44 pages 1 hour read

Assata Shakur

Assata: An Autobiography

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1987

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Chapters 13-15

Chapter 13 Summary

After Manhattan Community College, Assata attended the City College of New York. She was married briefly to a Black man who had similar political views and thought for a while that they had a “marriage made in heaven” (196). However, she realized that he wanted her to become a traditional wife, which was not what she wanted. They divorced on amicable terms.

To expand her knowledge of other political movements, Assata visited the West Coast where she encountered Native Americans who protested at Alcatraz Island, having taken over the prison. As part of a first aid skills class, she joined the Native Americans who were protesting and learned more about their struggle. She also met the Brown Berets, a group of Chicano revolutionaries in the Bay Area. While she had some difficulties finding information about the Red Guard, the Asian American organizing group in the Bay Area, she stumbled upon them eventually while handing out fliers at a park.

Assata also seeks the Black Panther chapter in the Bay. The Black Panthers welcomed her and wanted to know why she was not a member of the New York chapter though she had volunteered for them from time to time. She shared honestly that she “had been turned off by the way spokesmen for the Party talked to people” (204) and that she was more interested in the “polite and respectful manner in which civil rights workers and Black Muslims talked to the people” (204).