Lead image for Sekyiwa Shakur: The trauma behind my struggle with suicidal thoughts.
Eighteen-year-old North Carolina descendant Alice Faye Williams was notified by her best friend, Sandra, that she was pregnant in 1996. Sandra had previously visited her New York obstetrician and gynaecologist for a hysterectomy procedure to prevent conception. As doctors often did to black patients, he removed one of her fallopian tubes, leaving everything else, including her womb, intact, without informing Sandra.
One night, after Alice left her shift at the post office, she received a phone call informing her that Sandra had tragically died in her bathroom after suffering a brain haemorrhage. The premature baby was miraculously born alive, but because she was black, the nurses chose to let her die without placing her in a neonatal intensive care unit.
To cope with her trauma, Alice sought refuge at a Bembe ceremony, a New York African traditional event that originated from the Yoruba ethnic group. She was told that her Orisha (divine spirit) was Oya, a powerful deity who ruled the wind, the tempests and the Niger River. She was bestowed with a new name, Afeni, which meant ‘dear one’ and ‘lover of people’.
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During the civil rights era, countless black people rejected ‘Anglo-Saxon slave names’ and adopted African-inspired names. One Saturday on the famous 125th Street in Harlem, Afeni attended a Black Panther Party rally and listened to founder Bobby Seale speak articulately and passionately about the rights of black people. She watched him recite the Black Panther Party’s 10-point agenda, including point six, which demanded ‘free healthcare for all blacks’ and resonated with Afeni. The Panthers were a profoundly tenacious movement that fiercely loved the black community.
The bigoted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counter-intelligence programme infiltrated the Panthers and arrested their leaders under falsified and unlawful claims. On April 2, 1969, Afeni’s apartment door was kicked open, a shotgun was pointed at her and she was arrested alongside 20 other members of the Panthers, leading to the infamous Panther 21 conspiracy case.
During the many court hearings, Afeni discovered that she was expecting Panther activist Billy Garland’s child. On June 16, 1971, a month after her acquittal, which spared her from serving a cumulative 309-year prison sentence, she delivered a son and named him Tupac Amaru, after a Peruvian liberation leader.
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