Tupac Shakur
Panther heritage

Shakur's parents, Afeni Shakur—born Alice Faye Williams in North Carolina—and his biological father, William "Billy" Garland, had been active Black Panther Party members in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A month before Shakur's birth, his mother was tried in New York City as part of the Panther 21 criminal trial. She was acquitted of over 150 charges.

Other family members who were involved in the Black Panthers ' Black Liberation Army were convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned, including Shakur's stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, who spent four years as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Mutulu Shakur was apprehended in 1986 and subsequently convicted for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck, during which police officers and a guard were killed.

Shakur's godfather, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a high-ranking Black Panther, was wrongly convicted of murdering a schoolteacher during a 1968 robbery. After he spent 27 years in prison, his conviction was overturned due to the prosecution's having concealed evidence that proved his innocence.

Shakur's godmother, Assata Shakur, is a former member of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. Since 2013, she has been in the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list after she escaped prison in 1979.
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