By Phil Tarley
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 10/09/2025
“I’ve always believed that everyone is like a jukebox. If you press the right buttons, we all have one good song to sing or one great story to tell.”
That is what I told Tupac’s godmother, Assata Shakur, when I phoned her in 2002 from my pensione in Habana Vieja. I had brought her 15 pounds of books from a friend in Los Angeles. I carried them as hand luggage from L.A. to Mexico City, then hauled them onto my night flight to Cuba.
Shakur lived in a small clapboard house and worked as a mentor and counselor in the hip-hop community. She received a modest monthly stipend from the Cuban government, which also granted her political asylum and the right to live in exile.
Black Panther Assata Shakur—also known as JoAnne Chesimard—was the first woman ever placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. In 1973, she was incarcerated in a New Jersey penitentiary for the death of a state trooper following a gunfight on the New Jersey Turnpike after police stopped a car full of Black Panthers. Even though she was not the shooter, she was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. Two years later, in 1979, she escaped and fled to Cuba.
I had assembled quite a revolutionary library for Shakur. Included were copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, two copies of her autobiography Assata, and an advance copy of Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. I also carried Cornel West’s Race Matters and Sister Souljah’s No Disrespect. Heavy reading—in both weight and content.
I admired Shakur’s fierce intelligence. I remembered her quotes on cards and T-shirts. Her autobiography burned with revolutionary brilliance. When I phoned her from my place in Havana, I could hardly believe I was speaking with her.
Playfully, I told her that since I schlepped all these heavy books, the least she could do was come to my place in Habana Vieja, where I’d cook her a great lunch, and then she could tell me the whole story: how she broke out from prison, how she lived underground, and how she secretly made her way to Cuba. I wanted all the details.
She laughed and said, “Look… these are people… I don’t fuck around with them anymore. But their secrets… they will never leave my lips. I don’t need your free lunch, but I would like the books you brought me. Can you bring them over here?”
That is how I made my way to Regla, a quiet, run-down neighborhood with a predominantly Black population, located across the bay from Havana. At the Sierra Maestra ferry terminal on the old city’s shore, I paid two pesos and crowded onto the ancient ferry for the fifteen-minute crossing. A strong sea breeze cooled my hot flush of excitement. I was going to see Assata Shakur. What a trip.
Following her directions, I walked along a narrow cobblestone street, up a small hill, then down a tiny alley—past country folk carrying live chickens, a bootleg CD seller, and an outdoor bar and sandwich stall. Finally, I reached a row of old wooden shacks painted pink and green. There she was, waiting for me on her shaded porch.
She looked older than the photo on the FBI’s Most Wanted poster. No longer lean and fierce, her body was heavier, her face fuller. She looked kind, even grandmotherly.
Assata genuinely appreciated the books I brought. Sitting with her, I felt a bit intimidated in the presence of a living revolutionary legend, a woman who clearly wanted to protect her privacy. It felt intrusive to pry. She poured cafecitos and offered me a tray of biscuits. We talked instead about her work in the hip-hop community. In Cuba, hip-hop was a political movement, addressing social ills like homophobia and sexism.
Assata Shakur made me feel the echoes of another time and place—a time when we all believed, as the Rolling Stones sang in Street Fighting Man, that “the time is right for a palace revolution.” We thought that revolution would come. But sitting there with her in Havana, I realized it had already passed, leaving behind not victory or defeat, but the lingering hum of what might have been.
