Cultural Impact
A documentary film about Shakur, Eyes of the Rainbow, written and directed by Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando, appeared in 1997. The official premier of the film in Havana in 2004 was promoted by Casa de las Américas, the main cultural forum of the Cuban government. The National Conference of Black Lawyers and Mos Def are among the professional organizations and entertainers to support Assata Shakur; The "Hands Off Assata" campaign is organized by Dream Hampton. Hip-hop artist Common recorded a tribute to Shakur, "A Song for Assata", on his album Like Water for Chocolate, after traveling to Havana to meet with Shakur personally. Digable Planets, Paris ("Assata's Song"), Public Enemy, and X-Clan have recorded similar songs about Shakur. Due to her support in the hip-hop culture, Shakur has been alternately termed a "rap music legend" or a "minor cause celebre".
On December 12, 2006 the Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, directed City College's president, Gregory H. Williams, to remove the "unauthorized and inappropriate" designation of the "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center", which was named by students in 1989, when a student group won the right to use the lounge after a campus shutdown over proposed tuition increases. The decision resulted in a lawsuit from student and alumni groups. As of April 7, 2010, the presiding judge has ruled that the issues of students' free speech and administrators' immunity from suit "deserve a trial."
In 1995 Manhattan Community College renamed a scholarship which had previously been named for Shakur, following controversy. In 2008, Shakur was featured in a course on "African-American heroes"—along with figures such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, John Henry, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis—at Bucknell University. Rutgers University professor H. Bruce Franklin, who excerpts Shakur's book in a class on Crime and Punishment in American Literature, calls her a "revolutionary fighter against imperialism".
Shakur is still a notorious figure among New Jersey law enforcement officials. For example, black (now ex-)Trooper Anthony Reed sued the force, among other things, over posters of Shakur, altered to include Reed's badge number, being hung in Newark barracks, an incident that Reed considered "racist in nature". In contrast, according to Dylan Rodriguez, to many "U.S. radicals and revolutionaries" Shakur represents a "venerated (if sometimes fetishized) signification of liberatory desire and possibility".
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