ASSATA SHAKUR, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, EXCERPTS...

ASSATA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, by Assata Shakur (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago: 1987), pp. 257-258 “My mother brings my daughter to see me at the correctional facility for women in new jersey, where I had been sent from alderson. I am delirious. She looks so tall. I run up to kiss her. She barely responds. She is distant and stand-offish. Pangs of guilt and conscience fill my chest. I can see that my child is suffering. It is stupid to ask what is wrong. She is four years old, and except for these pitiful little visits—although my mother has brought her to see me every week, wherever I am, with the exception of the time I spent in alderson—she has never been with her mother... “I go over and try to hug her. In a hot second she is all over me. All I can feel are these little four-year-old fists banging away at me. Every bit of her force is in those punches, they really hurt. I let her hit me until she is tired. 'It's alright,' I tell her. 'Let it all out.'...'You're not my mother,' she screams the tears rolling down her face. 'You're not my mother and I hate you.' I feel like crying too. I know she is confused about who I am. She calls me Mommy Assata and she calls my mother Mommy. “I try to pick her up. She knocks my hand away. 'You can get out of here if you want to,' she screams, 'You just don't want to.' 'No I can't,' I say weakly. 'Yes you can.' she accuses. 'You just don't want to.'” ASSATA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, by Assata Shakur (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago: 1987), pp. 262-265 “'I love you,' my grandmother said. 'We don't want you to get used to this place, do you hear me? Don't let yourself get used to it.' “'No, grandmommy, I won't.' “Every day in the street now, I remind myself that Black people in America are oppressed. It's necessary that I do that. People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After awhile, people just think that oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” “The Tradition” Carry it on now. Carry it on. Carry it on now. Carry it on. Carry on the tradition. There were Black people since the childhood of time who carried it on. In Ghana and Mali and Timbuktu we carried it on. Carried on the tradition We hid in the bush when the slavemasters came holding spears. And when the moment was ripe, leaped out and lanced the lifeblood of would-be masters. We carried it on. On slave ships, hurling our selves into oceans. Slitting the throats of our captors. We took their whips. And their ships. Blood flowed in the Atlantic-- And it wasn't all ours. We carried it on. Fed Missy arsenic pies. Stole the axes from the shed. Went and chopped off master's head. We ran. We fought. We organized a railroad. An underground. We carried it on. In newspapers. In meetings. In arguments and streetfights. We carried it on. In tales told to children. In chants and cantatas. In poems and blues songs and saxophone screams, We carried on. In classrooms. In churches. In courtrooms. In prisons. We carried it on. In sit-ins and pray-ins And march-ins and die-ins. We carried it on. On cold Missouri midnights Pitting shotguns against lynch mobs. On burning Brooklyn streets . Pitting rocks against rifles, We carried it on. Against waterhoses and bulldogs. Against nightsticks and bullets. Against tanks and tear gas, needles and nooses. Bombs and birth control. We carried it on. In Selma and San Juan. Mozambique and Mississippi. In Brazil and in Boston, We carried it on. Through the lies and the sell-outs. The mistakes and the madness. Through pain and hunger and frustration, We carried it on. Carried on the tradition. Carried a strong tradition. Carried a proud tradition. Carried a Black traition. Carry it on. Pass it down to the children. Pass it down. Carry it on. Carry it on now. Carry it on TO FREEDOM! ---Assata Shakur.