Pac + Afeni’s Lesson on Shaming + Naming

It’s Tupac’s birthday!

Many folk, myself included, don’t know much about Afeni other than her being Tupac’s mom. I knew that she was a Black Panther and that she was once a victim of crack cocaine, but that’s it.

In a GirlTrek podcast episode, I learned that Afeni:

• grew up in an abusive household which led to her using drugs at 15 years old
• played a key role in the Black Panther Party; she wrote for their newspaper and used it to trick the FBI
• peeped a member of the Panther Party who was an undercover agent before anyone else did
• became part of the Panther 21 in 1969–arrested/charged with conspiracy to bomb police stations. The bond for each of ’em was $100k. The Party could only afford to bail out two of them, and they chose Afeni as one of the two because she knew how to write and how to use her writing to raise money
• represented herself in court and cross-examined that undercover agent and got him to admit that he was an agent and that he was purposely trying to incite violence in the Party to frame them; this led to the Panther 21 being acquitted
• renamed herself Afeni, which means “lover of the people”; she was born Alice Faye Williams

And ALL of this happened before she even had Tupac. She had him in ’71 when she was 24 years old. She named him Lasane Parish Crooks, then renamed him Tupac (after a revolutionary in Peru) when he was one year old.

People thought Tupac was wrong for airing his mama’s dirty laundry in “Dear Mama,” but she said she supported him releasing that. He needed to admit his hurt and how she had hurt him. We can’t heal and grow and move on if we ain’t getting it all out.

Afeni was a powerful, for-the-people woman who birthed and raised a powerful, for-the-people man. That ain’t coincidence either. You reap what you sow. History gives us plenty examples of that, including 1) Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun, whose father was an activist, 2) Virginia Khia, an amazing Savannah artist/activist, whose parents were activists, 3) Oretha Castle Haley, a legendary New Orleans activist, whose mama worked in a restaurant that also served as a hub for the civil rights movement.

Them kids be paying attention ni.

They ain’t gotta be your child to teach ’em. Afeni said save the children in your community. Camoflauge, a rapper from Savannah, said in his song “No Love,” that “…We gotta save these kids.” They both said the same thing.

Rappers are the hood’s storytellers. If you wanna know what’s troubling the people in any era or area, go listen to the most criticized music. I’ve quoted Pimp C in front of an audience of mostly old, white people. Because what he said fit what I was saying. We gotta release the shame around what we gravitate towards and what we survived. It’s all a part of who we are and what makes us so fucking magical.

So today, I call the name of Tupac Shakur and his mama, Afeni.

P.S.: I’m walking/running everyday this month as a way of shaking up how I pay tribute to those who came before me. Katherine Dunham, in 1969, said June is the month to honor the ancestors. Read about it.