51 pages • 1 hour read
Assata ShakurAssata: An Autobiography
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9
Chapter 7 Summary
On January 28, 1973, Shakur and Sadiki were acquitted in the Bronx bank robbery trial. Shakur returned to Morristown County Jail to await trial for the New Jersey Turnpike shooting.
When the jury selection process began, most of the potential jurors were white and claimed to not be racist. The defense team asked that the question, “Have you ever read a book called Target Blue?” (120) be included in the jury questioning process. The author, Robert Daley, once worked with the New York City Police Department and had recently published an excerpt of the book in New York magazine. In the book, Daley discusses Shakur’s role in the Black Liberation Army in what Shakur describes as “a collection of sensationalism, groundless accusations, and outright lies” (120). One of the white male jurors admitted to having a copy of the book and that he had shared it with other jurors. Those jurors were dismissed from the case. After that incident, Shakur and her defense team did not feel confident about their prospects with the white jurors in New Jersey.
Shakur began to feel unwell and realized she could be pregnant. She tried to receive a pregnancy diagnosis from the prison doctor, but he dismissed her concerns repeatedly. Finally, after her conditions worsened, the doctor gave her several pregnancy tests and determined that she was pregnant. Shakur was elated as she dubbed her unborn baby “the miracle of all miracles” (123). However, she also was experiencing pain, and the prison doctor advised her to abort her child or else risk a miscarriage. Shakur was offended at his proposal and decided to advocate for a Black doctor to examine her.
Dr. Ernest Wyman Garrett, a Black doctor, came to examine Shakur and determined that her health conditions did not make her suitable for immediate trial as she needed to be hospitalized. He told her that he was willing to advocate for her health in the court of law and that “to deny [her] proper medical care would be tantamount to committing murder” (128). Thanks to Dr. Garrett’s words, the judge postponed Shakur’s trial while she received hospital care. However, Sundiata, who was tried on the case with her, was forced to proceed with the trial alone. While this saddened Shakur, she knew she had to care for her unborn baby.
Chapter 8 Summary
After Evelyn’s friend found Shakur living in a hotel, Shakur was sent to live with her aunt, with occasional visits to her mother during the weekends. Evelyn lived in a small room on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, between Central Park and Riverside Park. Shakur loved visiting nearby museums, but also noticed that the neighborhood that her aunt lived in featured major class divisions. While she lived in the lower income side of the neighborhood, there was a white middle-class neighborhood just a few blocks away. Individuals who lived there considered themselves “liberals” (132), a political concept that Shakur regarded with disdain.
Evelyn pushed Shakur to take her education seriously, encouraging her to go to a Catholic high school. During summers, Shakur would visit her grandparents in the South where she discovered the work that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was doing. While she was “ready to do whatever it was they were going to do” (138), she realized that her political stance did not match up with their nonviolent approach. While NAACP members advocated for not responding to attacks from white people, Shakur “couldn’t get used to the idea of letting somebody spit on me” (138). She parted ways with the NAACP after that disagreement.
Chapter 9 Summary
After Dr. Garrett determined that Shakur was one month pregnant, she was brought to Middlesex County Jail for men and kept in solitary confinement from February 1974 to May 1974. By the time Shakur arrived at Rikers Island, she was anemic yet was still refused proper food and care. Her defense team filed a lawsuit against the state of New Jersey in response to her mistreatment in its jails. They also acquired a court order from the New York court that would allow Dr. Garrett to keep treating her. However, the Montefiore Hospital and the Health and Hospital Corporation argued that Dr. Garrett was “disruptive” to the care they were offering. They stated that Shakur was not allowed to select her care since she was “only a prisoner” (142). The court decided to uphold their motion.
On September 10, 1974, Shakur went into labor and was taken to Elmhurst Hospital. A large protest gathered outside, demanding that the hospital honor Shakur’s choice of doctor. Dr. Garrett had to explain to the public the circumstances barring his care. The demonstration placed pressure on the hospital, leading them to offer a release statement for Shakur to sign that would absolve them of all responsibility if Dr. Garrett took over in the delivery process. Shakur signed the statement and Dr. Garrett became her doctor once more.
The next day, Shakur gave birth to Kakuya Amala Olugbala Shakur. She was allowed to breastfeed the child but was then quickly discharged from the hospital and returned to Rikers Island’s infirmary. Saddened by the abrupt separation from her newborn child, Shakur declared, “I don’t want to be here” and demanded to be in solitary confinement (144). She refused examination and was beaten by guards until she was eventually taken to solitary confinement.
For two weeks, Shakur refused medical examination and ate so infrequently that she stopped lactating. They extended her punishment in solitary confinement. Her repeated protests and hunger strike led to additional infractions that increased her time in solitary for a month. Meanwhile, Evelyn issued a writ of habeas corpus against the Rikers Island commissioners for keeping Shakur so long in solitary confinement.
Finally, a deputy lied to Shakur that Evelyn had advised her to see a doctor since her court date had been postponed. Shakur allowed herself to be examined by prison doctors, assuming it was Evelyn’s advice. After her examination, she was released from solitary confinement but remained in jail.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Shakur’s treatment while pregnant and incarcerated demonstrates a new level of violence toward her, offering insight into the cruelty of the US justice system toward pregnant inmates. Knowing that incarcerated women, particularly Black women, are subjected to invasive medical exams and advised to abort by prison doctors, Shakur insists on having a Black doctor who will treat her as a human being rather than as an inmate. When she finds a healthcare provider she trusts in Dr. Garrett, she must fight to keep him as her doctor. Hospital workers call Dr. Garrett “disruptive” for noting her condition on the hospital chart. Shakur knows that resistance to her advocacy for her health is due to the presumption that incarcerated people, even pregnant women, do not deserve rights. To receive a choice in one’s care is one of the many basic human rights that are routinely denied to incarcerated people, and given that Black people make up a disproportionate share of the prison population, Shakur sees this system as a means of stripping rights from Black people.
In Chapter 8, Shakur discusses her political stance regarding nonviolent protest and “liberals.” While early Black civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. practiced nonviolence as a protest strategy, Shakur belongs to a new generation of Black leaders who refuse to rule out the use of violence against a violent system. In her depiction of her meeting with the NAACP, she makes clear that her values differ from other members through her belief that Black people have the right to fight back against white people’s attacks. She states that she “couldn’t get used to the idea of letting somebody spit on me” (138)—a lesson she learned in childhood from her grandmother in North Carolina. For Shakur, self-defense is an expression of self-respect. This rejection of non-violence is also tied to Shakur’s recognition of The Difference Between Revolution and Reform. If her goal is to overthrow the system rather than to reform it, then she must be prepared to use violence to take power from those who will not give it up willingly.
Shakur is also critical of middle-class white liberals who express support for social justice but who are ultimately unwilling to sacrifice their class comforts for a true revolution. Shakur argues that liberals “feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges” (133). For Shakur, this pity is self-centering and not conducive to the larger mobilizing action needed to affect true social change.
