education for both the
PGRNA government workers and also the local branch of the Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense (BPP), headed by his friend and comrade, Abdul Majid (formerly

known as Anthony Laborde). The PGRNA and BPP shared office space and coop-
erated together. BPP member Freddie Hilton (later known as Kamau Sadiki)

remembered learning about the concept of imperialism from Mutulu in a political
education session in Jamaica, Queens. Many of the Black Panthers in Jamaica,
Queens and in Harlem also became citizens of the RNA and swore their allegiance
to New Afrika.28

Coming to the Defense of Comrades in Crisis

Another ordeal of the United States government’s assault on the Black Liberation
Movement occurred immediately after Mutulu Shakur returned from Detroit and
the battle of New Bethel. His friends and associates in the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense were arrested on charges of conspiracy in what would be called the
New York Panther 21 case. Twenty-one of the leading members of the New York
chapter were charged and indicted on 156 various criminal counts centered on

conspiracy to bomb police stations, the Botanical Gardens, and commercial estab-
lishments in New York city and to carry out sniper attacks on police officers.

Mutulu’s childhood friend Lumumba Shakur and his wife Afeni were arrested as
part of this alleged conspiracy. Other New York 21 defendants included Richard
Dhoruba Moore, Jamal Joseph, Sundiata Acoli, Joan Bird, Baba Odinga, Robert
Collier, Curtis Powell, Kwando Kinshasa, Ali Bey Hassan, Kuwasi Balagoon,
Richard Harris, Thomas Berry, Lee Berry, Michael Tabor, Lonnie Epps, Abayama
Katara. Another comrade, Sekou Odinga, escaped arrest and went underground,
eventually emerging in Algeria to receive political asylum with the international
section of the BPP there.

The Panther 21 were critical of the Oakland-based leadership of the BPP con-
cerning their support for the New York defendants, their attack on revered

Panther comrade Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) and other ideological and political dif-
ferences. The tensions became public after an open letter from incarcerated leaders

and members of the New York 21 to the white anti-imperialist clandestine organ-
ization, the Weather Underground (a.k.a. “The Weathermen”). The Weather

Underground took responsibility in the bombing of political targets primarily
related to opposition the Vietnam War. The BPP national leadership expelled the
New York chapter in response to the open letter.29 The open letter and subsequent
expulsion were major events in what some have labeled the split of the BPP.
Prior to the expulsion and split, Mutulu Shakur joined with other comrades in
the revolutionary movement in New York to provide support for the 21 after
criticisms surfaced that the BPP national leadership weren’t providing adequate
support for their incarcerated comrades. The National Committee for the Defense
of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) consolidated a variety of local defense committees
14 Souls January–June 2022

to support the 21 defendants and other incarcerated Black Panther, Black
Liberation Army, and Black Power activists on the East Coast, including Assata
Shakur and Freddie Hilton (aka Kamau Sadiki).30 The New York 21 trial took
eight months with most of the defendants incarcerated for two years during the
proceedings. The Panther defendants’ legal team presented a vigorous defense that
exposed government infiltration and the use of agent provocateurs to “set up” BPP
members by suggesting they engage in acts of violence. After such a lengthy trial,
it took the jury 45 minutes of deliberation to acquit the New York defendants.
According to Shakur, Yuri Kochiyama was the “driving force” in the formation
of the NCDPP. He told Kochiyama biographer Diane Fujino that New York area

Black and Puerto Rican revolutionaries made their “first call” to her if incarcer-
ated. Kochiyama would contact “a lawyer, get information out to ... the family

(of the captured activist), and the Movement.” She also maintained files and dis-
tributed information on the cases of incarcerated movement comrades. Mutulu

and PGRNA worker Ibidun Sundiata were key participants of the NCDPP.31

The NCDPP continued to work to support other political prisoners and prison-
ers of war, particularly in New York state after their acquittal of the Panther

defendants in the 21-court case. The defense committee had a New Afrikan inde-
pendence orientation as its newsletter was titled Take the Land (TTL), a more

militant slogan than the PGRNA’s “Free the land.” TTL highlighted the cases of
captured Black Liberation Army combatants, like Dhoruba Moore (Bin Wihad),
Assata Shakur, and the New York 3 (Albert Nuh Washington, Herman Bell, and
Anthony Bottoms a.k.a. Jalil Muntaqim) as well as New York area and national
cases like the Wilmington 10 and the Republic of New Afrika 11. The NCDPP
engaged in fundraising, media work, and grassroots awareness campaigns around
the cases of political prisoners and mobilized supporters to fill the courtroom for

the respective cases in New York and New Jersey. Their support for BLA combat-
ants and other revolutionaries on trial and incarcerated was critical during a

period where counterinsurgency efforts by local police and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) had significantly destabilized and disrupted the revolutionary
nationalist, pro-national liberation forces of the Black liberation movement.
New York BPP leader Zayd Malik Shakur assigned Mutulu to California in
1971 to check on the well-being and case of incarcerated political prisoner
Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). Geronimo, aka known as “G,” was a veteran of the U.S.
Army—82nd Airborne (serving in Vietnam), who shared his military training and

skills to the defense forces of the BPP and other Black Power movement organiza-
tions. Besides the BPP, Geronimo trained the paramilitary forces of the Texas and

the Alabama Black Liberation Front, the PGRNA, De Mau Mau (composed of
Vietnam-era Black veterans), and also underground combatants in the urban and
rural communities throughout the U.S. empire.32 After being captured in
December 1970 in Dallas, Texas, ji Jaga was convicted of the 1968 murder of
Caroline Olsen, a white female elementary school teacher, in Santa Monica,
California and sentenced to life. The FBI and the state of California used a variety
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 15

of dirty tricks to secure the conviction. The prosecution infiltrated ji Jaga’s defense
team with an informant who supplied intelligence to the District Attorney’s office.

In addition, the main witness in the case perjured himself on the stand. BPP mem-
ber Julio Butler provided perjured testimony during the trial testifying that ji Jaga

admitted killing Olsen. Butler also committed perjury during the cross-examin-
ation by defense attorney Johnny Cochran, in response to the question if he was a

U.S. government informant. Cointelpro files would later confirm Butler was a paid
FBI informant embedded in the BPP. The FBI also withheld evidence of ji Jaga’s
whereabouts during the time of Olsen’s murder. FBI surveillance could confirm ji
Jaga was 350-miles away from the scene during the time of the crime at a BPP
national meeting in Oakland, California. Another crucial development was the
BPP leadership labeling ji Jaga as a counterrevolutionary and purging him from

the organization. BPP founder and leader Huey Newton was convinced by his gov-
ernment operatives, ambitious party members, and his own paranoia, that ji Jaga

was dangerous. BPP leadership could have corroborated his presence in Oakland
during the time of the murder but ordered its members not to testify and support
the case.33

Mutulu and the NCDPP considered the Oakland-based, national BPP leader-
ship’s abandonment of ji Jaga, who many considered a hero and revolutionary

freedom fighter, as similar to its relinquishment of support of the legal defense of
the New York 21. Mutulu knew the role the ji Jaga played in developing fighting
forces of Black freedom fighters across the United States, including training the
clandestine snipers that aided the Black Legion during the battle of New Bethel in
Detroit. He took this assignment to travel to California to check on ji Jaga and his
legal case with enthusiasm. Mutulu committed himself to work for the freedom of
ji Jaga after meeting him in San Quentin. He recruited a team of activists to work
on ji Jaga’s defense, including former BPP New York 21 defendant Afeni Shakur,
radical activist and paralegal Yaasmyn Fula, Afrikan Peoples Party (APP) and
House of Umoja organizer Watani Tyehimba and revolutionary activist Njeri
Khan in Los Angeles.34

Formation of the National Task Force for Cointelpro Litigation and Research

White radical activists made a tremendous contribution to confirming Black
Power activist charges that their organizations, leaders, and members were being
arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on trumped-up charges, forced into exile,
and targeted for assassinations through a governmental campaign of low intensity
warfare. The Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field
office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971 and stumbled upon memorandums and
reports documenting surveillance and counter-insurgency activities on movement
activists. The release of the liberated files to the media led to a demand to make
the FBI’s counter-insurgency documents public and sanctions placed on the FBI
for violations of civil liberties and human rights.
16 Souls January–June 2022

Political repression on the NCDPP and the revelation of the FBI’s Cointelpro
program and its emphasis on surveillance, disruption, and neutralizing the Black
Liberation forces motivated Mutulu, Afeni Shakur,35 and Yaasmyn Fula to build an
investigative arm of the Black Liberation Movement, which publicly emerged as the
National Task Force for Cointelpro Litigation and Research (NTFCLR) in 1977. The
presence of the NTFCLR was announced at a 1978 commemoration of Malcolm X
at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.36 NTFCLR had an impressive Board of
Directors of progressive lawyers including, pioneer radical Black feminist Flo
Kennedy and Lennox Hinds of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and
scholar-activists Nathan Hare and Noam Chomsky.37 Its staff attorneys included

Black Power activist Lew Meyers, McCarthy era-survivor Jonathan Lubell, and anti-
imperialist solidarity supporter Susan Tipograph. Mutulu and Afeni Shakur served

as National Coordinators of the NTFCLR. Both asserted a Black liberation move-
ment-led investigative arm was a necessity. The NTFCLR utilized the Freedom of

Information Act to provide documentation of surveillance, disruption of movement
activities, and government misconduct. The research from these detailed inquiries of
counter insurgency would support these legal defense efforts of increased numbers
of incarcerated revolutionaries like ji Jaga, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) 11,
the Wilmington 10, Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, and other Black Liberation

Army defendants. Questions concerning the violent deaths of Black Power move-
ment activists like Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, John

Huggins, Ralph Featherstone, and Che Payne also motivated concentration to deter-
mine responsibility and pursuit of justice. NTFCLR was also a vehicle for defense of

the Black Liberation Movement as there was intense, continued repression on its

activists, particularly the PGRNA and the Afrikan Peoples Party (a successor organ-
ization of the Revolutionary Action Movement in the early 1970s). The priority for

the NTFCLR was the case of ji Jaga to demand release of the FBI surveillance on
him to determine his innocence in the murder of Carolyn Olsen.38

Revolutionary Doctor: Healing the People

Already active in Queens and Brooklyn, Shakur emerged in the leadership in the

grassroots effort of another New York borough, the Bronx. The Puerto Rican revolu-
tionary nationalist Young Lords Party and other insurgent forces led an activist occu-
pation of the Nurse’s Residence Bronx’s Lincoln Hospital in November 1970. This

action was the latest of a series of protests by patients, medical professionals, and

grassroots activists to address the health care needs of the working class and impov-
erished people of Black and Puerto Rican Bronx communities. Lincoln Hospital was

known in the Bronx as “the Butcher shop” for its substandard facilities and services.

The Young Lords and a coalition of grassroots forces emerged in the Bronx to con-
front the genocidal policies and treatment of Black and Latinx people at the hospital.

The November 1970 action led to the formation of the People’s Program to serve the
needs of grassroots people combating heroin addiction. Heroin was devastating Black
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 17

and Puerto Rican people in working class and poor neighborhoods. The People’s
Program sought solutions to this plague in the Bronx. Mutulu Shakur and the
PGRNA workers he led joined the fight for people’s health care in the Bronx.
Shakur played a critical role in two aspects of the detox project of the People’s

Program: political education and the use of acupuncture in the detoxification pro-
cess. Mutulu Shakur‘s experience as a political education instructor with the

PGRNA and BPP in Queens and New Afrikan nation-building classes and for
Ocean Hill-Brownsville students in Brooklyn provided him plenty of experience in
teaching radical politics to community folks. He was hired by the Lincoln Detox

Community Program as a political education instructor in 1970. Lincoln Detox pri-
oritized political education to recovering addicts. Political education was crucial to

the recovery since arming the patient with an understanding of the social reality
that contributed to their addiction would aid them in combating substance abuse
and recidivism. One friend of the Detox program offered the program desired to
transform addicts from “victims into revolutionaries.”

39 The political education
courses drew from 50 to 100 people per session.40 Shakur and other instructors

pointed to understanding the social and economic position of addicts in the under-
ground economy and their exploitation by high level drug dealers, organized crime,

and pimps, as well as the cycle of violence that harms the community. The Lincoln

Detox political education program also targeted the capitalist pharmaceutical indus-
try and its investment in the U.S. government-controlled methadone maintenance

program for recovering heroin addicts. They argued not only did methadone have

adverse medical effects but was also used to replace heroin addiction with depend-
ency on a new pharmaceutical (methadone) that was controlled by the federal gov-
ernment. This made the U.S.-controlled methadone program another vehicle to

control poor and oppressed communities within the empire. Lincoln’s Detox’s pos-
ition on the debilitating impact and colonial implications of the use of the metha-
done program on Black and Puerto Rican communities made the clinic a political

target of the “for profit,” corporate medical and pharmaceutical industries.
Shakur discovered the efficacy of acupuncture when two of his children were
healed through that treatment. This led him to advocate the Lincoln detoxification

program explore acupuncture as a vehicle to assist patients with a safe, non-chem-
ical withdrawal from heroin addiction.41 The political grounding of the program

was clearly linked to the use of acupuncture to combat addiction. Lincoln’s
People’s Program articulated:
We believe that acupuncture will allow for painless withdrawal. These
treatments will be combined with our political education and after care
programs, housing, vocational, educational, legal, etc.
Since the drag plague is result of the diabolical, avaricious, racist, sexist, and
classist nature of this society, acupuncture is no solution. In that it will allow
for drugless detox, we believe it will help people to better deal with the root
cause of addiction. As a people’s medicine is the big step towards reclaiming
control over our own bodies and minds.42
18 Souls January–June 2022

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

The Chinese Revolution’s concept of the barefoot doctor served as a model for the
Acupuncturists of the Lincoln Detox program.43 Barefoot doctors were healthcare

workers trained and imbedded in rural, peasant communities who served previ-
ously underserved people in the Chinese Revolution. Revolutionary China pro-
moted this concept to developing nations and liberation movements. The Lincoln

Detox healers saw themselves as people’s servants working in the interests of
oppressed, working, and poor people. His work of healing at Lincoln Detox
became the motivation to pursue becoming proficient and licensed as a doctor of
acupuncture. Dr. Shakur became certified and licensed to practice acupuncture in
the State of California in 1976. Eventually, he was promoted to Assistant Director
of Lincoln Detox.
Lincoln Detox came under vicious attacks as right-wing elements in the federal,
state, and local governments and other counter-insurgency forces targeted the
revolutionary-led health care institution. Lincoln Detox endured a campaign of
Cointelpro-oriented media assaults, physical attacks on medical staff, including the
suspicious death of Dr. Richard Taft. Dr. Taft was instrumental in introducing
acupuncture to the Lincoln Hospital People’s Program. Taft’s critical role in the

Mutulu Shakur visiting People’s Republic of China in 1976. Photo from personal collection of Dr.
Mutulu Shakur.
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 19

Richard Delaney (left), Dr. Mutulu Shakur (middle) and host in People’s Republic of China in 1976. Photo
from personal collection of Dr. Mutulu Shakur.

Lincoln’s Peoples Program, and advocacy for a non-chemical detoxification made

him a target for the pharmaceutical industry and other counterrevolutionary oppo-
nents of Lincoln Detox. He began carrying a weapon after surviving a shooting

from unknown attackers in August 1974. He was found dead in a hospital closet
on October 29, 1974. While “preliminary examination of his body showed no track
marks of evidence of drug use,” his death was “officially” declared an overdose.44
Shakur and other Lincoln Detox staff and associates believed his death was a
Cointelpro-oriented political assassination designed to undermine and ultimately
destroy the revolutionary-controlled medical program in the Bronx. The fact that,
on the day of his death, Taft was scheduled to meet with a federal drug official

about the work at Lincoln Detox supported their suspicions. Taft was also specific-
ally a target of the propaganda of the National Caucus of Labor Committees

(NCLC) attacking the Lincoln People’s Program. NCLC was a “pseudo-gang”
45
headed by the controversial Lyndon LaRoche.46 While characterizing itself as a left
organization, the NCLC engaged in counterinsurgency through disruptive actions
designed to destabilize Lincoln Detox and other revolutionary movements like
Newark’s Congress of African People.
The Mayor Edward Koch and the hospital administration took advantage of the
media attacks and internal contradictions at Lincoln Detox to raid the clinic with
a force of 200 NYPD officers on November 28, 1978. The real issue was for the
Richard Delaney (left), Dr. Mutulu Shakur (middle) and host in People’s Republic of China in 1976. Photo
from personal collection of Dr. Mutulu Shakur.
20 Souls January–June 2022

city and the hospital to seize control of an autonomous unit operating on revolu-
tionary politics. Revolutionary Puerto Rican and New Afrikan Lincoln Detox staff

hired as city employees, like Panama Alba, Walter Bosque, and Mutulu Shakur
were all transferred to other city-controlled medical facilities outside of
the Bronx.47
Despite the counter-insurgency assault against Lincoln Detox, by the late 1970s,
Shakur’s work in acupuncture and drug detoxification was both nationally and
internationally recognized as he was invited to address members of the medical

community around the world. Dr. Shakur lectured on his work at many inter-
national medical conferences and was invited to the People’s Republic of China. In

addition, he developed the anti-substance abuse program for the United Church of
Christ’s social justice arm, the Commission for Racial Justice. The United Church
of Christ (UCC) founded the CRJ in 1969 with an annual commitment
of $500,000.
Mutulu Shakur and another skilled acupuncturist, Dr. Richard Delaney, moved
to create an independent clinic and alternative medical school in Harlem, New
York after the city shut down the Lincoln Detox program. Shakur and Delaney’s
clinic operated as a wing of their organization, the Black Acupuncture Advisory
Association of North America (BAAANA). At BAAANA, he continued his
remarkable work and also treated thousands of poor and elderly patients who

would otherwise have no access to treatment of this type. Many community lead-
ers, political activists, legal workers, and doctors were served by BAAANA and

over one hundred medical students were trained in the discipline of acupuncture.

Organizing Self-Defense on the Frontline of the Struggle

The Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ) also employed Shakur to aid Black com-
munities to defend themselves from white supremacist violence. He was engaged

in CRJ in support efforts for community activists in two Black communities under
siege in the early 1970s, Wilmington, North Carolina and Cairo, Illinois. Both
communities were tormented by white supremacist paramilitary groups to repress
grassroots campaigns for human rights. Shakur’s training in armed self-defense
became a resource for both communities’ need to repeal white terrorist invaders.
The CRJ initiated support efforts for the beleaguered Black community of Cairo
in Alexander County in southern Illinois in 1969. African Americans constituted

half of the city’s population of 6000 but were meagerly represented in local gov-
ernment or civil service.48 Cairo Black residents suffered from substandard hous-
ing concentrated in the Pyramid Courts projects, and low income related to

limited employment opportunities in the private and public sector. Black resistance
accelerated in Cairo inspired by federal civil rights legislation during the late
1960s. The death of Robert Hunt, a 19-year-old Black G.I. found hung in the local
jail, sparked a three-day Black revolt in the city in 1967. The increased activism
and Black uprising incited white supremacist reaction, including attacks on the
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 21

Black community by the White Hats, a racist paramilitary group deputized by the
Alexander County Sheriff. Black Power activist and Black liberation theologian
Reverend Charles Koen returned to his hometown to serve as the spokesperson

and organizer of the Cairo United Front, which led the Black community’s grass-
roots movement for human rights. The Cairo United Front organized an economic

boycott of white enterprises downtown in response to white vigilantes firing
rounds of ammunition into the Pyramid Courts for two and a half hours on
March 31, 1969. Routine police repression and nightly attacks by the White Hats
attempted to break Black resistance and the boycott. The white reaction to Black

insurgency increased the necessity of the Black community to organize armed self-
defense for protection and security.49

The CRJ assigned George Bell, one of its staff, to work with the local movement
in Cairo and provided material aid to its Black community. The CRJ joined a
national network of Black clergy to provide food and medical assistance to Cairo’s
Black community to survive economic isolation and violent terrorist assaults.
Mutulu Shakur traveled to Cairo for the CRJ bringing groceries, medicine and
other supplies gathered in New York to the Pyramid Courts in 1970. He also

brought a PGRNA security team to assist the training and armed self-defense cap-
acity in Cairo to repel white vigilantes. Shakur remembered his group traveling

into the Pyramid Courts had to “shoot our way in there” to deliver the material
aid to Pyramid Courts.50
Like Cairo, North Carolina’s Wilmington became a racial hotspot. Wilmington
racial situation “heated up” in 1971 sparked by its recently desegregated school

system. Wilmington’s Black students initiated protests after an off-campus skir-
mish of racial violence. After this incident involving Black and white students,

only the African American youth were disciplined by the high school administra-
tion. Approximately one hundred Black students from two secondary schools

gathered at the Gregory Congregational Church to protest the punishment and
other grievances. Since Gregory was the headquarters of the local resistance and
affiliated with the UCC, CRJ involvement in the local was a natural connection.
Black students demanded justice in cases where they believed they and their peers
were punished unjustly and also wanted the implementation of an African
American Studies curriculum and recognition of the birthday of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. The students called for a boycott of classes until their demands

were met. The CRJ dispatched an organizer Ben Chavis to provide more experi-
enced leadership to the students and local activists.

The student protesters and the Gregory Church became targets of local elected
officials, police, and white supremacists. The paramilitary Rights of White People
group initiated terrorist drive-by shootings at the Gregory Church directed at the
student protesters. Given the increased violence in Wilmington, CRJ Executive

Director Charles Cobb requested Shakur’s assistance in the North Carolina com-
munity. Shakur’s experience in armed self-defense since he was a teenager and

leadership in training to collective security played a critical role for this Black

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

community under siege. He enlisted other trained New Afrikan Security Force per-
sonnel under his leadership, including Chui Ferguson and Ibidun Sundiata, to

instruct Wilmington residents in armed self-defense strategy and tactics. The New
Afrikan security provided training for Wilmington Black residents to defend their
lives and Gregory from terrorist attack.
Hostilities increased resulting in spontaneous violence in downtown
Wilmington. Blacks defending Gregory shot and killed Harvey Cumber, an armed
white man who penetrated a police barricade around the church. The unrest led to
a National Guard occupation of Wilmington. Federal, state, and local authorities
collaborated to charge Chavis and 9 other activists with conspiracy charges related
to the uprising, eventually convicting the Wilmington 10 and sentencing them to a
total of 282 years of incarceration. The Wilmington 10 would ultimately be

released due to a determined international campaign and the exposure of miscon-
duct in the prosecution utilizing perjured testimony.

Revolutionary Nationalist Building Solidarity Relationships

While Mutulu Shakur was a New Afrikan nationalist, anti-imperialism and inter-
national solidarity was a critical aspect of his political practice and beliefs. The

internationalism of Malcolm X is well documented. Malcolm encouraged Black
people to support struggles of oppressed people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Particularly after leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm also began to develop polit-
ical relationship with radical whites in opposition to capitalism and imperialism.

Shakur’s political orientation from his “ideological father” Herman Ferguson,
Gaidi and Imari Obadele and other Malcolm X associates and PGRNA founders
certainly contributed to his internationalism. In a 1979 speech in solidarity with
the Zimbabwe national liberation struggle against white settler colonialism, Shakur

defined himself as a part of the “revolutionary nationalist anti-imperialist move-
ment.”

51 His comrade Yuri Kochiyama described Shakur, “[He] was so inter-
nationalist. He was Black nationalist, a revolutionary Black nationalist, but he very

international in every way.”

52 The insurgent nationalism of Shakur was not racial-
ist and guided him to worked with comrades of a variety of ethnicities and nation-
alities for the liberation of New Afrika and human rights of all oppressed people

against capitalism and imperialism. While he was a nationalist fighting for the lib-
eration of the Black nation, much of his activism around fighting political repres-
sion, people’s medicine, and support for African liberation were collaborations

with activists outside of the Black community. Shakur won allies for the New
Afrika national liberation struggle from his practice and ideological advocacy.
Shakur’s relationship with Kochiyama illustrates his internationalist politics and
practice. An associate of Malcolm X, Kochiyama was widely respected in the Black
community. Her relationship with Malcolm X and citizenship in the Republic of
New Afrika was unique. Through Kochiyama, Shakur reached out to activist Asian
Americans for solidarity with the New Afrikan Independence Movement.
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 23

Japanese-American activist and singer Nobuko Miyamoto notes how she and other
radical Asians participated in a PGRNA rally at the United Nations 1973 in her
biography Not Yo’ Butterfly (2020). The rally called for a UN supervised plebiscite
and the freedom of RNA political prisoners. Miyamoto and her musical partner
Chris Iijima performed at the rally expressing their solidarity with the New
Afrikan movement and situating the plight of Asian Americans with Third World
national liberation movements. She notes how this performance grew greater
bonds of solidarity between activist Asian and New Afrikan communities.
Miyamoto, Iijima, and William “Charlie” Chin would also record an album titled
A Grain of Sand, considered by some “the first album of Asian-American music.”
A Grain of Sand featured a song dedicated to the New Afrikan Independence
Movement titled, “Free the Land.” Mutulu Shakur and his (step) son Tupac were

present at the recording of “Free the Land” and sung background on the record-
ing.53 Tatsu Hirano, one of his Asian American acupuncture students, developed a

solidarity relationship to New Afrikan independence. Hirano stated, “For ex-slaves

in this country to gain strength, to have self-determination. You need to have self-
reliance. You need to have independence ... . the Republic of New Afrika was the

vehicle for that.”
54

Yuri Kochiyama commented on how Shakur also exhibited support and devel-
oped relationships with Asian-American revolutionary organizations like I Wor

Kuen (based in New York’s China town) and East Wind, a revolutionary national-
ist and Marxist-Leninist collective of Japanese Americans in California. Kochiyama

offered, “he supported and knew so much about Asia and the struggles of people
of Asia ... ” She also acknowledged Shakur committing PGRNA workers to do

security for an event in solidarity for the People’s Republic of China to be repre-
sented in the United Nations in 1971. He also assisted in organizing solidarity

events for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea).55
His participation in the Lincoln Peoples Program and people’s detoxification
program also included significant relationships with not only the Puerto Rican
comrades, including members of the Young Lords Party, but also with radical
whites. His work at Lincoln Detox demonstrates how Shakur collaborated with a
cadre of activist white physicians at the Lincoln Detox Program, like Richard Taft
and Barbara Zeller, and other white grassroots health care advocates and activists.
Dr. Zeller’s medical credentials enabled the acupuncture treatment to function at
Lincoln in a critical moment. She noted that Shakur and others initially worked
with her but did not allow her to immediately join the Lincoln collective given the
arrogant and oppressive relationship white physicians had with communities of
color. Zeller’s humility, commitment, revolutionary posture, and service to Black

and Brown patients and acupuncture students was critical in building a profes-
sional and political relationship with Shakur and the New Afrikan and Puerto

Rican members of the collective.56 Zeller later became a founding member of the
May 19th Communist Organization.
24 Souls January–June 2022

Shakur’s relationship with the May 19th Communist Organization is an example
of his cultivating political relationships with white anti-imperialists. His work
against repression and at Lincoln Detox had an impact on the solidarity with white
anti-imperialists who founded the May 19th Communist Organization. Commonly
referred to as May 19th, May 19th Communist Organization was a Marxist-Leninist
collective of white anti-imperialists whose primary work was solidarity with
national liberation movements inside and outside the United States. The date May

19 is distinguished among revolutionaries by the birthdays of Vietnamese com-
munist and patriot Ho Chi Minh (1890) and Black revolutionary Malcolm X

(1925), and the death of Cuban independence fighter Jose Marti (1895).57
May 19th had its roots in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the
support network of the Weather Underground. National discourse intensified within
the white anti-imperialists with the publication of Weather Underground’s book
Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism. The Prairie Fire

Organizing Committee (PFOC) was organized to provide an aboveground, organiz-
ing vehicle and political program to make the politics in the publication a reality.

The Weather Underground, through PFOC, utilized the publication to organize its
network for the 1976 Hard Times Conference in Chicago, ostensibly to promote
unified resistance during the economic recession of the period. The conference
resulted in ideological struggle and political conflict, not a coordinated anti-capitalist

and imperialist program of action and resistance. In the tradition of new left gather-
ings during the Black Power era, Black conference participants formed a caucus and

placed demands on the Hard Times gathering organizers. Revolutionary nationalists
and feminist activists were particularly critical of conference organizers goals of
attempting to promote an objective of multi-national, Marxist-Leninist vanguard
party to lead an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle within the U.S. empire.
A primary motivation for the development May 19th grew out of the criticism by
revolutionary nationalists and New Afrikan liberation forces that the Weather
Underground’s Hard Times Conference did not recognize the vanguard role of the
Black Liberation and other national liberation movements, inside and outside the
borders of the U.S., in the fight to dismantle imperialism.
One of the recognized leaders and founders of May 19th was Italian national
Silvia Baraldini. Born in Rome to a privileged Italian household, Baraldini came to
the U.S. with her family when she was 14. She attended the University of Wisconsin

at Madison, where she joined SDS and anti-war protests during the Vietnam con-
flict. After leaving college, Baraldini moved to New York and became active in

defense efforts of the New York Panther 21 and captured Black Liberation Army
members, including Assata Shakur. Shakur and other members of the NCDPP
developed a working relationship with Baraldini in the work in support of the NY
21 and other revolutionary nationalist political prisoners. Her work particularly
focused on building white solidarity with Black political prisoners.
Baraldini participated in and organized for the Hard Times and was responsible
for recruiting Black liberation forces from the South, including PGRNA President

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

Dara Abubakari, to the conference. The Weather Underground’s political positions

and leadership of the conference disappointed her. She perceived the political dir-
ection of the conference leadership as an abandonment of the Black liberation

movement, particularly the captive Black revolutionaries that had become the cen-
ter of her political work.

Other key founders of May 19th were participants of work that Shakur was
engaged in at Lincoln Detox. Shakur’s acupuncture student, Susan Rosenberg, also
worked with him at Lincoln Detox, and participated in solidarity activities with
the Black liberation movement. After the Hard Times experience, Baraldini and
Rosenberg pursued a deeper understanding of the Black Liberation movement,
even traveling to the southeastern U.S. to explore the potential and possibility of a
New Afrikan national liberation struggle.
A recognized leader of the revolutionary nationalist movement in the New

York area, Mutulu Shakur developed into a representation of the national liber-
ation movement of the New Afrikan people for May 19th. Shakur consulted and

Dr. Mutulu Shakur in Zimbabwe in 1980 to observe the elections that ushered the country to Black major-
ity rule.

26 Souls January–June 2022

collaborated with May 19th on its solidarity work with the Black liberation move-
ment and freedom struggles on the African continent, particularly the fight against

settler colonialism in Zimbabwe.
One of the best examples of his anti-imperialist work and collaboration with
May 19th was their joint work in solidarity with the Zimbabwe African National
Union (ZANU). ZANU was engaged in mass resistance and armed struggle of
national liberation to dismantle white minority rule in their southern African
country, called Rhodesia by the settler-colonial regime. The solidarity work
included raising funds for material aid to ZANU. One of the most successful
events was a 1978 benefit concert in Harlem to purchase an ambulance for ZANU.
The concert featured popular artists including pianist and bandleader Eddie
Palmieri, progressive singer and spoken word artist Gil Scott Heron, and Shakur’s
friend Nobuko Miyamoto and Bennie Yee.58 The following year, Mutulu Shakur
delivered an address at Chitepo Day59 organized by a group led by May 19th

cadre—the New York Material Aid Campaign for ZANU. A lifelong Pan-
Africanist, Shakur clearly linked the struggle against settler colonialism in

Zimbabwe with the fight for Black liberation in the United States. Shakur traveled

to Zimbabwe in 1980 as a part of a delegation to observe the independence elec-
tions in Zimbabwe for Black majority rule. The delegation included Muntu

Matsimela of the Afrikan Peoples Party, former political prisoner Ahmed Obafemi

of the PGRNA and Dr. Barbara Zeller of May 19th and was invited due to the soli-
darity work with ZANU in the fight against settler colonialism.

Underground and Clandestine Resistance

Mutulu Shakur went underground to avoid capture by the FBI/NYPD Joint
Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) in March of 1982, after a Southern District of New
York magistrate issued a warrant for his arrests along with former BPP member
Jamal Joseph and his old PGRNA recruit Chui Ferguson. The FBI charged them
with being part of a criminal enterprise under Racketeering Influenced Corrupt

Organization (RICO) act. They argued that Shakur was part of a revolutionary col-
lective called “the Family’’ a.k.a. “New Afrikan Freedom Fighters’’ that carried out

a series of acts primarily directed against U.S. financial institutions. The federal
prosecution argued that Shakur beginning in 1976 organized a clandestine unit
that targeted armored cars and banks to secure funds to finance political causes

and institutions, including the BAANA clinic, youth development programs, polit-
ical mobilizations, and material aid for the fight against settler colonialism in

Zimbabwe. The U.S. attorneys and FBI also included the 1979 escape of Assata
Shakur from the Clinton Prison for Women as part of a criminal conspiracy.
Mutulu Shakur eluded the FBI and the JTTF for four years, ultimately being

captured in 1986. The incident that sparked the manhunt for him and several for-
mer BPP, PGRNA, BLA, and white anti-imperialists was a failed attempt by the

elements of BLA and its alliance with white anti-imperialists, the Revolutionary
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 27

Armed Task Force (RATF) to take 1.6 million dollars from a Brink armored truck
on October 20, 1981. On November 5, 1981, a BLA communique was issued to put
the October 20 event in Rockland County into political context. The communique
described the Rockland holdup as an “expropriation.”

60 Sundiata Acoli, an incarcer-
ated BLA soldier defined expropriation as “(W)hen an oppressed person or political

person moves to take back some of the wealth that’s been exploited from him or
taken from them.”

61 The BLA communique stated the attempted expropriation was
an action of RATF, a “strategic alliance ... of “Black Freedom Fighters and North
American (white) Anti-Imperialists... under the leadership of the Black Liberation
Army... ”62 The RATF came together in response to an escalation of acts of white
supremacist violence in the United States during the late 1970s and early 80’s,
including the murders of Black children in Atlanta, Black women in Boston, the
shooting of four Black women in Alabama, and the acceleration of paramilitary
activity by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations.63
Shakur’s trial attorney, Chokwe Lumumba, argued he was not a criminal but a
New Afrikan Freedom Fighter. While not claiming involvement in the activities he

was charged with, his defense asserted these acts were not part of a criminal enter-
prise, but a result of the political conflict of the national liberation forces of the

captive Afrikan people in the U.S. Under cross-examination, government’s witness
Tyrone Rison, testified that the participants in these actions were “revolutionaries
committed to the liberation of New Afrika, and that their deeds were designed to

secure funds from the New Afrikan struggle, to maintain community service insti-
tutions for the oppressed black population, and to support other Afrikan liberation

struggles in the world.”

64 Rison is a Vietnam-era veteran and a former worker in

the PGRNA who became a prosecution witness and informant to avoid racketeer-
ing conspiracy, murder and bank robbery charges for himself and felony charges

for his wife. He admitted on stand to killing the Brinks guard at a June 20, 1981,
expropriation in the Bronx, NY. Despite admitting to the murder, Rison was
rewarded with a 10-year sentence for his testimony betraying his former comrades
and cooperation with the federal prosecution.
The prosecution’s case against Shakur was built by former movement activists,
like Rison, who cooperated with the government’s case to receive lesser sentences.
Prosecutors presented no incriminating physical evidence linking him to criminal
offenses to the jury. Shakur and his codefendant Marilyn Buck were convicted on
May 11, 1968, despite the prosecution’s lack of physical evidence and reliance on
the testimony of compromised informants. Federal Judge Charles Haight ordered
a 60 year sentence for Shakur and 80 years of incarceration for Buck.

Life in Incarceration: The Struggle Continues

Since his capture in 1986, Dr. Mutulu Shakur has been a political prisoner in sev-
eral federal institutions across the U.S. He continued to engage in political educa-
tion and consciousness raising of his fellow prisoners. Shakur established a “circle

28 Souls January–June 2022

of consciousness” behind the walls at each institution he was incarcerated. The

“circle of consciousness” would promote mutual respect for cultural diversity, pol-
itical and cultural awareness, and intellectual and artistic development. 65 Several

men incarcerated with Shakur credit him with promoting unity between a variety
of elements in the institutions he was imprisoned, including street organizations

like Crips, Bloods, Gangster Disciples, as well as religious and cultural commun-
ities as the Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, Sunni Muslims, Rastafarians,

Christians, and a variety of other constituencies. This work is a continuation of

the work he engaged in with Abubadika Carson to bring unity to street organiza-
tions in the city in the five boroughs of New York. Despite his work to bring unity

and decrease violence inside some of the highest security prisons in the U.S.,
Shakur continues to be a target of political repression while incarcerated.
Incarceration did not prevent Shakur from being impactful inside the prison in
the Black liberation struggle on the streets. His relationship with his (step) son
and popular commercial Hip Hop artist and actor, Tupac Amaru Shakur, certainly

aided his ability to organize inside the penitentiary. Dr. Shakur and other promin-
ent individuals incarcerated around the U.S. conferred and decided to establish a

code to discourage violence and informants and encourage order in Black and

Brown communities. Vehicles to establish conflict resolution between street organ-
izations were established. Tupac Shakur was asked to be the “face” of the code,

which was titled the Thug Code. Dr. Shakur, Tupac and Mutulu’s son and Hip-
Hop artist Mopreme were signatures to the Thug Code, issued in 1992. Tupac

worked with local activists and performed at grassroots gatherings in New York
and New Jersey to promote the Thug Code.66 Tupac also visited and brought other
Hip-Hop artists, including fellow Thuglife and Outlawz artist Big Syke aka
Mussolini (Tyruss Gerald Himes), Bay Area rapper and producer Mac Dre, and
all-female Los Angeles R&B and Hip Hop group YNV to the Federal Correctional

Institution (FCI) in Lompoc, California in 1993. Tupac’s performance at the fed-
eral prison inspired young prisoners across the U.S.67 Dr. Shakur believed Tupac’s

arrest for sexual assault and 1994 shooting outside Quad studios in New York was

related to his advocacy of the Thug Code and a part of counterinsurgency to pre-
vent the radicalizing of Black street forces.68

Dr. Shakur organized a memorial musical tribute project to salute Tupac, ten
years after his untimely death in 1996. The project, Dare to Struggle (2006),
included underground artists on the street and those incarcerated. Mutulu Shakur
and Canadian music producer and artist and Hip-Hop activist Raoul Juneja (a.k.a

Deejay Ra) served as executive producers on Dare to Struggle. Artists on the pro-
ject included Dr. Shakur’s children Mopreme and Nzinga, Tupac’s group the

Outlawz, and those affiliated with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Ife Jie
and Zayd Malik, and an Iranian M.C. Imman Faith. Incarcerated artists like Strap
and the group SCU (Solitary Confinement Unit) also joined the project. One of
the artists who contributed a song that didn’t make the album was a young rapper
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 29

from L.A. named Concept, who eventually became an internationally known Hip
Hop performer and entrepreneur, Nipsey Hussle.69
Dr. Shakur proposed programming and education focused on Hip Hop to make
Cultural Diversity classes sponsored by Georgia State University’s (GSU) African
American Studies in United States Penitentiary (USP) Atlanta. Shakur’s proposal was
offered to promote more participation among younger prisoners in the Cultural
Diversity classes. The proposal centered around a Hip Hop Summit that included
engaging prisoners with scholars from GSU, Morehouse College, and the University
of Georgia and participation from members of the entertainment industry, including
popular radio deejay Greg Street from Atlanta’s V103 FM and Disturbing the Peace
Records. The Hip Hop Summit was transplanted to the Federal Correctional Center
(FCC) at Coleman, Florida in 2005. FCC Coleman is the largest federal correctional
center in the United States with two maximum and a medium and minimum-security
facility for men and a prison for women. Warden Carlisle Holder was the chief
administrator for three of the facilities (one maximum, the medium, and women’s
prison). Holder encouraged education and rehabilitation and there were few incidents
of violence in the facilities under his command. Shakur worked with other prisoners
and friends from the community to organize cultural and educational programs at
FCC Coleman. The Hip Hop Summit and African American History Month drew
significant participation from prisoners and included outside guests including Hip
Hop artist Ja Rule, former Black Panther, writer, and theatrical producer and director
Jamal Joseph, New Afrikan activist Ahmed Obafemi, African-centered scholar
Marimba Ani, and music mogul Chazz Williams (the cousin of Shakur).

Continued Political Repression While Incarcerated

The federal Bureau of Prisons used a leak of an unauthorized video recording of

programming at USP Coleman as a pretext to investigate Shakur ultimately trans-
ferring him to USP Administrative Maximum Security (ADX Florence) in

Florence, Colorado in 2007. ADX Florence is the highest-level security facility in
the federal prison system. The transfer of Shakur and other prisoners, as well as

USP Coleman staff, effectively disrupted the educational and rehabilitation activ-
ities at the institution and discouraged other federal prisons from instituting simi-
lar programs.

Dr. Shakur was transferred from ADX Florence (in Colorado) to another max-
imum-security facility USP Victorville in California in 2011. The political repression

of Shakur continued as he was placed in segregation there after an officer monitor-
ing his February 2013 phone call to a Black History Month program at California

State University at Northridge determined he was “inciting a riot,” a peculiar assess-
ment since he was speaking on the need for a truth and reconciliation process in

the United States to the event (which included actor Danny Glover).70 He suffered a
stroke while in isolation, most likely since in segregation, Shakur was prevented
from access to the food and exercise he utilized to manage hypertension.

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

The U.S. Parole Commission rejected a mandatory release date for Dr. Shakur
in 2016. The argument presented to deny his release was based upon his politics.
His defining himself as a target of the FBI’s Cointelpro program and as a “political
prisoner was presented as evidence that he was not remorseful and a danger to the
community.” Shakur’s signing correspondence with the terms “stiff resistance” was
also used as evidence by the Parole Commission that he would commit crimes if
released.71 The continued incarceration of Dr. Shakur is evidence that political
detention continues.

Conclusion

Mutulu Shakur has lived an amazing life of struggle and resistance. He has contin-
ued to engage in the movement to liberate his people and humanity from his teen-
age years on the streets of New York until being an incarcerated elder in his 70s.

Shakur organized in and for his community and in solidarity with people around
the world. His life is driven by the vision of New Afrikan people being free and
independent and that human beings live in a world where quality education, food,
clothing, health care and shelter is available to all.
For decades Mutulu Shakur has advocated a process of truth and reconciliation
for the hostilities of the Cointelpro era, a struggle in which he was an active part
of the resistance to free Black people. While not claiming specific acts, Dr. Shakur

has acknowledged being part of what the state calls a “conspiracy” and that he par-
ticipated in concert with others in a strategy to achieve national liberation for New

Afrikan (Black) people. Dr. Shakur recognizes that the conflict between the U.S.
government, state, and local entities, as well as white supremacist civilians, and the
Black liberation resistance had its consequences. Lives were lost and families and
communities were irreparably harmed from this hostility. He has, “accepted full
responsibility for the acts that resulted in his conviction and for many years has

expressed the deepest remorse for those who were killed and their families plead-
ing that there is no justification for the loss of life for the victims.”

72 Dr. Shakur
also believes the issue of trauma experienced, particularly from the participants in
the conflict and the families and communities effected, must be taken into account
in the process of bringing resolution to the damages of the Cointelpro-era conflict.
He also sees the issue of political repression and its corresponding loss of life,
trauma and other impact on families and communities as issues of reparations.
While Dr. Shakur calls for truth and reconciliation, the federal government
shows no compassion or sense of playing by the rules in his situation. Shakur has
been eligible for release for years according to the guidelines of his sentencing and
given his conduct during incarceration. His continued incarceration is a de facto
death sentence as Dr. Shakur is a cancer patient and vulnerable to COVID 19,
which he has already survived once.
Dr. Shakur continues to unite people toward national liberation and a just
world. He continues to promote healing and reconciliation. Growing numbers of
people are calling for his release.

Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 31

Notes

1. Sid Mordaunt, phone conversation with author (October 29, 2021).
2. Mutulu Shakur, discussion with People’s Video Network, Atlanta, GA (March 26, 1998),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FApkBXm4A3A (December 26, 2021).
3. According to Ferguson, his membership in the Muslim Mosque Incorporated was “without
fuss or fanfare” since he was an employee of the New York city public schools. See Iyaluua
Ferguson with Herman Ferguson, An Unlikely Warrior-Herman Ferguson: Evolution of the
Black Nationalist Revolutionary (Holly Springs, NC: Ferguson-Swan, 2011), 130.
4. For details on Herman Ferguson’s revolutionary nationalist organizing in South Jamaica,
please read Ferguson, An Unlikely Warrior.
5. Mutulu Shakur quoted in Ibid., 190.
6. Max Stanford was the National Chairman of RAM and particularly identified on J. Edgar
Hoover’s “Black Nationalist Hate Group” memo—a key document in identifying the
Mutulu Shakur (top-center) with family visiting at United States Penitentiary at Lompoc (California).

Pictured are Mutulu’s children Mopreme (top left), Sekyiwa (top right), Nzinga (bottom right), Chinua (bot-
tom center) and wife Makini (bottom left). Photo from the collection of Makini Shakur.

32 Souls January–June 2022

prioritizing of political repression and counterinsurgency against the Black
Power movement.
7. Ferguson, An Unlikely Warrior, 190–1.
8. Shakur interview with People’s Video Network.
9. Sonny Carson (aka Mwlina Imiri Abubadika) was the Chairman of Brooklyn chapter of
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and in 1967 broke with the national organization
to form independent CORE with a more radical and militant political agenda. After
leaving national CORE, Abubadika formed his own organization, the School of
Common Sense.
10. Chui Ferguson interview; Mutulu Shakur correspondence with author (May 29, 2021).
11. Herman Ferguson quoted in Ferguson, Unlikely Warrior, 203.
12. Ibid.
13. Shakur interview with People’s Video Network.
14. Ibid.
15. Rhody McCoy, interviewed in “Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back,” NPR
(February 12, 2020), https://www.npr.org/transcripts/803382499
16. Anonymous Republic of New Afrika citizen quoted in Christian Davenport, How Social
Movements Die: Repression and Demobilization of the Republic of New Africa (New York:
Cambridge University, 2015), 199.
17. Ibid., 95, 195.
18. Ibid., 215.
19. Mutulu Shakur, Notes on the National Task Force for Cointelpro Litigation and
Research (n.d.).
20. Ibid.
21. Imari Obadele, Free the Land (Washington, DC: The House of Songhay, 1987), 36.
22. Mutulu Shakur notes on NTFCLR.
23. Chaka Fuller would be mysteriously murdered after the acquittal, which his movement
comrades believed to be a retaliatory assassination by Detroit police.
24. Shakur interview with People’s Video Network.
25. Davenport, How Social Movements Die, 211–12.
26. Her birth name was Mary Yuriko Nakahara. She married Bill Kochiyama in 1946. Please
see the biography of Yuri Kochiyama by Diane C. Fujino, The Revolutionary Life of Yuri
Kochiyama: Heartbeat of Struggle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2005).
27. Chui Ferguson-El, conversation with author (telephone) (March 24, 2021).
28. Mutulu Shakur, conversation with author, Victorville, California (June 17, 2012); Kamau
Sadiki, conversation with author (November 27, 2003), Atlanta, GA.
29. The Panther 21 open letter proclaimed the Weathermen as part of the vanguard of the
revolutionary movement inside the United States and was critical of the national BPP
leadership. The insurgent resistance of the Weather Underground was contrasted with the
perspective of Panther 21 reflect the views of many members who believed it was necessary
to respond to state repression by strengthening the armed resistance capacity of the BPP,
not abandoning it. Rod Such, “Newton Expels Panthers,” Guardian (February 1971), Vol.
20, No. 21, 4; E. Tani and Kae Sera, False Nationalism, False Internationalism (Chicago: A
Seeds Beneath the Snow Publication, 1985), 209; Akinyele O. Umoja, “Set Our Warriors
Free: The Legacy of the Black Panther Party and Political Prisoners” in Black Panther
Party Reconsidered, ed. Jones, 421–22. The Panther 21 open letter was printed in the East
Village Other, a local underground newspaper. It appeared in the January 19, 1971 issue.
30. Dr. Mutulu Shakur, conversation with author (May 21, 2021); Mutulu Shakur notes on the
National Task Force for Cointelpro Litigation and Research.
31. Mutulu Shakur, National Cointelpro Litigation and Research Notes (n.d.); Mutulu Shakur,
quoted in Diane C. Fujino, The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama: Heartbeat of
Free the Land, Free the People: The Political Significance of Dr. Shakur’s Legacy 33

Struggle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2005), 182–3. Shakur and PGRNA worker
Ibidun Sundiata were key participants of the NCDPP.
32. Geronimo ji Jaga speech at Pasadena City College, October 1997, Freedom Archives.
33. Akinyele Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance, Liberation, Imagination, and the Black
Panther Party,” New Political Science 21, no. 2: 140.
34. Shakur, Notes on NTFCLR.
35. Mutulu and Afeni Shakur began a relationship in the early 1970s and married in 1975.
Their household was composed of Afeni’s son Tupac (born in 1971) and their daughter
Sekyiwa (born in 1975).
36. Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom 13 years prior. This event was the
first time Black Liberation movement forces used the facility since his assassination.
37. Yaasmyn Fula, Spirit of an Outlaw: The Untold Story of Tupac Shakur and Yaki “Khadafi”
Fula (Los Angeles, CA: Bearded Dragon, 2020), 28.
38. “National Task Force for Cointelpro Litigation and Research,” 1978, http://
freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/COINTELPRO/510.COINTELPRO.
NationalTaskforceCOINTELPRO.statement.pdf (accessed December 31, 2021).
39. Nobuko Miyamoto, Not Your Butterfly: My Love Song of Relocation, Race and Revolution
(Oakland, CA: University of California, 2021), 269.
40. “Lincoln Detox-The People’s Program,” (flier) Freedom Archives (accessed April 22, 2021).
41. Eana Meng, “Mutulu Shakur and the Lincoln Detox Center,” Of Part and Parcel (February

20, 2020), https://www.ofpartandparcel.com/blog-2/dr-mutulu-shakur-and-the-lin...
center (accessed November 12, 2021); Nobuko Miyamoto, Not Your Butterfly.

42. Lincoln Detox, Bronx New York, quoted in SOULBOOK 10, 3, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 71.
43. Rachel Pagones, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation and Love (London: Brevis
Press, 2021), 28–9.
44. Ibid., 134, 137.
45. The use of pseudo gangs is a counterinsurgency tactic where state-controlled actors
disguise themselves as insurgent groups by oppressive forces to create division within the
resistance movement. This tactic was used by the British to fight the Kikuyu insurgency
(aka the Mau Mau) in the 1950s. See Major Frank Kitson, Gangs and Counter-Gangs
(London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960).
46. Lyndon LaRoche was an American political activist who described himself and the NCLC
but promoted a right-wing agenda. Some also argued NCLC functioned as a cult around
the personality of LaRoche. See Manning Marable, “Black Fundamentalism: Louis
Farrakhan and the Politics of Conservative Black Nationalism,” Institute of Research in
African American Studies 39, no. 4: 73–5.
47. Pagones, Acupuncture as Revolution, 152.
48. David Maraniss and Neil Henry, “Race ‘War’ in Cairo Reconciliation Grows as Memories
Recede,” Washington Post (March 22, 1987), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/
politics/1987/03/22/race-war-in-cairo-reconciliation-grows-as-memories-recede/578ee207-
f584-4b0a-bbb6-100ec52d561a/ (accessed September 6, 2021).
49. “Guide to the United Front of Cairo, Illinois Photographs PHOTOS 171,” Tamiment
Library and Robert Wagner Labor Archives, http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/
photos_171/bioghist.html (accessed September 6, 2021); Kristen De Mez, “The Roots of a
Public Housing Crisis in Cairo, Illinois,” Anxious Bench (September 7, 2017), https://www.
patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2017/09/roots-public-housing-crisis-cairo-illinois/
(accessed September 6, 2021).
50. Shakur conversation with author, Victorville, CA (USP Victorville) (June 17, 2012).
51. “Speech by Dr. Mutulu Shakur: Chitepo Day” (March 18, 1979), Freedom Archives, http://
freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC52_scans/52.MutuluShakur.ChitepoDay.1979.
pdf (accessed December 31, 2021).
34 Souls January–June 2022

52. Yuri Kochiyama, interview in The Shabazz Production, “Yuri: Mutulu Shakur and the
Malcolm Connection,” https://youtu.be/kDpafZzeCSQ (accessed December 20, 2021).
53. “NYT notes Mutulu and a young Tupac’s backing vocals on ‘A Grain of Sand’ album,”
mutulshakur.com, https://mutulushakur.com/a-grain-of-sand-album/ (accessed December 5, 2021).
54. Pagones, Acupuncture as Revolution, 146–7.
55. Kochiyama, “Mutulu Shakur and Malcolm.”
56. Pagones, Acupuncture as Revolution, 140–1.
57. Ibid., 160.
58. Ibid., 119.
59. Chitepo Day was named for Herbert Chitepo, a founder and leader of the Zimbabwe
African National Union who was assassinated in 1975.
60. Black Liberation Army communique, “On Strategic Alliance of the Armed Military Forces

of the Revolutionary Nationalist and Anti-Imperialist Movement,” in America, the Nation-
State: The Politics of the United States from a State-Building Perspective, ed. Imari

Abubakari Obadele (Baton Rouge, LA: The Malcolm Generation, 1998), 423–4.
61. Acoli, Brink’s Trial Testimony, 30.
62. BLA Communique, “Strategic Alliance of Armed Military Forces,” 423.
63. Afoh et al., Black Struggle in America, 43. “Sekou Odinga: I Am a Muslim and a New
Afrikan Freedom Fighter,” New Afrikan: Organ of the Provisional Government of the
Republic of New Afrika (December 1983), IX, 3, 4.
64. Chokwe Lumumba, POW Motion, 16.
65. Ras J. Jondi Harrell, interview (video recording), December 18, 2021.
66. Cocaine City, https://youtu.be/wEu7_pXuYSU (accessed December 25, 2021); Watani
Tyehimba correspondence with author (December 25, 2021).
67. Gus Lines, interview with author, video recording (December 18, 2021).
68. Cocaine City.
69. Robert, Hip Hop Exclusive Mutulu Shakur’s Video Mixtape, Thuglife Army (May 26,

2006), https://www.thuglifearmy.com/tupac-news/2302-hip-hop-exclusive-mutu...
video-mixtape.html (accessed December 24, 2021); Ife Jie, correspondence with author

(December 22, 2021).
70. Mutulu Shakur: Legal Action v. Parole Commission, pg 30, https://www.documentcloud.org/
documents/4449357-Shakur-Legal-Action-031127820403.html (accessed December 28, 2021).
71. Ibid., 43.
72. “Dr. Mutulu Shakur: It’s Time for His Release,” https://mutulushakur.com/ (accessed
December 29, 2021).
About the Author
Akinyele Umoja is a Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University and
the author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance and the Mississippi Freedom
Movement (NYU Press, 2014). Professor Umoja is also a coeditor, with Karin
Stanford and Jasmin Young, of the Black Power Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press,
2018). Professor Umoja’s scholarship is featured in several other journals and

anthologies. For well over four decades, Umoja has advocated reparations, free-
dom of political prisoners, and solidarity of the Black Liberation movement with

people across the globe fighting for human rights and freedom from oppression.

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

Kofi Bilal Mahmud Eid AlFitr 1443 A.H.

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