Keisha Morris is the only woman Tupac was ever married to. The marriage began behind prison walls and was over within months. Little is known about her, and that seems to be how she wants it: she has rarely spoken publicly, most extensively to XXL magazine in 2011.
Meeting at a club
By her own account, the two met in the summer of 1994 at Capitol, a New York club. Keisha was 20, a New Yorker studying at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and working as a camp counselor. They danced and spoke briefly. A month later they ran into each other again at the Tunnel, he had spent that month looking for her, going to every club, she said.
It was the hardest stretch of Tupac’s life. In the autumn of 1994 he stood trial in New York on sexual abuse charges; in November he was shot at Quad Studios; in February 1995 he was sentenced to prison.
A wedding in prison
On April 29, 1995, Tupac and Keisha were married at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in upstate New York, where he was serving his sentence. She told XXL how he explained it: “I don’t want you saying you’re my girlfriend. I want people to take you seriously.”
Keisha visited him regularly. During that time Afeni Shakur was about to lose her house. According to journalist Ben Westhoff, Tupac asked his wife to contact Suge Knight, the head of Death Row Records in Los Angeles; Afeni then received $15,000. In October 1995 Death Row posted Tupac’s $1.4 million bail, and he walked free.
A quick ending
After his release Tupac moved to Los Angeles, and the marriage fell apart. Keisha later said she realised “I wasn’t needed anymore.” The marriage was annulled in 1996. In 1997 Vanity Fair called it a marriage of convenience from his prison days, Keisha herself describes a real relationship.
They stayed friends. By her account, she last saw Tupac a few days before his death in September 1996. She remembered something he told her: “Everything I touch, I damage, I mess up.” And she said she knew Tupac, he would never have hurt her.
In 2011, according to XXL, Keisha Morris was an educator with a master’s degree and a mother of two.
Rumours and evidence
Several claims circulate about the reasons for the wedding and about the couple’s wishes for children and plans for the future. None of these statements is supported by any source, and they concern the private life of a living woman, so we do not repeat them. The date needs care as well: it is sometimes given as “May 1995”; the correct date is April 29, 1995.