The General is Home: A Conversation with Dr. Mutulu Shakur

The eras of the sixties and the seventies were a time of war, revolutionary war, and anti-colonial struggles on the continents of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. But also a war, by the hands of the United States government against Black people in this country. The murders of our leaders, the murders of activists, men, women, and children from times that we were brought here on those boats all the way through the eras of lynchings and on through the Black power movement.

It is in that context and in that time that Dr. Shakur is born, is raised and is doing his work. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, raised in Queens, New York, Dr. Mutulu Shakur was a conscious member of the new African Independence movement and the Black Liberation struggles from the age of 15. First organizing locally around community control of schools in Brooklyn, and later nationally as a founding member of the provisional government of The Republic of New Africa. A committed defender of our people, Dr. Shakur not only put his body on the line to protect the lives of those new Africans during the infamous attack on the New Bethel Church by the Detroit police in 1969, but worked to save and transform lives of those struggling with addiction in New York City almost a decade later through the Black acupuncture Advisory Association of North America.

Dr. Shakur is a soldier of the people and has lived a life of revolutionary discipline and revolutionary struggle, a life of sacrifice and service to the new African nation, and all oppressed people around the world.

Indicted by the empire on charges of expropriations of armored cars and the liberation of Assata Shakur, Dr. Shakur served way too many years behind the walls. Through the tireless work of so many people: The New African People Organization, The Malcolm X Grassroots movement, The Shakur Squad, comrades, activists and most importantly his family, Dr. Shakur was released late last year in 2022.

No struggle in the history of the world has ever been successful leaving their people behind.

Black Men Build is honored to welcome the General Dr. Mutulu Shakur back home.