assata
...nt and vilification continued, forcing her into the underground. On May 2, 1973 she and her comrades Sundiata Acoli and Zayd Shakur were driving on the New Jersey Turnpike when a state trooper pulled them over in a case of Driving While Black. Shots were exchanged and Zayd and one of the white state troopers were killed. Shot and seriously injured in the incident, Assata Shakur was at the time on the FBI’s most wanted list, and orders had been given for her capture dead or alive, because she was supposed to be armed, dangerous, a kidnapper and murderer. Although Zayd Shakur was the only one on whom a weapon was found, Assata and Sundiata were both tried and convicted of murder in 1977. On July 14, 1947 Assata Olugbala Shakur was born. Her birth name is Joanne Deborah Byron and married name was Joanne Chesimard. Shortly after her birth, her mother and father divorced. Young Shakur lived with her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother and grandfather in Jamaica, New York. At the age of three, she moved with her grandparents to the house where her grandpa was raised in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her early childhood was spent working for her grandparents in the restaurant and on the beach. Her grandfather instilled in her a love of the written word, and she spent a great deal of her time reading to satisfy her imagination. Her family tried to infuse in her a sense of personal dignity, “you are as good as anyone else. Don’t let anyone tell you that they’re better than you.” Her grandparents would not let her say “yes ma’am” or “yes sir” and she was to look at white people in the eyes when she talked to them. Shakur's grandparents opened up a business on their beachfront property. Her early childhood was spent working for her grandparents in the restaurant and on the beach. As a kid she would go to the beach and while she was there she would notice that most of the blacks were wearing clothes to swim in. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a political, legal, and social struggle to gain full citizenship rights for Blacks and to gain racial equality. The goals of the civil rights movement was to end segregation, the system of laws and separating of blacks and whites that whites used to control blacks after slavery was abolished. During the civil rights movement, individuals and ci...