An Amerikan Family by Santi Elijah Holley

Author:Santi Elijah Holley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

14.

Nothing to Lose but Our Chains

HER FACE IS bruised and swollen. Her hair, which had once been styled into a large and proud Afro, is now only a few inches long. She is grievously thin. Her right arm is wrapped in a sling, paralyzed from when the trooper’s bullet severed her median nerve. Her clavicle has also been shattered, by a bullet passing through her shoulder. A bloodied bandage covers a bullet wound in her chest; the bullet hasn’t been removed, nor will it ever be. As Assata Shakur recovers at New Brunswick’s Middlesex General Hospital, a phalanx of state troopers stands nearby, hurling racist epithets and threats against her.

While still in her hospital bed, she is arraigned on numerous charges, including first- and second-degree murder, assault and battery against a police officer, assault with intent to kill, and illegal possession of a weapon. She calls her aunt, Evelyn Williams, who arrives at the hospital that Friday, May 4. After a procedural and hurried legal consultation, Assata’s mother and sister enter her hospital room. It’s been more than two years since her family has seen her in person, aside from the “wanted” photos displayed all over town and in the papers. Assata is overjoyed to see them but worried about what they might think, what they might say. Her mother, Doris, approaches her bedridden daughter, kisses her, and says, “I’m proud of you.”

“The words spin around me, weaving a warm blanket of love,” Assata thinks. “I am so happy. I can hardly contain myself. My mother is proud of me. She loves me and she is proud of me.”

The family reunion is over in minutes, and hard reality sets in. The indictments against Assata come quickly, stacked one on top of the other like firewood, waiting to be burned. In addition to charges of shooting the state troopers, Assata is indicted for the April 1971 robbery at the Statler Hilton Hotel; the August 23 bank robbery in Queens; the September 1972 bank robbery in the Bronx; the December kidnapping of the bartender James Freeman in Brooklyn; the January 1973 murder of Richard Nelson at a Brooklyn social club; and the attempted murder, also that January, of police officers Roy Pollina and Michael O’Reilly in Queens. The FBI opens a new file, called CHESROB (Chesimard robbery), attempting to connect Assata to nearly every bank robbery or violent crime allegedly committed by a Black woman on the East Coast.

Because she was still a relative unknown in the liberation struggle at the time of her capture, she was portrayed by media as a common criminal, bank robber, and bloodthirsty murderer. Assata realized she’d need to shape her own narrative, to “talk to my people and let them know what i was about, where i was really coming from.” Written in early July and preserved with a tape recorder—reluctantly provided by Williams—Assata’s first public remarks served as an introduction to herself and her ideology and provided a sort of Black Liberation Army mission statement.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.