A new docuseries explores the Black Panther who shaped Tupac: his mom

BY DENEEN L. BROWN The Washington Post

She was a powerful, revolutionary voice for the people, a voice the government tried to silence. In the predawn hours of April 2, 1969, Afeni Shakur, who would become the mother of the hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, was arrested with 20 other members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Harlem. The group was falsely accused of conspiring to bomb buildings in New York.

Afeni Shakur, who was only 22 years old at the time and a leader in the Black Power movement, was sent to the New York Women’s House of Detention, a women’s prison in Manhattan. It was there, in January 1970, that she wrote a prophetic letter about the conditions of Black people in America and their fight for justice.

“We know that you are trying to break us up because we are the truth and because you can’t control us,” Shakur wrote. “We know that you always try to destroy what you can’t control. We know that you are afraid of us because we represent a truth of the universe. We are not being tried for any overt act nor for [the] attempt to commit any overt act — we are being tried for bringing within our minds the focusing of the ideas of centuries and trying to bring this knowledge into a workable plan to liberate our people from oppression.”

FX on Friday is premiering “Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur,” a five-part docuseries that explores the lives of the late Afeni Shakur and her late son Tupac, the rapper, actor, poet and political visionary. The series will also stream on Hulu.

“Dear Mama” moves between the 1970s and 1990s to tell the story of Tupac and the woman who so powerfully shaped him, connecting hip-hop with Black activism and “the struggle for human rights.” Afeni Shakur’s voice would plant the seed for her son’s voice and his music, which cried out against injustice with lyrics that still resound worldwide.

The series is directed by Allen Hughes, who filmed three of Tupac’s early music videos and originally cast him in the 1993 blockbuster “Menance II Society,” according to Billboard. Tupac was fired from that film after a fight on set, during which his associates beat Hughes. Hughes told Bill-