The life and times of Tupac Shakur’s mother
Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary.
What you need to know:
- On June 16, 1971, at 24, she gave birth to a son, Tupac Amaru, a month after leaving solitary confinement.
- She was judiciously acquitted of 196 bogus felony counts. She was facing 312 years, as part of the infamous Panther 21 trial.
On April 2, 1969, the New York Police Department's Special Bossy Unit, a division of cops fresh from the police academy, conscripted a crackdown on black leaders.
They indiscriminately intruded Black Panther party anti-sexism affiliate, Afeni Shakur's apartment and brutally arrested her.
On June 16, 1971, at 24, she gave birth to a son, Tupac Amaru, a month after leaving solitary confinement.
She was judiciously acquitted of 196 bogus felony counts. She was facing 312 years, as part of the infamous Panther 21 trial.
Afeni had another child, Sekyiwa, five years later, after she was abandoned by the ineptitude Billy Garland, Tupac's biological father.
"I won. I had support from women during the trial. Women have to find strength from other women," Afeni states. "That is what gets us through."
Over the next decade, she toiled to raise two children as a single mother. Enduring incessant harassment and surveillance by the disingenuous Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Dismissed
The FBI secretly ensured she was dismissed from her occupation as a legal services employee by secretly revealing to her superiors her history as a spirited pragmatic Black Panther. This led to her fleeing New York City in 1984 to Baltimore, Maryland, and eventually to Marin City, California, in 1988.
Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary impassions Afeni's childhood tribulations, including racial discrimination and segregation, and the Black Panther movement.
It's a colouration of her family tree that consists of her great grandmother, who was a field slave; her grandmother, a sharecropper; and her mother, a factory worker.
It concludes with Afeni raising her children as a revolutionary. Her parenting skills inspired her eloquent son's rise to poetic superstardom, while he rescued her from a shattering crack-cocaine addiction.
The Black Panther ideology was dominated by a consistent thirst for knowledge. Afeni coerced her children to read the New York Times and numerous books.
When Tupac was 17, he was an effervescent, courageous and articulate human encyclopaedia. He possessed prominent historical knowledge and constitutional competence of a legal practitioner.
As a Black Panther, Afeni was involved in reopening 28 neglected public schools in poor New York locations within Bronx Brooklyn Harlem and Queens. Schools that the sinister White Teachers' Union tried to keep closed.
Having attended New York School for the Performing Arts, she enrolled Tupac in the Baltimore School for the Performing Arts, replenishing his poetic and drama talents.
Afeni combated the most successful hip hop record label in the 1990s, Death Row Records, whose intimidating six-foot three-inch combustible CEO Marion Suge Knight had a menacingly violent reputation.
At the age of 25, Tupac, was viciously gunned in Las Vegas Nevada on September 7, 1996, by South Side Crips gangbanger Orlando Anderson. He succumbed to the fatal gunshot wounds, six days later, at the Las Vegas University Medical Centre.
He left behind a workaholic corpus, including seven movies and 713 master tapes to songs he wrote and ferociously recorded. While he was signed to Death Row Records and its parent company, Interscope.
After Tupac's cremation, Afeni spent the next seven years battling for her son's rights. She noticed Tupac's account only contained $105,000, regardless of the fact that he had generated $60 million worth of album sales in 1996 alone.
Afeni and her lawyer, Richard Fischbein, persistently requested for accountability from Suge Knight, who had doubled as Tupac's manager. He became evasive and elusive.
Tupac’s financial records
Fortunately, having been enabled by Tupac's friends, Jada Pinkett and Jasmine Guy, Afeni employed an accountant, Jeffrey Joiner. He meticulously scrutinised Tupac's financial records.
Afeni also hired Deloitte and Touche, that audited Interscope Records and located Tupac's outstanding compensation.
Afeni, came to a forensic conclusion that her son had been swindled out of $17 million. He had signed a three-album recording contract, with a 12 per cent royalty payment, a year before his death.
It was not consented in the presence of Tupac's personal lawyer, as legally demanded. The contract was only adjudicated by Death Row Records controversial attorney David Kenner.
A week before his fatal shooting, Tupac officially sent a letter, dismissing David Kenner as his legal representative, when his suspicions of his financial records magnified.
On April 18, 1997, Afeni successfully filed a 43-page lawsuit to fragment the previous contract Tupac signed in 1995.
She obtained control of his unreleased recordings, launched Amaru Entertainment and commenced releasing Tupac's music, posthumously increasing his international album sales to 75 million copies.
She also opened the Tupac Amaru Centre for Performing Arts in 2001, to nurture creative talent of underprivileged children.
Jeff Anthony is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother
