Years ago, when I was working at Essence, I traveled to Cuba as part of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s delegation. We met officials, toured Havana, and experienced a version of Cuba that existed outside of U.S. headlines. But for me, what hit hardest wasn’t the politics of diplomacy—it was walking streets and sitting in spaces that Assata Shakur herself once walked. To be in a country that had granted her asylum, to imagine her life unfolding there in exile, was surreal. It made her story more than a chapter in a book or a line in a speech; it was real, lived, and breathing right under the Cuban sun.

Shakur’s words have always stretched beyond the page. They’ve become mantras of resistance, reminders that liberation is both collective and deeply personal. Standing in Havana, I understood that her voice wasn’t only about the U.S. struggle but about freedom as a global condition.

Take one of her most widely cited lines: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” You don’t just read that—you feel it in your bones. It’s a blueprint for survival and solidarity.

Her critique of education also resonates with anyone who’s had to unlearn what they were taught: “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” It’s a sharp reminder that history in the classroom is curated, sanitized, and often weaponized. Liberation demands self-study and community study—exactly the kind of work Black scholars, artists, and movements have done outside of official institutions for generations.

And then there’s her insistence on revolution as something more human than militant: “We need a r/evolution of the mind… r/evolution is love.” For someone painted by the U.S. as a permanent threat, these words reveal a radical tenderness. She wasn’t only talking about the overthrow of oppressive systems, but also about how we treat one another in the process.

Shakur also gave language to the carceral state long before “mass incarceration” became the buzzword. She laid bare the loophole in the 13th Amendment: “Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.” When I see how prison labor is exploited today, her words feel less like history and more like prophecy.

Being in Cuba gave me a sense of the contradictions she must have carried—exiled yet alive, vilified yet venerated. The U.S. branded her a terrorist, but for many across the diaspora, she was a freedom fighter who told uncomfortable truths.

Her voice was sharp, unapologetic, and timeless: “Nobody in history has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” That line reads like it was written yesterday. And in many ways, it was.

Shakur’s words cut because they’re not designed to comfort; they’re designed to wake us up. And if you ever find yourself in Havana, breathing in the same humid air she once did, you’ll realize that her exile is also a testament: the struggle for liberation doesn’t stop at borders.

Rest in eternal peace, Assata.