Tupac carried his surname but not his blood: Lumumba Shakur was the first husband of Afeni Shakur and the man through whom the name Shakur came into Tupac’s life.
Son of Saladin Shakur
Lumumba Abdul Shakur was born Anthony Coston, on January 9, 1942, according to genealogical records. His father, Saladin Shakur, was a follower of Marcus Garvey and an associate of Malcolm X. In Harlem, Saladin became a surrogate father to many young activists; Afeni said he “was the father for all the young boys who had no fathers.” Some of them, including the later Mutulu and Assata Shakur, took his surname. Lumumba’s brother was Zayd Malik Shakur.
Lumumba is often called a brother of Mutulu. That is true only in the political sense: Mutulu counted Lumumba and Zayd among his brothers all his life, but they were not related by blood.
Panther and husband
Lumumba was a Muslim and part of the Black Panther leadership in Harlem. According to the authorized biography, he was the chapter’s deputy minister of defense. In November 1968 he married Afeni, who took the name Shakur through him. He was already married and lived in a polygamous marriage under Islamic law, an arrangement Afeni accepted at first.
The “Panther 21” trial
In the early morning of April 2, 1969, police were at the door of the couple’s apartment on West 117th Street. Lumumba and Afeni were arrested along with 19 other Panthers; the case went by the name “The People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur et al.” Prosecutors accused them of planning attacks. Afeni decided to represent herself. Lumumba considered that irrational and tried to talk her out of it. On May 13, 1971, all defendants were acquitted.
The end of the marriage
The marriage fell apart while the trial was still going on. When Lumumba learned that Afeni was seeing other men, he divorced her under Islamic law and demanded that she drop the name Shakur. Afeni refused and obtained Saladin’s permission to keep it. In November 1970 she learned she was pregnant; she had to tell Lumumba in the courtroom. The child’s father was not him but, as far as is known today, Billy Garland.
That is how Tupac came to bear the name Shakur: Afeni kept it, and her son received it with her.
Death in 1986
Lumumba Shakur died in early February 1986; genealogical records give February 3. According to the family, he died before Mutulu, who names him among the departed comrades in his 1996 farewell letter to Tupac.
It is often written that Lumumba was “shot during Mutulu’s arrest in Louisiana.” That does not hold up: Mutulu was arrested in California on February 12, 1986, days after Lumumba’s death. Various accounts say Lumumba was shot in New Orleans; no reliable press source for this is available.