Afeni Shakur, then only 22 years old and a leader in the Black Power movement, was sent to the New York Women’s House of Detention, a women’s prison in Manhattan. There, in January 1970, he wrote a prophetic letter about the conditions of Black people in America and their struggle for justice.
“We know you’re trying to tear us apart because we are the truth and because you can’t control us,” Shakur wrote. “We know you always try to destroy what you can’t control. We know you fear us because we represent the truth of the universe. We are not being tested for any overt act or for [the] attempt to take any overt action — we are being tested to instill in our minds a focus on the ideas of the centuries and an effort to bring this knowledge into a workable plan to free our people from oppression.”
FX on Friday is set to premiere “Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur,” a five-part docuseries that explores the lives of the late Afeni Shakur and her late son Tupac, the rapper, actor, poet and political visionary. The series will also stream on Hulu.
“Dear Mama” moves between the 1970s and 1990s to tell the story of Tupac and the woman who so powerfully shaped him, connecting hip-hop to Black activism and “the struggle for human rights.” Afeni Shakur’s voice would plant the seed for her son’s voice and his music, crying out against injustice with lyrics that still resonate around the world.
The series is directed by Allen Hughes, who filmed three of Tupac’s earlier music videos and originally cast him in the 1993 blockbuster “Menance II Society,” according to Billboard. Tupac was fired from that film after a fight on set, in which his companions beat Hughes. Hughes told Billboard that he was initially reluctant to direct “Dear Mama.”
“I just don’t know if I want to [deal with] what I was gonna be forced to, personally,” he said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to go on that emotional journey, but I said, ‘Give me a few days, let me think about it.'” He eventually decided to do “Dear Mama” and include her relationship with Tupac in the film.
At one point in the docuseries, Afeni Shakur was shown explaining her motherly mission. “It was my responsibility to teach Tupac how to live in his reality,” he said. The camera flashes to Tupac, as a 17-year-old high school student, explaining his ethos. “My mother taught me to analyze society and not to be silent. If something is on my mind, say it,” he says. “My mother was a Black Panther. And she was really involved in the movement.”
Years later, he rapped: “My mother never let me forget my history, hoping that I would break free from the chains that were placed on me.”
Afeni Shakur explains that being a mother is hard. “I know very well how to protect my children,” she said. “I spent a large part of my own life in prison. I didn’t want this to happen to my son.”
The camera then rewinds time to a speech that seems to set the stage for her son. It’s as if Afeni Shakur was rapping in both verse and space, but it was years before Tupac became a star: “I’ve got a revolutionary story to tell,” he shouts, as the camera pans to black-and- his white footage. being arrested. “My hands refuse to be beaten by this tortured cell.”
Afeni Shakur was born Alice Faye Williams in 1947 in Lumberton, NC, and moved with her sister to the Bronx when she was about 11 years old. In 1968, after listening to a speech by Bobby Seale, the powerful co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, he joined. She changed her name to Afeni Shakur after marrying Lumumba Shakur, who founded the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party.
Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panthers on Oct. 15, 1966, to protect Black communities from police brutality. “People often forget that Huey Newton was a law student in 1965,” former Black Panther David Hilliard said in 2006, when a panel at the University of New Mexico. “Newton and Seale patrolled with law books in one hand and guns in the other.”
“We didn’t practice racist ideology,” Hilliard recalled. “The system is discriminatory and violent. Our slogan has become revolution and salvation, waiting for the change of society; survival pending revolution.”
The Black Panthers are committed to universal health care, education, decent housing, free medical care and transportation for seniors. The party required members to attend political education classes, abide by party disciplinary rules and memorize the party’s 10-point platform, which called for land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace .
The party, which at its peak had more than 2,000 members in chapters across the country, created free school breakfast programs and provided sickle cell anemia testing, legal aid and education for adults. But it became a target of the FBI. On June 15, 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that “the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the nation’s internal security.”
In 1969, in a simultaneous raid on New York, Afeni Shakur and 20 other members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense were arrested on charges of conspiring to blow up police stations and other public institutions in New York. York. He and his wife were arrested in their apartment.
Tupac would later recall the raids: “The government raided each Panther’s house, especially the one they thought could do the most damage as an orator. They exploded and pointed a gun at my mother’s head and said, ‘Don’t move. You are under arrest.’ They considered him less than human.”
Bail was set at $100,000. The Black Panthers raised the money, and Afeni Shakur was released. But bail was returned to the jail, and Shakur, who was then five months pregnant with Tupac’s baby, was returned to jail after two other defendants skipped bail.
During the trial in the New York court, “he was his own lawyer, never studied law,” Tupac recalled as a high-schooler. “She’s facing 300-and-something-odd years. A Black woman, pregnant, beat the case. That just goes to show you the strength of a Black woman, the strength of the oppressed.”
In fact, in May 1971, Afeni Shakur and 12 other Black Panthers were acquitted on all 12 counts. “The members of the jury — which included five blacks and one Puerto Rican — reached a unanimous verdict so quickly that they surprised even themselves,” the New York Times reported.
“We had lunch and started talking and were amazed to find out right away that we felt the same way, after the verdict was handed down in the eight-month trial, the longest in the history of the State Supreme Court here,” the jury said. Frederick Hills, an editor for McGraw Hill Publications, told the Times,
Another juror, Joseph Gary, said: “There was not enough evidence. We all came with bags, prepared to stay a long time, but there was no need. There was evidence, all right, but not enough.”
On June 16, 1971 — “one month and three days after we were acquitted,” Afeni Shakur told CNN in a 2003 interview — she gave birth to a baby boy, who would be named Tupac Amaru Shakur.
In 1995, Tupac released the song “Dear Mama,” a tribute to his mother. A year later, on September 13, 1996, he was seriously injured when someone in a white Cadillac opened fire on Tupac while his car was waiting at a stoplight in Las Vegas. The murder remains unsolved.
After the death of his daughter, Afeni Shakur worked to preserve his legacy. He managed his estate, founded Amaru Entertainment and released Tupac’s unreleased work. In 1997, he founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundationwhich according to the foundation, is “committed to eradicating the effects of trauma in our community by raising awareness of its impact on mental health and well-being.”
Afeni Shakur also executive-produced “All Eyez on Me: The Writings of Tupac Shakur,” a collection of Tupac’s lyrics, poetry, clothing and videos of his performances, exhibited at the Grammy Museum.
“Tupac’s writings are an honest reflection of his passions for, and about life,” Afeni Shakur wrote in a message on the museum’s website. “His timeless messages instill hope for those who have little, and for others, they serve as a catalyst for change. His words continue to motivate and inspire new generation. The world is a better place because of him.”
Afeni Shakur continued her work to uplift her community until she died on May 2, 2016, in California, after suffering a cardiac arrest. In a recent film, he was heard advocating for people to find stories in history and correct them.
“Where are your stories?” he asked. “Tell me about those. … If you don’t do this, we will be wiped out. Right now, these young people don’t know that we stand powerful. They don’t know yet that if it wasn’t for women, there would be no Black Panther Party.”
His son, of course, has known that powerful history since he was a child.
