Tupac and the Black Panther Party: Legacy, the Panther 21 Trial and the FBI

Few people have had their first court appearance before they were born. In the spring of 1971, when the jury in New York was deliberating in the trial of the “Panther 21,” Afeni Shakur was pregnant. One month later, Tupac was born. His mother had defended herself without any legal training-and she won. Tupac’s anger, his distrust of the police, and his sense of community began right here.

Key companions have their own pages: Afeni Shakur, Lumumba Shakur, Mutulu Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, and Assata Shakur. This text summarizes what the party demanded, how the state moved against it, and what Tupac made of it.

Ten Points, Free Breakfast, and Loaded Weapons

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland in 1966. As a Marxist-Leninist organization of the Black Power movement, its Ten-Point Program demanded jobs, housing, better schools, an end to police brutality, and exemption from military service for Black men, alongside a breakfast program for children. The group became visible because its members openly carried weapons. By around 1969/70, it had an estimated peak of up to 5,000 members across roughly thirty chapters. It disbanded in 1982.

The party’s legacy is contested. Earlier accounts viewed it as a criminal rather than a political group. Others described it primarily as the victim of a repressive state. Both readings are now considered too one-sided. Recent works speak of one of the most influential Black Power alliances with a “tragic” end that also stemmed from internal strife.

156 Counts and an Acquittal After 90 Minutes

At dawn on April 2, 1969, New York police raided the apartments of 21 members of the New York chapter, including Afeni and her husband Lumumba Shakur. District Attorney Frank Hogan accused them of planning murders of police officers and bomb attacks on four police stations, five department stores, railroad lines, and other targets. Bail was set at $100,000 per person. Because hardly anyone could raise the money, most remained on Rikers Island for months.

The case became the talk of the salons: on January 14, 1970, conductor Leonard Bernstein invited 90 guests to a fundraising party that Tom Wolfe mocked under the title “Radical Chic.” The trial against the remaining 13 defendants began on October 19, 1970, before Judge John M. Murtagh. It ranked among the longest and most expensive in the history of the State of New York. The prosecution relied on undercover police officers and seized material. Murtagh stated that it was not a political trial, even though much of the evidence was political.

According to biographer Jeff Pearlman, Afeni rejected a court-appointed lawyer because he was not loud enough for her; she defended herself. In cross-examination, she led undercover officer Ralph White to admissions about the role of informants. On May 13, 1971, after about 90 minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted all defendants on all 156 counts, including the two who had fled abroad during the trial. The jury followed the prosecution on not a single count.

COINTELPRO: The FBI Declares the Party an Enemy of the State

The Panthers did not concern local police alone. In 1967, the FBI launched a covert program (COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program) targeting “Black Nationalists.” According to the 1976 US Senate Church Committee report, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had already described the Panthers in September 1968 as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” From July 1969, they were the primary target: in the end, 233 out of 293 authorized actions against “Black Nationalist” groups were directed at them. Methods included anonymous letters designed to sow discord and attempts to incite violence between the Panthers and other groups. The committee called it “deplorable” that officials used such means, and found it “equally disturbing” how proud they were of the bloodshed they caused.

The killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969, during a police raid in Chicago became a symbol. The security chief of the Chicago chapter, William O’Neal, had informed for the FBI and supplied the police with a floor plan of the apartment; this became known in 1973. For Tupac’s circle, the state was an open adversary: his godfather Geronimo Pratt spent 27 years in prison until a court vacated the conviction in 1997 because the prosecution had concealed that its star witness was an informant. His uncle by marriage Zayd Shakur died in 1973 in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in which a police officer was also killed. Assata Shakur, who was in the car, was convicted of it in 1977 and always denied the crime.

Between Panther Son and Street Rider: Tupac’s Roots

Tupac spoke early and often of these origins. Speaking to journalist Tony Patrick, he listed his family: mother Afeni, stepfather Mutulu, godfather Pratt, “aunt” Assata. He came from a long line of “soldiers,” and every day had been a test. That women had it hardest in this world was something he witnessed early on: “I grew up watching that.” In the Vibe interview of February 1996, he described himself as torn between being the son of a Black Panther and a “rider” from the street. His mother had taught him the ideals, he said, and he had taught her about life in the real world.

These traces run throughout his entire body of work. At age eleven, Tupac reportedly wrote a notebook of poems and haikus dedicated to incarcerated Panthers from his mother’s circle of friends; Sotheby’s offered it for auction in 2022. In Marin City in 1989, he recorded the song Panther Power with Ray Luv, which was not released until 2003. His poetry collection The Rose That Grew from Concrete contains Can U C the Pride in the Panther, and he named his production project after Harriet Tubman’s escape network, the Underground Railroad. When he was recovering at the home of actress Jasmine Guy in December 1994 following the Quad Studio shooting, the Fruit of Islam and former Panthers guarded the house, according to Wikipedia.

A Political Vocabulary Instead of a Party Card

In Words for My Comrades (Doubleday, 2025), journalist Dean Van Nguyen portrays Tupac as a conduit of Panther ideology to a modern audience, going so far as to call him “America’s last great revolutionary figure.” Publishers Weekly considered the portrait “avid yet muddled”: it was in conflict with his conviction for sexual abuse (see Image of Women).

Jeff Pearlman paints a more sober picture. According to Complex, Tupac also briefly joined the Young Communists League in Baltimore; his political education was therefore broader than the Panther line. In Pearlman’s words-as summarized by NPR-his mother was a hero, but not an everyday mother: Afeni fell into crack addiction in the 1980s. By the time Tupac reached adulthood, the party no longer existed; it ended in 1982. What he inherited was a vocabulary, not a party card.

Further reading: Afeni Shakur · Tupac and Politics · The Name Tupac Amaru · Poems