Most people know Afeni Shakur as the mother at the center of Tupac Shakur's 1995 song "Dear Mama." The San Francisco Bay View has reprinted a moment from her own story: the closing argument she delivered in a New York courtroom in May 1971, at 23 and pregnant, while defending herself in the Panther 21 trial.
The case
The Panther 21 were members of the Black Panther Party arrested by New York police in 1969 on suspicion of planning a series of bombings, as NBC News recounted. Shakur, who had no law degree, chose to represent herself. On May 11, 1971, she told the jury, in a passage the Bay View reprints from Murray Kempton's 1973 book The Briar Patch:
"Let history record you as a jury that would not kneel to the outrageous bidding of the state. Show us that we were not wrong in assuming that you would judge us fairly."
The jury cleared the defendants, and The New York Times reported on May 14, 1971, that the Panther members had been freed. About a month later, on June 16, 1971, Shakur gave birth to her son, Tupac.
The Bay Area chapter
Shakur remained an activist and organizer for the rest of her life, and NBC News remembered her as a political and social activist and Black Panther member. She died in May 2016 after deputies responded to a report of possible cardiac arrest at her Sausalito home, NBC News reported.
The Bay View's republication is part of its ongoing coverage of Black Panther history, a story with deep roots across the bay in Oakland, where the party was founded in 1966.