Assata Olugbala Shakur ( born July 16, 1947, as JoAnne Deborah Byron, married name Chesimard ) is an African-American activist and escaped convict who was a member of the Black Panther Party ( BPP ) and Black Liberation Army ( BLA ).

Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur was accused of several crimes and made the subject of a multi-state manhunt.

In May 1973 Shakur was involved in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, during which New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and BLA member Zayd Malik Shakur were killed and Shakur and Trooper James Harper were wounded.

Between 1973 and 1977, Shakur was indicted in relation to six other alleged criminal incidents — charged with murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, and kidnapping — resulting in three acquittals and three dismissals.

Shakur was then incarcerated in several prisons, where her treatment drew criticism from some human rights groups.

Shakur was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, on July 16, 1947, where she lived for three years with her parents and grandparents, Lula and Frank Hill.

Shakur was arrested for the first time in 1967 with 100 other BMCC students, on charges of trespassing.

That same year she changed her name to Assata Shakur and joined the Black Liberation Army ( BLA ), " a politico-military organization, whose primary objective ( was ) to fight for the independence and self-determination of Afrikan people in the United States.

On April 6, 1971, Shakur was shot in the stomach during a struggle with a guest at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan and was arrested on a string of charges.

Shakur then allegedly displayed a revolver and a struggle ensued, during which she was shot.

Shakur is alleged to have said that she was glad that she had been shot since now that she had experienced what it was like she was no longer afraid to be shot again.

Following an August 23, 1971, bank robbery in Queens, Shakur was sought for questioning, and a photograph of a woman ( who was later alleged to be Shakur ) with thick rimmed black glasses, a high hairdo pulled tightly over her head, and a steadily pointed gun became ubiquitous in banks and full page print ads paid for by the New York Clearing House Association.

On December 21, 1971, Shakur was named as one of four suspects by New York City police in a hand grenade attack that destroyed a police car and slightly injured two patrolmen in Maspeth, Queens ; a 13-state alarm was issued three days after the attack when a witness identified Shakur and Andrew Jackson from FBI photographs.

Shakur was one of those wanted for questioning for wounding a police officer attempting to serve a traffic summons in Brooklyn on January 26, 1972.

Faith Evans, who at the time was Biggie's estranged wife, was reportedly seen with Shakur after a public breakup with Biggie.

Surkov reportedly has portraits of Argentine-born revolutionary Che Guevara and American rapper Tupac Shakur next to one of Putin in his Kremlin office and is fond of poets such as Allen Ginsberg of the Beat Generation.

They took on causes of the Black Panthers, marching to the Women's House of Detention in support of Afeni Shakur, and other radical New Left causes.

Prior to joining the BPP, Shakur had met several of its members on a 1970 trip to Oakland, California.

According to police, Shakur knocked on the door of a room occupied by an out-of-town guest and asked " Is there a party going on here?

John Powis alleged that Shakur was involved in an armed robbery at his Our Lady of the Presentation church in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on September 14, 1972, based on FBI photographs.

In 1972, Shakur was the subject of a nationwide manhunt after the FBI alleged that she was the " revolutionary mother hen " of a Black Liberation Army cell that had conducted a " series of cold-blooded murders of New York City police officers ", including the " execution style murders " of New York Police Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones on May 21, 1971 and Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie on January 28, 1972.

As of February 17, 1972, when Shakur was identified as one of four BLA members on a short trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, Shakur was wanted for questioning ( along with Robert Vickers, Twyman Meyers, Samuel Cooper, and Paul Stewart ) in relation to police killings, a Queens bank robbery, and the grenade attack.

Shakur was announced as one of six suspects ( pictured left ) in the ambushing of four policemen — two in Jamaica, Queens, and two in Brooklyn — on January 28, 1973, despite the fact that the assailants were identified as male.

Specifically, documentary evidence suggests that Shakur was targeted by an investigation named CHESROB, which " attempted to hook former New York Panther Joanne Chesimard ( Assata Shakur ) to virtually every bank robbery or violent crime involving a black woman on the East Coast ".

Mug shot of Shakur, taken on May 2, 1973

On May 2, 1973, at about 12: 45 a. m., Assata Shakur, along with Zayd Malik Shakur ( born James F. Costan ) and Sundiata Acoli ( born Clark Squire ), was stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick by State Trooper James Harper, backed up by Trooper Werner Foerster in a second patrol vehicle ( Car 820 ), for driving with a broken tail light.

At this point, Assata Shakur and Acoli were ordered to put their hands on their laps and not to move ; Harper said that Assata Shakur then reached down to the right of her right leg, pulled out a pistol, and shot him in the shoulder, after which he retreated to behind his vehicle.

On October 20, 1981, after six previous unsuccessful attempts to rob a Brinks truck, Shakur and five or six other men succeeded in robbing one in Nanuet, New York.

Aboriginal boxing champion and former rugby league player Anthony Mundine identified US rapper Tupac Shakur as a personal inspiration, after Mundine's release of his 2007 single, Platinum Ryder.

Mopreme recently released the mixtape " Assassin & Mopreme Shakur Present: Black & Brown Pride " as a prelude to his album, which was released in early 2007.

After several years of chart successes for artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Outlawz and Tha Dogg Pound, Death Row Records stagnated after Knight's incarceration on parole violation charges in September 1996.

The same year, Knight offered to post a bail ($ 1. 4 million ) for Tupac Shakur if the troubled rapper agreed to sign with Death Row.

In 2001, Jay-Z spoke out against Prodigy after he took an issue with a Jay-Z line from " Money, Cash, Hoes " that he felt were subliminal shots at Mobb Deep and referenced Mobb Deep's beef with Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and Death Row Records.

Death Row Records soon acquired Tupac Shakur, Warren G and Snoop Doggy Dogg as a feud developed between the East and West Coasts.

Another report was that Death Row Artist, Sam Sneed, was beaten in one of the label's meetings by a group of Death Row affiliates, led by Knight and Shakur.

During a trip to Las Vegas for a Mike Tyson fight, Shakur was interviewed on the possibility of Death Row East, an east coast branch of the record label, it was also during this time Alex Roberts and David Kenner had been seen at Knights Vegas Club 662 in discussion about the possibility of having Roberts New York underworld connections help pave the way for Death Row East.

Afeni Shakur won her court case against Death Row Record to receive 150 unreleased songs by her son.

In the October that followed, towards the end of the same year, Tupac Shakur had been bailed out of jail by Death Row's Suge Knight in exchange for releasing his following four albums on Death Row Records.

Tupac Shakur was paid $ 200, 000 dollars by Death Row Records owner Suge Knight to record a track for the album.

In the wake of the " Cop Killer " affair, Warner Bros. distanced itself from gangsta rap and in late 1995 it sold its 50 % stake in Interscope Records and its controversial subsidiary Death Row Records ( Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg ) back to co-owners Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field.

When 2Pac signed to Death Row upon his release from prison, he recruited his step brother Mopreme Shakur and Big Syke from Thug Life.

A year later, Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Anderson in response to a lawsuit Anderson filed against Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight, Tupac's estate and others in the Death Row organization.

A rivalry began, fed by the music news, focusing on West Coast's Tupac Shakur and the East Coast's Notorious B. I. G .. By the middle of the decade, Tupac and Biggie were shot dead, and Dr. Dre's Death Row Records had fallen apart.

Shakur and the Death Row crew attended a boxing match in Las Vegas, where he was murdered in 1996.

Wilkerson exhausted his final appeal to Judge Jan Krocker in February 2000, a dramatic scene involving community activist Njeri Shakur ( member of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement and the Allen Parkway Village Residents Council ) shouting at Judge Krocker led to a contempt charge against Shakur ; she served 30 days in the Harris County Jail albeit several demonstrations outside the Harris County Courthouse.