"Assata Shakur, the Black revolutionary once known as JoAnne Chesimard... died on Thursday in Havana. She was 78...."

"Assata Shakur was both lionized and demonized long after she and the Black Liberation Army, the militant group she had embraced, faded from broad public consciousness. To supporters she was a tireless battler against racial oppression. To detractors she was a stone-cold cop killer, the first woman to land on the F.B.I.’s 'most wanted terrorists' list, with $2 million in state and federal money offered for her capture. For her part, Ms. Shakur regarded herself as 'a 20th-century escaped slave.'..."

From "Assata Shakur Dies at 78; Convicted Revolutionary Found Refuge in Cuba/A member of a militant Black group, she was found guilty in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper, escaped from prison and fled to Cuba, where she taught and wrote" (NYT).

In 1987, Ms. Shakur published an autobiography, “Assata,” a name she had assumed in 1971, forsaking what she called her “slave name.” The book was replete with spellings and locutions that were standard in radical circles, like references to America as “amerika” and to the police as “pigs.” She routinely used a lowercase “i” as a first-person pronoun — to “take away from the egotistical connotation of the word,” she said.

As for her name, she wrote: “It sounded so strange when people called me JoAnne. It really had nothing to do with me. I didn’t feel like no JoAnne, or no negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman.”

ADDED: Does anyone feel like a JoAnne?