AN AMERICAN FAMILY: The Shakurs and the Nation They Createdby Santi Elijah Holley
In 1994, Tupac Shakur gave an exciting interview to MTV about his career and penchant for controversy. Shakur grew up poor and part of a black revolutionary family. He wasn’t always angry, but he insisted that black rage made sense: America exploited and persecuted black people, pulled talented survivors like him out of the ghetto, and condemned those left behind to violence and early death.
Tupac was desperate for a transformation, but without a plan to achieve it. “I’m not saying I’m going to rule the world, or I’m going to change the world,” he said. “But I guarantee I will spark the brain that will change the world. And that’s our job, to get someone else to watch us.
Santi Elijah Holley’s ‘An American Family’ is subtitled ‘The Shakurs and the Nation They Created’. In the introduction, Holley suggests that the nation he is referring to is America, a country resigned to suffering and shame until racism is eradicated. But the Shakurs didn’t create America, of course. As you read the book, you will be looking for another emerging nation, one imagined by generations of black revolutionaries, solid in its constitution and goals: security, dignity, and self-determination for black people.
According to Holley, for all their charisma and dedication, the Shakurs didn’t create that nation either. Tupac’s talent and tragedy defined a generation of hip-hop, spawning countless imitators whose versions of the life of a thug will never be as powerful. Convicted of killing a police officer, Assata Shakur has become an almost mythical figure in exile, and several other Shakurs have shared her resilience and devotion. But the family suffered huge losses and the victories they achieved seem a bit disconnected and faded. The Shakurs continue to inspire sparks, but the promise of change is unfulfilled.
The starting point of the Shakurs’ struggle is New York City in the 1960s. That’s where Sekou Odinga and Lumumba Shakur, two friends in their early twenties, promised each other that they would devote their lives to the liberation of the black population. Sekou and Lumumba were trained and mentored by Saladheen Shakur, Lumumba’s father and a former associate of Malcolm X.
When Malcolm was assassinated in February 1965, he left a void in the leadership of the more rebellious factions of the black liberation struggle. The Black Panther Party stepped into that void when it was founded in 1966. It took a few years for the Panthers to spread their message from California across the country, but when it took hold in New York, Sekou and Lumumba teamed up the Harlem Chapter of the Panthers.
“Under Lumumba’s leadership,” Holley writes, “the Harlem Panthers were distinguished for their militancy.” In 1969, 21 members of the party, including Lumumba and his wife, Afeni, were arrested and charged with plotting to bomb warehouses, railways and police stations.
The People of New York State v. Lumumba Abdul Shakur et al. was the most expensive court case in the state’s history, and it was a bust. The “Panther 21” were acquitted on all counts in 1971, thanks in no small part to 23-year-old Afeni Shakur, who broke away from the group and acted as her own defense in court. A month after the trial ended, she gave birth to Tupac, whom she fathered with another Panther, Billy Garland, while out on bail.
The Panther 21 trial is the first subject of the book and sets a standard for drama that seems impossible to sustain. But the cast of characters is expanding, and somehow each one the reader encounters is just as compelling as the last. Not everyone with the Shakur name was a blood relative, but “adopting the nickname made them part of the family, denoting their commitment to the fight for black liberation,” Holley writes.
Among those sharing the stage with Lumumba, Afeni and Tupac is Mutulu Shakur, a freedom fighter and acupuncturist who considered Lumumba an older brother. Mutulu became the leader of the first detoxification center of its kind at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. Readers also get to know Assata, the now-iconic revolutionary whose legend was fueled by police malfeasance as well as her own actions or intentions. Also not related by blood to Lumumba or Saladheen, Assata became the first woman to be added to the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted Terrorists” by escaping prison and fleeing to Cuba after a dubious 1977 conviction for murder and assault.
Chaos reigned in the lives of the Shakurs. They were plagued by poverty, drug addiction, betrayal, police brutality, and their own reckless decision-making and fearlessness. This is a dizzying and expansive clan to write about, and the book reflects that vertigo at times. Holley introduces key characters and later returns to them in ways that sometimes make it difficult to discern how much influence they had on the events discussed.
He also walks a difficult line between acknowledging the courage and probity of the cause and describing the grim tactics and behaviors of the book’s central players. It’s not easy to confidently judge each person, especially since it’s sometimes impossible to confirm which version of the most disturbing events, from Tupac’s sexual assault allegations to Assata’s shootout with the police, is true.
“An American Family” isn’t presented as a definitive family biography, but still manages to portray as revealing and inclusive a portrait of the Shakurs as we’ve seen. For all the intimacy and richness of detail offered by Holley’s admirable archival work and interviews, there’s room for more engagement with the ideas and arguments the Shakurs put forth. The Shakurs did not share a single, consistent vision of black liberation. But there are specific themes that emerge in their speeches, letters and music that could be explored further, especially the link between racism and capitalism.
For example, Holley briefly mentions and quotes Assata’s “To My People,” a now-famous statement she made in 1973 after the arrest that led to her conviction. The play opens with a declaration of love to black people and a declaration of war on the rich who thrive in our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces and all the mindless, heartless robots who protect them and their property. It closes with a phrase that has been widely adopted by protesters in the years since: “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”
However, Holley is not concerned with Assata’s 1978 piece “Women in Prison: How We Are,” which contains a more vivid account of the lives of incarcerated women, as well as a more thorough analysis of the prison-ghetto complex. Assata emphasizes that “for many, prison is not much different from the street. … The poverty is the same. The alienation is the same. The racism is the same. The sexism is the same.” The argument that prison is not a distant place to which the poor are relegated, but rather an extension of the abusive places they already reside, is a powerful intervention in a late 20th century conversation that also includes the work of prison abolitionists such as Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
The ideas the Shakurs put forth remain as relevant as ever, but “An American Family” offers no romantic guarantee that the Shakurs’ legacy will live on in politics or music exactly as they intended. Instead, it offers readers a visceral and blemished account of the black liberation struggle as a material and often lawless battle between the US government and black people who refuse to be trampled. This is not a “moral arc of the universe” explanation of racial progress. The Shakurs were insulted, mistreated and robbed by white supremacists. They were also unbowed, claiming their unalienable rights and the rights of all black people, without apology.
Michael P. Jeffries is the dean of academic affairs and professor of American studies at Wellesley College. His most recent book is ‘Black and Queer on Campus’.
AN AMERICAN FAMILY: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created | By Santi Elijah Holley | 306 pp. | Mariner Books | $32.50