Mutulu Shakur
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Mutulu Shakur (born August 8, 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland as Jeral Wayne Williams and is also known as Dr. Mutulu Shakur) was a member of the Republic of New Africa and a close friend of Geronimo Pratt.
Shakur is best known for planning the infamous 1.6 million dollar robbery of a Brinks armored truck in New York that left three persons dead. One of his accomplices in the holdup was Kathy Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground and a fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted List for 11 years. Boudin was arrested at the scene of the crime, but Shakur escaped. Shakur had been a leader of an offshoot of the Black Liberation Army. He is currently incarcerated in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prison's "Administrative Maximum" (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado [1]. His projected release date is 10 February 2016. [2]
On October 20, 1981, after 6 previous unsuccessful attempts to rob a Brinks truck, Shakur and five or six other men succeeded in robbing the Brinks truck, killing one of the Brinks guards. They drove to another location where they transferred the money to a U-Haul truck driven by Boudin and her husband David Gilbert. However, the transfer was seen and called in to the police, who set up a roadblock at the Tappan Zee bridge. A shootout occurred in which two Nyack policemen were killed and Boudin captured.
In the 1980s, he was arrested on RICO charges of bank robbery and aiding his sister, Assata Shakur, in her escape from prison. While at large, on July 23, 1982 he became the 380th person added by the FBI to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
He was arrested February 11, 1986 in California and was found guilty. His case is currently on appeal. He served several years at the infamous ADX Florence, but later transferred to Coleman II USP.
While in ADX Florence he was visited by novelist Jonathan Franzen. The visit forms part of Franzen's essay 'Control Units' which is one of the chapters of his book of essays 'How To Be Alone' published in 2002.
Shakur is the stepfather of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur, and father of rapper Mopreme. Shakur was interviewed in the Oscar-nominated documentary "Tupac: Resurrection", in which he described how he wrote a "Thug Life Handbook" with Tupac, which expressed an anti-drug and anti-violence message.
Mutulu founded a New York based organization by the name of "Dare 2 Struggle" [3], and released a compilation CD under the same name. As Shakur explains it the CD was created in order to: motivate, inspire, and challenge Black People to "Dare 2 Struggle" against all of their obstacles. He also recorded a radio PSA for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy' campaign, encouraging reading of books about Tupac.
Shakur has five children including two daughters (Sekiywa and Nzingha) and two sons (Mopreme, Chinua)
In 2007, he released a tribute album for Tupac Shakur A 2Pac Tribute: Dare 2 Struggle. It featured such artists as Mopreme and Outlawz.
