by Dr. Tanisha Cannon, LSPC Managing Director
I landed in Cuba on September 26, the day after Assata Shakur transitioned to join the ancestors. I have always centered my travel around learning about the African diaspora across the world, guided not just by the paths of migration but also the ways resistance, culture, and liberation followed. Cuba has long held a sacred place in that story.
On my way to Cuba, I dreamed I might connect with Assata, to touch a living piece of the history that shaped so much of my political consciousness. Dorsey Nunn, LSPC’s former Executive Director, had interviewed her years ago, and I imagined what it might mean to stand in that same space.
As soon as I touched down, I heard the news that Assata had passed. The weight of that moment sat with me. In that moment, I felt something move: a shift of energy, a spiritual succession, a transfer of liberation. Knowing that Assata passed as a free woman, on liberated soil, was both grounding and deeply moving. Her autobiography was one of the first books I ever read about revolutionary struggle. It helped shape how I viewed resistance, how I understood courage, and how I learned that fighting for our people’s liberation is not just political, it’s ancestral.
As I moved through Havana, I thought about Fidel Castro’s decision to grant her asylum. That act was solidarity, in its most plain and powerful form. I thought, too, about Fidel’s own story.
In 1953, a 26-year-old Fidel led an armed assault on one of the largest military posts in Cuba. Many of his comrades were killed and tortured, and the assault failed. Upon his capture, Fidel was put on trial and delivered a five-hour speech laying out his vision for a liberated Cuba, one which would include education, land, health, justice, dignity. At the end, he declared:
“Condenadme, no importa. La historia me absolverá.”
“Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me.”
That statement wasn’t a plea, it was a prophecy. The state could condemn him in the present, but history—the people, the struggle, the future—would vindicate him. And it did. Six years later, Batista fled, the revolution triumphed, and those words became a cornerstone of revolutionary legacy around the world.
Assata, too, was branded a criminal by the U.S. state. She was hunted, imprisoned, and exiled. But like Fidel, she stood strong, rooted in the righteousness of her cause, the fight for Black liberation. And just like history absolved Fidel, history will absolve Assata.
The courts, and the state? Perhaps not. But the people, the movement, the generations who will know her name—they will remember her not as a fugitive, but as a freedom fighter.
This is the part that sits deeply with me. Our work is ensuring that history tells the truth. Every campaign we push forward, every member letter we write, every rally, every coalition: it’s all carrying the torch of those who came before us.
Assata’s story didn’t end in exile. It lives on in movements across this country and around the world. It lives on in Cuba. And it lives on in the work we do every day to dismantle bondage, build power, and fight for liberation.
We are continuing the work on their shoulders.
And history will absolve her.
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