Chesimard, Joanne (1947–)

An African American revolutionary and writer, Joanne Chesimard was once the leader of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a violent offshoot of the Black Panther Party. She has been living in Cuba [Page 132]since the mid-1980s, after escaping from the prison where she was serving a life sentence for murder.

Raised primarily by her grandparents in North Carolina, Chesimard moved to Queens, New York, when she was a teenager to live with her mother and stepfather. As a young adult, Chesimard developed strong political convictions that led to her participation in the black liberation movement and eventually to her membership in the Black Panther Party in 1970. It was around that that time she assumed the name Assata Shakur.

Between 1971 and 1973, Chesimard's involvement with the BLA became widely known, as did the various crimes, such as robberies, committed in order to fund their organization. Chesimard ran into much more serious trouble with the law on May 2, 1973. While driving on the New Jersey Turnpike with two friends, Malik Zayad Shakur and Sundiata Acoli, Chesimard was stopped by white state troopers, supposedly for a shattered headlight. Exactly how the subsequent events unfolded is still debated, but the outcome was that Malik Zayad Shakur and Trooper Werner Foerster were killed with Foerster's gun. Trooper James Harper, Acoli, and Chesimard were all wounded. The state maintains that Chesimard either fired the gun from point-blank range at Foerster, or that she was an accomplice to the shooting; defenders of Chesmiard claim the trooper was killed accidentally by his partner. Chesimard was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

With the help of four friends, who took a prison guard hostage, she managed to escape from the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women on November 2, 1979. Chesimard now resides in Cuba, where she has been granted political asylum. There have been several efforts to have Chesimard extradited back to the United States to serve her full sentence, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her apprehension.