Assata: An Autobiography (13 page)

"Who did you kill?”

"I didn't kill anybody.”

"Well, who did they say you killed?”

"A cop, a new jersey state trooper.”

"Oh, shit. You gon have a hard way to go. You didn't really do it?”

"No."

"You got a bank robbery, too. Did you rob the bank? How much money did you get?"

"I didn't get any money because i didn't rob the bank."

"Yeah? Then your boyfriend did it and put the blame on you?"

"No, i don't have a boyfriend.”

"Oh, so you like girls funny?" They laughed. "You're kinda cute. Ya wanna go with me?" one of them joked. "You ever do time before?"

"No, never.”

"You got any other cases?”

"Yeah, i have another bank robbery.”

"Did you do that one?”

“No!"

"Well, damn, they got you all hooked up!" the one called Delores said. "How come they tryin' to frame you up like that?"

"Because i'm a revolutionary. They say that i'm in the Black Liberation Army.”

"Oh, oh, I know you. You that girl I read about in the papers. Yeah, what's your name?"

"Assata, Assata Shakur, but my slave name is JoAnne Chesimard."

"Yeah, you the one. I never thought I'd meet you. How you doin'?"

"Yeah," Coke said, "I saw your picture on TV, but you look different now."

"How?" i asked.

"When I saw your picture I thought you was much bigger. And much blacker, too."

"Really?" I laughed. It was a statement i heard over and over. Everybody told me they thought i was bigger, blacker, and uglier. When i asked people what they thought i looked like, they would describe someone about six feet tall, two hundred pounds, and very dark and wild-looking.

"Bad as them papers said you was, I just knew you had to look bad. And here you are, just a little ole thing."

I asked them what they were in prison for. In the course of those next few days i was to learn a whole new vocabulary. Jostling was pickpocketing; boosting was shoplifting; juggling paper was writing bad checks and dragging or playing drag was conning.

Later that evening a woman who had just come from kourt told me that Phyllis wanted me to come to the gym at 8:30. I was overjoyed. I had heard that Simba was on the rock, but i thought they might move her to make sure we had no chance to be together. The gym was large. Women were playing handball and basketball, dancing, sitting on the bleachers, and talking. Finally, behind a clump of women, i saw Simba. We embraced and both just sat there, trying to get out all the words that were in our hearts. So much had happened since we had seen each other. We had been close when we were both members of the Black Panther Party. For a while we had lived together. She was always a real earthy sister with a heart of gold. She told me about her case, about the other comrades she was in touch with, and, then, that she was pregnant. Homey was her nickname for her lover, the baby's father, Kakuyan Olugbala. He was a beautiful revolutionary brother, and he was murdered by the New York police. Kakuyan and i had gotten to know each other pretty well while we were both at the Harlem branch of the Black Panther Party. He was one of the brothers who, in the days of the Panther Party's lumpen ideology, would be called lumpen. He was raised in Harlem around 116th Street and 8th Avenue, a relaxed, easy kind of person, but a fighter to the heart. He loved weapons and was a genius with them.

I was glad about her pregnancy and sad at the same time: she was facing twenty-five years. Although i tried to be cheerful, i guess she could see the concerned expression on my face.

"Don't worry," she told me. "These people can lock us up, but they can't stop life, just like they can't stop freedom. This baby was meant to be born, to carry on. They murdered Homey, and so this baby, like all our children, is going to be our hope for the future." I would think about her words many times later.

It's early in the morning. It feels like a quarter to zero and i want to sleep. I hear my name vaguely over the microphone. Something about kourt. They are calling me for kourt. Hurriedly i roll out of bed, shower, dress, comb my hair, and i'm ready to go. They bring breakfast on the food truck. I can't even stand the look of food, much less eat anything.

"All right, court ladies, time to go to the receiving room," the microphone wails. It's too early in the morning for that thing. I want to tear it out of the ceiling. I stumble down to the receiving room, still not fully awake. It's 7:20 A.M. I sit in the receiving room for three hours. Finally, the marshals come. Now they want me to hurry. One of them chains me up. First he shackles my feet; then he puts a chain around my waist, fastens the handcuffs to the chain, and handcuffs on my hands. I can barely walk. Or shuffle.

Kourt, dull, gray, dull green. They are putting me into the bull pen. I don't know why they call it a bull pen, though i have often speculated.

"Attorney visit," one of the marshals calls as he opens the bars to let me out.

We go to the end of the hall. Evelyn is puffing and huffing. She always puffs and huffs when she's angry. In a few minutes, i know that she will begin pacing and tapping her feet.

"They're trying to force us to go to trial right away," she tells me. "You know I've been busy, drawing up motions for federal court."

"What do you mean, federal kourt? Aren't we in federal kourt?"

"Yes, but if the judge denies our motion for postponement, I want to be ready to go straight into the circuit court."

"What's the circuit kourt?" It was all Greek to me.

"That's where we appeal if the judge issues an unfavorable opinion."

We go on talking. Evelyn is trying to explain to me and i am trying to explain to her that we can't possibly go to trial. "There's no way in the world you can be ready to go to trial right now." I am ranting.

"I know, I know," Evelyn replies.

I rant and rave indignantly while Evelyn tries to explain the law to me. They call us to court. The judge is gagliardi. He looks just like what he is: a racist dog craka. Kamau comes into the courtroom. I am delighted to see him. He has aged. He's grinning, but under the grin his face is hungry. I wonder what he's thinking. Bob Bloom, Kamau's lawyer, is up on his feet talking. He is asking for a postponement. Everything he says is logical and makes sense. Evelyn gets up and starts to rap. She is talking pure unmitigated truth and logic. The judge looks at the ceiling. I predict the out- come of the hearing and keep turning around to look at the audience. Friendly, familiar faces smiling at me. I don't want them to ever stop. The judge denies our motion for a postponement. The judge denies all our motions. I want to scream, "Dirty dog, slimy pig, you're not a judge. You're just another prosecutor."

I look at the prosecutor. He's smug. His face is unreal-like a poster. He looks like a 1940 war poster. John Q. Public. I keep staring at him. Nobody could look that corny. He's like a ghost from the past. I'm convinced he doesn't know it's 1973. The lawyers ask for a joint meeting and the judge says yes, but make it short. The lawyers outline the strategy of the appeals.

"What are our chances on this appeal?" i ask.

"There's a chance," Evelyn says. "Slim, maybe, but a chance. If the courts are interested in justice, well, of course, they'll support our position." We all know how big an "if" it is.

The next time we went to kourt five days later it had snowed. The trees were bare and covered with ice and, though i don't like winter, it was a beautiful sight. As soon as i arrived in the kourthouse, Evelyn was there to tell me that the circuit court had denied all of our appeals, and gagliardi was talking about going to trial that day.

"I just want you to understand that there is no way that I can adequately defend you on this short notice. I haven't had time to prepare pretrial motions, I have received no discovery material, and I haven't even had time to think about an appropriate defense because I haven't been able to find out the basic facts of the case. I just want you to know that."

"I know," i told her, "and i know you're doing the best that you can."

"At any rate," Evelyn said, "if worse comes to worst, you'll have a solid issue for appeal."

It was a depressing picture. We clearly were being railroaded. We went before the judge. Again, he was arrogant and belligerent, determined to force us to go to trial right away. Again, she asked the judge for a postponement, but her arguments fell on deaf ears. He ruled that we could have a joint conference later, but the trial would begin immediately.

As we left the courtroom, Akilah was standing in the hallway with Ksissay, Kamau's two-year-old daughter. As he walked near her, she held out her arms to him. Kamau took about two steps toward her and the marshals jumped him and began beating him. I jumped on the marshals and tried to pull them off. In an instant there was one hell of a fight in the hallway. Finally, the marshals drew their guns and forced us to lie down on the floor with our arms spread apart. We lay there while they stomped our backs and kicked us as they handcuffed our hands behind our backs. Akilah ran to tell everybody what was going on as Ksissay screamed hysterically. I will never forget the haunting scream of that child as she watched her father being brutally beaten.

After the fight, the marshals were vicious and vindictive. They did everything they could to provoke and harass us. Newspapers reported that we had attacked the marshals.

Kamau and i decided that we weren't just going to let ourselves be railroaded quietly. This so-called trial was such a blatant miscarriage of justice that we weren't even going to participate in it. And we didn't want Evelyn and Bob Bloom to participate in it either.

"Just sit there and don't say anything," we told them. "We'll do the talking." And do the talking we did.

At the next kourt session, gagliardi asked the lawyers if they were prepared to begin picking the jury. Both of them made statements to the effect that since it was impossible for them to represent us adequately, we had requested that they remain “mute."

"All right, then, we'll proceed with you or without you," the judge roared. "Bring in the panel.”

As soon as the jury panel entered the kourtroom, Kamau and i began to tell them what was going on. We told the jury that he had been appointed by Nixon and that he was persecuting us because of our political beliefs, that he was the same judge who had just given Mitchell and Stans, the Watergate defendants, who did not have one fraction of the valid reasons for an adjournment that we had, an extended postponement. After a while, the judge ordered us removed from the courtroom. Jury selection continued with only the judge and the prosecutor participating. Every so often the judge would send the marshals back to ask us if we were going to "behave."

"Of course," we would tell the marshals.

Once returned to the courtroom, we "behaved." Again we told the jury what was happening and that the judge was trying to railroad us. As soon as we began to talk, the judge ordered us from the kourt. "Whenever we were about to be thrown out, the marshals vied for positions closest to us and for the opportunity to grab us, twist our hands behind our backs, and get their licks in. To avoid being manhandled, as soon as the judge said, "Remove the defend ant from the courtroom," i would say, "The defendant will remove herself." Most of the time it worked, but one day the marshals were so gung ho they jumped on me and started brutalizing me in open kourt. Evelyn jumped up like she was ready to fight and stood between me and them, holding them away with an outstretched arm.

She complained to the judge. My arm and hand had not yet fully recovered and i was still partially paralyzed. Evelyn's remarks made the marshals more vicious. They became so brutal that all of the spectators began to cry out. As the marshals carried me out of the kourtroom, the spectators chanted, "Railroad, railroad." The judge ordered them removed. As i was being taken downstairs, i could hear the commotion. People were chanting and yelling and screaming. The marshals, i later found out, had beaten some of them. I sat in the bull pen, lost in my thoughts, when they brought a white woman and man down the hallway and put the woman in the cell with me. I looked at her without much interest.

"Assata," she said, "I'm go glad to have finally met you. But I never thought it would be this way."

I looked at her blankly.

"My name is Natalie Rosenstein. I was upstairs. I was one of the spectators in the courtroom when they started pushing and shoving and beating people."

"What?" i said. "You're kidding!"

"No. We didn't move fast enough, so they arrested us," she said, referring to herself and the white man.

""What did they charge you with?”

"Obstructing justice.”

After that, Kamau and i were banned from the kourtroom. We were put into a freezing room next to the kourtroom where a loudspeaker had been installed so we could listen to the trial. In the beginning, they slammed the door shut. At first, we wanted the door open because it was so cold and the warmth from the rest of the building helped. Then we began to enjoy the privacy. It was good to be able to talk to each other without someone looking down our throats. Because we knew that sooner or later they would open the door and stare at us, we would open it.

"Let some heat in. It's freezing in here.”

"The door stays closed." After a while, they locked it.

One of the first things that Kamau and i had discussed was Islam. He had been a Muslim for some time and was deep into it. He was seriously trying to convince me to convert and become a practicing, active Muslim. I had always said that if i had any religion, it was Islam, but i had never practiced it. Because of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, the Muslim influence over our struggle has been very strong, but it had always been difficult for me to accept the idea of an all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing god. And, i reasoned, how could i be expected to love and worship a god whose "master plan" included the enslavement, torture, and murder of Black people?

Kamau argued that Islam was a just religion, opposed to oppression. "Oppression is worse than slaughter," he quoted from the Holy Koran. "A true Muslim is a true revolutionary. There is no contradiction between being a Muslim and being a revolutionary." I didn't know much about it, but i agreed to seriously check it out. Muslim services were held regularly on Rikers Island, and Simba and i began to attend.