Tupac's Political Awakening: A Movement And Law Journey

Tupac Amaru Shakur, born Lesane Parish Crooks, was an American rapper and actor. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time, with academics considering him one of the most influential music artists of the 20th century.

Tupac was born in New York City to parents who were both political activists and Black Panther Party members. He was raised by his mother, Afeni Shakur, and relocated to Baltimore in 1984 and then to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1988.

With the release of his debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, in 1991, Tupac became a central figure in West Coast hip-hop for his conscious rap and political rap lyrics.

Throughout his career, Tupac experienced legal troubles, including incarceration. He served eight months in prison on sexual abuse charges. Following his release, he signed to Marion Suge Knight's label, Death Row Records, and became heavily involved in the growing East Coast-West Coast hip-hop rivalry.

On September 7, 1996, Tupac was shot four times by an unidentified assailant in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He died six days later, on September 13, 1996, at the age of 25.

In September 2023, 27 years after Tupac's murder, Duane Keefe D Davis, the uncle of Orlando Anderson (a suspected gang member), was arrested and charged with Tupac's murder.

Tupac's involvement with the Black Panther Party

Tupac Shakur was born to parents who were both members of the Black Panther Party. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was a political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. She was tried in New York City as part of the Panther 21 criminal trial a month before Tupac was born and was acquitted of over 150 charges.

Tupac's parents' involvement with the Black Panthers influenced his artistic sensibilities and outlook. His work was deeply influenced by a wide range of American, African American, and global influences, including the Black Panther Party, black nationalism, egalitarianism, and the concept of liberty.

Tupac's godfather, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, was a high-ranking member of the Black Panther Party and was wrongly convicted of murdering a schoolteacher during a 1968 robbery. His conviction was overturned after 27 years due to the prosecution's concealment of evidence that proved his innocence.

Tupac's godmother, Assata Shakur, was also a member of the Black Panther Party's Black Liberation Army and was convicted of first-degree murder in 1977. She has been on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list since 2013 after escaping prison in 1979.

Tupac's stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, was also a member of the Black Panthers and spent four years as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. He was convicted of a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck, during which police officers and a guard were killed.

His parents' Black Panther activism

Tupac Amaru Shakur was born Lesane Parish Crooks on June 16, 1971, in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was a prominent political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. She was tried in New York City as part of the Panther 21 criminal trial a month before Shakur's birth and was acquitted of over 150 charges.

Afeni Shakur was born Alice Faye Williams on January 10, 1947, in Lumberton, North Carolina. She moved to the South Bronx with her mother and sister at the age of eleven in 1958. Williams attended Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in the Bronx, where she demonstrated above-average reading ability and qualified for honors. She later attended Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts, where she felt free-spirited. However, she dropped out after one term due to financial constraints and a sense of not fitting in.

Williams became involved in a Bronx street gang called the Disciples and worked as one of the first female mail carriers in New York. She joined the Black Panther Party in 1968 after hearing a speech by party co-founder Bobby Seale. She met Lumumba Shakur, a Sunni Muslim, whom she married in November 1968, and changed her name to Afeni Shakur. She became a section leader of the Harlem chapter and a mentor to new members.

In April 1969, Afeni Shakur and twenty other Black Panthers were arrested and charged with several counts of conspiracy to bomb public places in New York. She was one of the Panther 21, facing a potential life sentence. She chose to represent herself in court and, after an eight-month trial, was acquitted of all charges in May 1971.

During her two years in the New York Women's House of Detention, Afeni Shakur began relating to and advocating for gay inmates. After her release, she continued to fight against homophobia within the Black Panthers. She gave birth to her son Lesane Parish Crooks, later renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur, on June 16, 1971. Her marriage with Lumumba ended when it was discovered that he was not Tupac's biological father.

Afeni Shakur's involvement with the Black Panthers and subsequent trial had a significant impact on her son's life and worldview. Tupac Shakur became a prominent rapper and political activist for Black America, addressing social injustice, political issues, and the marginalization of African-Americans in his music. He was regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time before his untimely death in 1996.

His parents' imprisonment and legal issues

Tupac's parents, Afeni and Billy Garland, were both members of the Black Panther Party and political activists. They were active in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A month before Tupac was born, his mother was tried in New York City as part of the Panther 21 criminal trial, where she was acquitted of over 150 charges.

Tupac's stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, was also a member of the Black Panthers and its Black Liberation Army. He was one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives for four years and was convicted for a 1981 armoured truck robbery during which police officers and a guard were killed.

Tupac's godfather, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, was a high-ranking member of the Black Panthers and was wrongly convicted of murdering a schoolteacher during a 1968 robbery. After 27 years in prison, he was exonerated when it was found that the prosecution had withheld evidence of his innocence.

Tupac's godmother, Assata Shakur, was a member of the Black Liberation Army and was convicted of murdering a New Jersey State Trooper in 1977. She escaped prison in 1979 and has been on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list since 2013.

Tupac's parents' legal issues and imprisonment had a profound impact on his life and work. He addressed social injustice, political issues, and the marginalization of African-Americans in his lyrics and became a prominent political activist for Black America.

His own legal issues and incarceration

Tupac Shakur's legal issues and incarcerations began in the early 1990s and continued until his death in 1996. In October 1991, he filed a $10 million lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department, alleging they brutally beat him over a jaywalking incident. The suit was settled for $42,000.

In October 1993, Shakur shot and wounded two off-duty police officers in Atlanta, one in the abdomen and one in the buttocks, after an altercation. The charges were dropped when it emerged that the officers had been drinking, had initiated the incident, and that one of the officers had threatened Shakur with a stolen gun.

In December 1993, Shakur was charged with sexually abusing a woman in his hotel room. According to the complaint, Shakur sodomized the woman and then encouraged his friends to sexually abuse her. He vehemently denied the charges, stating that he and the woman had had consensual sex days before the alleged incident. On February 7, 1995, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for sexual abuse; specifically, the conviction offense was for "sexual abuse (forcibly touching the buttocks)".

In 1994, Shakur was convicted of attacking a former employer while on a music video set. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail with additional days on a highway work crew, community service, and a $2,000 fine.

In 1995, a wrongful death lawsuit was brought against Shakur following the 1992 shooting of six-year-old Qa'id Walker-Teal in Marin City, California. The child had been the victim of a stray bullet in a shootout between Shakur's entourage and a rival group, though the bullet was not from Shakur's gun. Criminal charges were not sought, and Shakur settled with the family for an amount estimated between $300,000 and $500,000.

On April 5, 1996, a judge sentenced Shakur to serve 120 days in jail for violating terms of probation.

On the night of November 30, 1994, the day before the verdict in his sexual abuse trial was to be announced, Shakur was shot five times in the lobby of the Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan by two black men in an apparent robbery attempt. He accused Puff Daddy (now Diddy) and Notorious B.I.G. of setting him up, believing that they knew about the shooting beforehand.

Shakur began serving his prison sentence for sexual abuse at Clinton Correctional Facility in February 1995. Shortly afterward, he released his multi-platinum album Me Against the World. Shakur is the only artist ever to have an album at number one on the charts while serving a prison sentence.

In September 1995, Shakur was released on bail after serving 11 months of his four-year sentence, due in large part to the help and influence of Marion "Suge" Knight, CEO of Death Row Records. Knight posted $1.4 million bail pending appeal of the conviction, in exchange for which Shakur was obligated to release three albums for the Death Row label.

Shakur's final incarceration came in 1996, when he was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a concealed weapon. He was released on $35,000 bail.

His death and the ongoing murder investigation

On the night of September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He died from his injuries six days later, on September 13, 1996. The murder remains unsolved, but the investigation is ongoing.

On the night of the shooting, Shakur was leaving a casino, where he had attended a prizefight featuring heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. He was travelling with Suge Knight, the head of Death Row Records, in a large entourage of around ten cars. Earlier that evening, Shakur had been involved in a fight with Orlando Anderson, a member of the rival Southside Compton Crips gang, in the lobby of the MGM Grand hotel.

At 11:00-11:05 pm, Shakur and Knight were stopped by police for playing their car stereo too loudly and for not having license plates. The plates were found in the trunk, and they were released without a ticket. At 11:10 pm, they stopped at a red light, and Shakur exchanged words with two women in a car on their left. At 11:15 pm, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside Knight's car, and the shooter, seated in the back, opened fire on Shakur's BMW. Shakur was hit four times, twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the thigh. Knight was hit by flying glass and suffered a head injury.

Shakur was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he was placed on life support. He died from respiratory failure and cardiac arrest on September 13, 1996, at 4:03 pm.

Numerous theories have emerged about who was responsible for Shakur's murder. Orlando Anderson, with whom Shakur had fought earlier that night, was initially a suspect, but he denied involvement and was never charged. He was killed in an unrelated gang shooting in 1998. In 2002, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times claimed that the shooting had been carried out by the Southside Crips gang to avenge the beating of one of its members by Shakur. The article also implicated East Coast rappers, including The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac's rival at the time.

In 2018, former Crips member Duane "Keefe D" Davis admitted that he had been in the car with the shooter but declined to identify them. In September 2023, Davis was arrested and charged with Shakur's murder. He pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin in November 2024.

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