Assata: Exile since 1979 On May 2 1973, Black Panther activist Assata Olugbala Shakur (fsn) Joanne Deborah
Chesimard, was pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot
twice and then charged with murder of a police officer. Assata spent
six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before
escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional
Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba. 
Assata: In her own words
My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Olugbala ( "for the people" )
Shakur ("the thankful one"), and I am
a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution,
I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political
repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government's
policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and
I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political
activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done
everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal,
nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various
struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement,
and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black
Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number
one organization targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO
program. because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation
of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it "greatest threat
to the internal security of the country" and vowed to destroy
it and its leaders and activists.