Afeni Shakur Evolution of a Revolutionary

Chapter ONE: The Stuff "It's important to know the stuff you came from." -- Afeni Shakur I travel east on I-20 as the sun sets behind me, passing exits I no longer recognize. Old fears of being lost on the highway in Stone Mountain, Georgia, resurface, even though I'm told it's no longer the crackerland of my childhood. Black folk live out here now, far beyond the parameters of my youth. Today, Atlanta stretches past Cumberland Mall, Six Flags, and even Stone Mountain. Things have changed and I missed the transition. I feel strangely stuck right in the middle of my life. There was a time when my life was all ahead of me. Today, there is a big chunk behind me and maybe just as much in front. All this means is, I still have time to change my attitudes and sensibilities, but I am just less inclined to do so. Let's say I'm just a little less flexible. Like an uncle of mine who still says "colored" instead of "black." He just never got used to saying "Black" or "Negro," and didn't understand what difference it made or why he had to make a change. The change was irrelevant to him..."African-American" was out of the question.So, the irony of the famed revolutionary and impassioned mother of a rapper -- superstar Tupac Shakur -- now residing in suburban, once-Klan-country Georgia is not lost on me. In fact, I have learned to expect the unexpected from Afeni Shakur. Not because she means to be complex or contradictory, but because she just is. That is her truth, and it's a truth that fascinates me. I've grown to love my friend Afeni.As I drive I think back to December 1, 1994, the day I met Afeni. At the time, I was writing a screenplay about a fictitious young woman in the '60s who was raising her daughter while still living with her own mother. The piece was, or still is if I ever get finished writing it, a three-generation piece about Black women. The young woman in the middle is a fictitious, composite character of Angela Davis and Afeni Shakur. My plan was to meet Afeni and hopefully have her help me develop this particular character and perhaps give me her insights on the other two. The way I met her was not how I'd imagined, though. In fact, I was thrust into a tumultuous family trauma her son, my friend, Tupac, had been brutally shot five times in the foyer of a New York recording studio on a Sunday night; had left Bellevue Hospital on a Monday, and was in court on a Tuesday morning for a sexual assault hearing. So, on December 1, 1994, I was early for the court hearing and waiting in a vast hallway with Jada Pinkett, a close friend of mine and an even closer friend to Tupac Shakur. We were waiting to get a glimpse of Tupac on his way into court and let him know we were near and there for him. At that time, I didn't even know the charges or the circumstances of the trial. I just knew that Tupac was shot the night before in the entrance of the recording studio, and I needed to be there to support my friends -- Jada and Tupac. The crazy events of the last two days had me reeling, but I tried to consciously stay in the moment. It is Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning. You're in New York. You're at the courthouse. I remember talking myself into the present moment of that day, but I kept slipping out. Tupac is shot. Someone shot Tupac. Today is Tuesday morning...Five times! Who did it? He's at Bellevue....That was Monday, which would be yesterday....He's out. Tupac's gone. He left. The hospital? He didn't feel safe up in there. At Bellevue? Monday, that was yesterday. Where is he? I don't know, but I'm going to New York. Here I am Tuesday morning at the courthouse. Just be here. Just be present. Someone may need you.And that's where I was -- jumping back and forth in my head -- this Monday, the day I first saw Afeni Shakur. A tight group clustered at the end of the hall, surrounding a wheelchair holding anGuy, Jasmine is the author of 'Afeni Shakur Evolution of a Revolutionary' with ISBN 9780743470537 and ISBN 0743470532.