Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you
Speaker 1: the wildest.
Speaker 2: True escape stories of all time.
Speaker 1: On this episode, we're going to head back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies for the daring daylight jailbreak of a true
Speaker 1: American revolutionary. I'm Mortcastro, and for this journey, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by the incredible talent, actor, writer, producer, and DJ Diallo Riddle.
Speaker 2: Dallo Riddle. Am I saying your name completely right?
Speaker 3: Or completely You said.
Speaker 4: It completely right, Diallow Riddle. You know people sometimes mistake
Speaker 4: di'allo for Diablo. My mother in law said that my
Speaker 4: to b wife could not date me because but.
Speaker 1: My mom did warm me about having the Diablo on
Speaker 1: Like I have questions.
Speaker 3: Diablo was surprisingly available.
Speaker 2: You know you're thinking, but right now the world's kind
Speaker 2: of fucked, so.
Speaker 3: It seems really busy. He seems really busy.
Speaker 2: May I ask the origin of your name?
Speaker 4: So my name is d'allo nob uh two ills. Actually
Speaker 4: it's from West Africa. Diallo amir Riddle. It stands for
Speaker 4: bold prince riddle in a West African language known as
Speaker 4: Fulani Fulanilani.
Speaker 3: So I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 4: You know, my parents just wanted to give me a
Speaker 4: name from Africa because you know, black Pride, and that
Speaker 4: is how you end up with a bold Prince Riddle
Speaker 4: aka Diallo Amir Riddle.
Speaker 2: Oh fantastic.
Speaker 1: You know, at the beginning of my career, I did
Speaker 1: a few Nigerian films and they call them Nollywood. So
Speaker 1: anything from West Africa films they call it Nollywood. And
Speaker 1: it was amazing because you know, obviously, like we'd go
Speaker 1: off to shoot in Lowell, Massachusetts and they'd be like,
Speaker 1: come make we go a white boy, and.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm not white. It looks like me, No,
Speaker 2: you want a white boy.
Speaker 4: You know what's funny is on one of our shows,
Speaker 4: Sherman Showcase, we uh, you know, we just shot a
Speaker 4: proof of concept, which you know is a fancy industry
Speaker 4: term for essentially we shot like the best five or
Speaker 4: ten minutes of a script and showed it to the
Speaker 4: network and we got picked up the series.
Speaker 3: But in that relations oh thank you.
Speaker 4: In that proof of concept, we had a essentially what
Speaker 4: was a Nollywood movie trailer. And in that trailer, because
Speaker 4: we have we have we have a couple of Nigerian
Speaker 4: writers on our staff, and we thought it was so
Speaker 4: funny that they were. Like, if you watch enough of
Speaker 4: these Nigerian Nollywood movies, a lot of times the twist
Speaker 4: is that somebody is a witch in some way.
Speaker 3: Every trailer it was she a witch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's usually the preacher who's also kind of
Speaker 1: a love interest, Like who reveals this story?
Speaker 2: Tell me about your greatest escape.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even have to be life threatening, it just
Speaker 1: has to be one of those like whoa I got
Speaker 1: away with that.
Speaker 3: Very few people know this story.
Speaker 4: But actually, when I was about seventeen, I'm filling out
Speaker 4: college applications and so I went to the store. Because
Speaker 4: you couldn't email the men back then, you had to
Speaker 4: like print them out on paper and send them in.
Speaker 4: So I go to the local drug store to pick
Speaker 4: up some paper.
Speaker 3: I'm literally buying.
Speaker 4: Paper to go to college and build a better life.
Speaker 4: When a guy came in and held up the convenience
Speaker 4: store and I remember he said, everybody on the floor,
Speaker 4: and I remember how like I had never seen a
Speaker 4: handgun wielded, you know, in person before, and I just
Speaker 4: remember thinking, that is a gigantic gun. And so we
Speaker 4: all got down on our stomachs and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 4: praying and like, you know, just thinking like, oh, if
Speaker 4: I can just get out of here and mail off
Speaker 4: my college application, I will never come back to this
Speaker 4: Ecker drugs man. So this is a great escape of
Speaker 4: someone else that actually saved my life potentially, because you know,
Speaker 4: everybody in this store, there weren't many of us at
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 3: I thought, like, you know, he might be like no witnesses,
Speaker 3: you know, and what a thought.
Speaker 4: And then somebody ran out the back like it was
Speaker 4: probably an employee, and just something about that emergency door
Speaker 4: jamming open, like the guy just grabbed a bunch of
Speaker 4: money out of the register and then ran back out
Speaker 4: the front. And then I got up and I picked
Speaker 4: up my paper, and I'm pretty sure I just walked
Speaker 4: down with my paper. I think I was like, they're
Speaker 4: going to have a lot of paperwork to fill out,
Speaker 4: and I don't know that I want to.
Speaker 3: Hang out here.
Speaker 2: I'm not here for it.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to be like, you know, I can't
Speaker 4: identify the guy. All I saw was a black glove
Speaker 4: on a gun. I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: Have you ever wanted to get to Cuba? Have you
Speaker 1: ever been to Cuba?
Speaker 3: Or I did? I really wanted to get to Cube.
Speaker 4: I mean, like, oh, man, you know, Cuba is such
Speaker 4: a obviously it's such a complicated social political topic. But
Speaker 4: I've always wanted, in my heart of hearts there to
Speaker 4: be like a very simple way to just fly out
Speaker 4: of Lax you know, into Cuba and just you know,
Speaker 4: go and visit and go around and see the country.
Speaker 4: So it's one of those places I've really wanted to go.
Speaker 4: I feel like every time I get a chance to
Speaker 4: go something something comes up.
Speaker 1: Now, Cuba is important in today's story for two reasons. Now,
Speaker 1: first the revolution in nineteen fifty nine that inspired a
Speaker 1: ton of people in the next couple of decades, and second,
Speaker 1: Cuba dozen extradye people today United States, which takes us
Speaker 1: back to the end of the nineteen seventies and one
Speaker 1: of the most significant prison escapes in American history.
Speaker 2: It was November two, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Three men walked into the Correctional Facility for women in Clinton,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, sometime between one and four pm. Each of
Speaker 1: the visitors showed their ID and they gave their names
Speaker 1: and addresses and were entered into the prison visitor log,
Speaker 1: but none of the information they gave was so you see,
Speaker 1: this wasn't any old visit. These men were complete revolutionaries,
Speaker 1: and they arrived to pull off one of the most
Speaker 1: staring jail breaks of the century in complete daylight. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: the only true thing the guards knew about him is
Speaker 1: that they looked seventies as hell. I'm talking afros, full beards, sideburns,
Speaker 1: a guy with a base behind him, going.
Speaker 2: Okay, that last part isn't true, but what that be awesome?
Speaker 1: So if you were gonna help with the jail break,
Speaker 1: how would you disguise yourself?
Speaker 2: Like, what would you be wearing for this?
Speaker 3: Oh man? Probably all black?
Speaker 4: Right, you gotta go like full you know what panthers slash,
Speaker 4: you know, calm cruise when he's like rappling in from
Speaker 4: the ceiling. That's that's what it is.
Speaker 2: I would wear.
Speaker 1: I would like wear like really thick eyebrows, because that's
Speaker 1: the one thing that people would describe me as.
Speaker 2: They're like and then I just rip them off and
Speaker 2: you have these ones.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have been here. I'm looking out. Then those
Speaker 3: zyebras are.
Speaker 1: The first man alone. He was checked through the registration
Speaker 1: building in the minimum security area of the prison. Then
Speaker 1: he climbed into a van that drove him across the
Speaker 1: prison grounds to the South Hall. Now this was the
Speaker 1: prison's maximum security area. But and this is key, okay,
Speaker 1: he was not searched.
Speaker 3: He wasn't.
Speaker 1: No. Instead, he was let through the extra fencing around
Speaker 1: the South Hall, and then the guards led him down
Speaker 1: to the glass booth, where he sat down to visit
Speaker 1: with an inmate.
Speaker 3: Now you got I got it.
Speaker 4: Put seventies nineteen seventies security teams like I just feel
Speaker 4: like yeah.
Speaker 2: They were just like, yeah, I don't care, you can
Speaker 2: go through. Who are you here to see? Yeah, okay, sure,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where like mister
Speaker 4: Burns has to go through like eight levels of security
Speaker 4: to get down to the nuclear reactor, but then a
Speaker 4: cat wanders in through a broken.
Speaker 1: So the next two men arrived soon after, and they
Speaker 1: did the same thing. They passed through registration without being searched, okay,
Speaker 1: and were shuttled into the prison van in the South Hall.
Speaker 2: Literally, nobody gave a fuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's the seventies.
Speaker 4: Everybody was packing and nobody was checking.
Speaker 1: When they came to the fence around the South Hall,
Speaker 1: and it was open for them. They sprang into their
Speaker 1: escape plan. They pulled out guns on the van driver
Speaker 1: while the gate hung open. Now inside the visiting booth,
Speaker 1: the first man turned to the prison guard who was
Speaker 1: watching the visit, and he whipped out two pistols out
Speaker 1: from under his jacket.
Speaker 4: That one and like you know, shoved into his crotch
Speaker 4: or like literally two guns.
Speaker 3: He was our own style.
Speaker 1: Something must have given it away when he had like
Speaker 1: a bullet belt around him. So holding the garden there
Speaker 1: at gunpoint, he forced her to open the booth up
Speaker 1: from behind the glass walked activists, black panther and soldier
Speaker 1: of the Black Liberation Army a Sata shaquor.
Speaker 3: That's right, yep yep Asadakor.
Speaker 1: Suddenly free from herself, Asada and her visitor took the
Speaker 1: guard hostage and they marched outside. They climbed into the
Speaker 1: van with the other two men, and now the four
Speaker 1: revolutionary and their two hostages were able to drive the
Speaker 1: prison van right out of the main prison gate. They
Speaker 1: reached a nearby parking lot where their getaway cars were
Speaker 1: part waiting.
Speaker 2: So Asauna and her rescuers left from.
Speaker 1: The van and into the cards and just fucking peeled away.
Speaker 1: The prison guards were left handcuffed in the prison van,
Speaker 1: but unharmed. Now everybody started flipping the fuck out. Roadblocks
Speaker 1: were rushed out onto the highway to stop the escaping vehicles,
Speaker 1: but conflicting reports flew in right. Some said they were
Speaker 1: in a blue Pondiac and a blue Cadillac, and no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they were in a Ford Maverick and a two toll Lincoln.
Speaker 1: No no, no, they had massive eyebrows. Everybody had massive hours,
Speaker 1: no confusing all the way. So the contradictory reports may
Speaker 1: have been the saving grace of the escapees. Before officials
Speaker 1: could decide which roads could be shut down and where
Speaker 1: to hunt, Asauna and her allies were out of there.
Speaker 2: Asada Shakur was free.
Speaker 3: It's insane, yellow.
Speaker 1: What do you know about Asada Shagar's life and why
Speaker 1: she was in prison?
Speaker 4: I mean, admittedly, you know, my my father was a
Speaker 4: painter in South Central now called South LA during the
Speaker 4: time of the Watts riots, and so you know, he
Speaker 4: used to, you know, do paintings and sculptures about you know,
Speaker 4: the ghettos in the in the hood back then.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: And I always felt like even though he wasn't like
Speaker 4: a black panther. Growing up in our household, we definitely
Speaker 4: understood the point of view that like our community needed
Speaker 4: you know, uplift and it needed, you know, certain things
Speaker 4: to reach its full potential.
Speaker 3: So the idea of like Asada Shakur.
Speaker 4: And Mumia abou Jamal, like these were not random names
Speaker 4: to us, Like these were people who we knew.
Speaker 3: In our household.
Speaker 4: And and honestly, when Tupac Shakur first blew up, I
Speaker 4: was like, is that Asada son? And of course you
Speaker 4: know Asada Shakur was the godmother.
Speaker 2: Of that's rights.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think his mom, Afienie Shakur was a
Speaker 4: was a good friend of Asadas.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: And you know this is a little off topic, but
Speaker 1: let me ask you something because you bring up something
Speaker 1: interesting about I didn't know that about your father. Do
Speaker 1: you think that you got from him the desire to
Speaker 1: express yourself and surroundings and sort of your point of
Speaker 1: view through art, be it to a through a writer,
Speaker 1: acting perspective.
Speaker 4: But no, you listen, you ask something that not many
Speaker 4: people have ever asked, but it's got a very very
Speaker 4: clear and strong answer, which is that absolutely one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: You know, my father started off at La City College
Speaker 4: doing still life, like he would paint pears, you know,
Speaker 4: in bowls and you know, light coming through a window
Speaker 4: on a villa.
Speaker 3: But you know, at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: Once the Watts Rice broke out, he was like, I
Speaker 4: can't do pears and bowls and still life anymore. I
Speaker 4: have to do art that means something. And he's sort
Speaker 4: of instilled, you know, in us. Even before I knew
Speaker 4: that I wanted to be an artist in my own way,
Speaker 4: even though before I knew I wanted to be creative
Speaker 4: with my profession, he always said that he felt like
Speaker 4: art without any social commentary had no interest to him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: He felt like everything that he did had to have
Speaker 4: some not message. He wasn't trying to be polemic, but
Speaker 4: it was just that he had a point of views. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it had to have a point of view. It had
Speaker 4: to have a very strong point of view. And I
Speaker 4: think that in my work to this day, everything from
Speaker 4: Sherman Showcase The South Side to some of the shows
Speaker 4: that we're working on now, I always think, what will
Speaker 4: this contribute to the world. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 4: anything like, oh, it's gonna get people to wake up
Speaker 4: about climate change. It's not like that. It's just more like,
Speaker 4: how will this make lives? You know, people's lives better.
Speaker 4: Even if it's just to say it's going to be
Speaker 4: so funny that it's going to give people who have
Speaker 4: had a hard week, it's going to bring them a
Speaker 4: little bit of joy. That is enough. There has to
Speaker 4: be something in there like that for me to be interested.
Speaker 1: What a fascinating thing to be able to witness that.
Speaker 1: If you see your dad's paintings from before the riots
Speaker 1: and after the riots, and you know how you just climb.
Speaker 2: And then suddenly so we're just watching it.
Speaker 1: I love the moment where you watch an artist find
Speaker 1: find their voice, you know, and visually being able to
Speaker 1: witness it must be really fascinating and impactful as a
Speaker 1: young man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, John Thomas Riddle, he's you know, his artwork is
Speaker 4: up at the California African American Art Museum and the
Speaker 4: Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: So it's it's you know, he had a great career.
Speaker 4: Sadly, as many people who work in that field know,
Speaker 4: the second that he died, his art skyrocket in value.
Speaker 3: Because there's not going to be anymore. That's the way I
Speaker 3: think about that.
Speaker 1: We'll put up a link at the bottom of this episode,
Speaker 1: so people going to check out you dad's art. Man.
Speaker 2: I think that'd be really cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've heard about ASADA's legendary prison escape, but
Speaker 1: now we're going to jump back and hear the story
Speaker 1: of the real person behind the legend. So, dell, well,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of this already, but for the listener,
Speaker 1: we're going to go way way back.
Speaker 2: Okay. Asada was born in Queens, probably in the year
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven, though the exact date is kind of lost.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she was born with the name Joanne and her
Speaker 1: family called her Joey. It was only later that you
Speaker 1: would leave it behind and become a Soda. Grew up
Speaker 1: with her mother and her on, and when she was three,
Speaker 1: her grandparents bought a beach property in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: So they moved south and they took a Soda with him. Now,
Speaker 1: and this is a really beautiful solo memory, I think.
Speaker 1: Asana says that while in Wilmington, the women in her
Speaker 1: grandmother's generation became her role models.
Speaker 2: They would some rivers and.
Speaker 1: Shoot the head off a snake and plant a garden,
Speaker 1: saw a pattern, kill a hog, and also quite a
Speaker 1: little fussing baby, all at the same time. Do you
Speaker 1: have any older women in your life that you consider
Speaker 1: bound asses like that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's interesting. I have an aunt Joanne
Speaker 4: a relation to a soada. Oh shoot, now it comes out,
Speaker 4: that's what we got.
Speaker 2: To come storming my booth. I'm like, I don't, what
Speaker 2: do you want with me?
Speaker 4: They're so I mean, like every I feel like all
Speaker 4: the women in my family are badass in their own way.
Speaker 3: But you know what's really.
Speaker 4: Interesting about what you say about them moving from New York.
Speaker 4: I think you said Queen's to North Carolina. I grew
Speaker 4: up in Atlanta. And the thing about Atlanta is, I
Speaker 4: think we have more trees, you know, per square inch
Speaker 4: than any major city in the country.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We have these woods, and we have these really wild
Speaker 4: areas that are right in the heart of Atlanta.
Speaker 3: And as a result, you know, me.
Speaker 4: And my friends right there in the city limits, we
Speaker 4: learned how to fish and identify which makes are harmless
Speaker 4: and which ones will kill you. And there's like this
Speaker 4: this strait of wile, and I think that that's.
Speaker 3: Really cool because unfortunately, every.
Speaker 4: Time I see, you know, black people depicted on TV
Speaker 4: in any kind of like rural or like river strewn area,
Speaker 4: it's almost always like something about slavery. Like it's just
Speaker 4: like they're always like running away from dogs trying.
Speaker 3: To like take them back into bondage.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, guys, there are a lot of rural
Speaker 4: black people who like know how to like fish and
Speaker 4: do the wildlife, you know, outdoors thing.
Speaker 3: You know, I love to hear stories like that.
Speaker 1: Picking black joy in the outdoors is something too much of.
Speaker 2: I totally hear you, dude.
Speaker 3: Do Mike all alone in the archery club, like come
Speaker 3: join me? Please?
Speaker 1: Did every time I see a Latino person in the desert,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, fuck, okay.
Speaker 2: I know I know where this is going. I couldn't
Speaker 2: have just been out for a fucking hike. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love hiking. Like every time everybody ever.
Speaker 1: Catches me like outside like an out of a palm springs,
Speaker 1: there's something they're like, oh, I know where you came from.
Speaker 2: No, you fucking go.
Speaker 1: I came from the Ace Hotel, motherfucker, and I just
Speaker 1: went for a nice little stroll.
Speaker 3: Fuck you. I was just on a doom buggy. Okay,
Speaker 3: forget y'all. That's right.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's why I'm all fucking dirty and thirsty.
Speaker 2: Okay, motherfucker, because I'm hungover.
Speaker 1: So to paint a picture of like what Wilmington was
Speaker 1: like at the time, public beaches around Wilmington were whites only,
Speaker 1: So Asadast's grandparents moved onto their ocean front property and
Speaker 1: opened it for business. Right, so they welcome black visitors,
Speaker 1: sold refreshments, and rented umbrellas.
Speaker 3: Smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So her time on the.
Speaker 1: Beach growing up became a sadast picture of what freedom
Speaker 1: really means, right, watching people enjoy themselves, sharing treats with them,
Speaker 1: dancing in the sand, kind of what we were talking
Speaker 1: about about minority joy that you hardly ever see. After
Speaker 1: elementary school, Asada moved back to New York, and after
Speaker 1: moving around so much as a kid, she was convinced
Speaker 1: that there wasn't a place in the United States where
Speaker 1: she could actually escape discrimination. You know, it was everywhere,
Speaker 1: both in the North and in the South. So in
Speaker 1: her teens, Asada ended up back living with her on Eveling,
Speaker 1: a lawyer who would eventually become a law professor at NYU. Okay,
Speaker 1: now under Yeah, so under Evelyn's care, Asada made it
Speaker 1: through high school and into college at the City College
Speaker 1: in New York. The year ever go to City College
Speaker 1: or visited that area at all in New York, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. My time in New York was
Speaker 3: a little bit limited.
Speaker 4: The only time I lived there was when I was
Speaker 4: a writer for Jimmy Fallon and that was about four years.
Speaker 4: And honestly, I went straight from my place in Upper
Speaker 4: West Side straight to thirty Rocks, So I never really
Speaker 4: got to know some parts of the city, like City College,
Speaker 4: and that's where I've.
Speaker 1: Got my first play, and like I had a mentor
Speaker 1: who taught film classes there, so I'd come out auditors class.
Speaker 1: So it still had those feelings that whenever you walk
Speaker 1: into a place that has been really important to a city,
Speaker 1: you still feel sort of the ghosts of the past there.
Speaker 1: And that's what City College fell like to me of
Speaker 1: learning than most people don't ever talk about.
Speaker 4: That's one of the best things about in New York
Speaker 4: is that you feel like the past is all around you.
Speaker 4: I will say that I think the ghosts of the
Speaker 4: past were very much alive in the basement of my
Speaker 4: New York building, Like I never wanted to go to
Speaker 4: that laundry.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's that's fully haunted. Haunted.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty seven, Assada joined other students at City
Speaker 1: College to protest the lack of black professors and black
Speaker 1: history being taught. Their entire group was arrested, and the
Speaker 1: violence of these arrests made one thing clear. Asada knew
Speaker 1: it would take a revolution for America to change. She
Speaker 1: made more friends in other radical groups and took a
Speaker 1: trip to California, which is the original home of the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers. The Panthers there challenged her to get off
Speaker 1: the sidelines and get involved, so she went home to
Speaker 1: New York and she stepped it up. Was a Black
Speaker 1: Panther party, something you were aware of growing up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean again, my father was, you know, very
Speaker 4: much of that sort of generation. And I mean, like
Speaker 4: we to grow up in my household was to know
Speaker 4: Fred Hampton, Huey P.
Speaker 3: Newton, you know my father.
Speaker 4: Just to this day, I have a painting of his.
Speaker 4: It's called Fairbanks or Garvy, and it's got a prominent
Speaker 4: picture of Marcus Garvey, you know in the painting. You know,
Speaker 4: like you definitely instilled upon us that we should take
Speaker 4: great pride in our.
Speaker 3: People, our accomplishments.
Speaker 4: You know, one thing that he said to me back
Speaker 4: when I was young that didn't really register until I
Speaker 4: had my own kids was just this idea, and this
Speaker 4: applies to you and everybody who's listening, is that there
Speaker 4: have been so many wars and conflicts and genocides and plagues.
Speaker 4: Everybody alive today is a bloodline that survived all that
Speaker 4: from the beginning of freaking time. I think that's so
Speaker 4: amazing that all of us have an ancestor who was
Speaker 4: able to jump over a rhino, you know, survive a flood.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, man, I mean, like, you know, just the
Speaker 4: idea that all of us have managed to survive all
Speaker 4: of human history and get to the point where we're
Speaker 4: now talking into you know, machines and over invisible waves.
Speaker 4: It's kind of amazing. But I think that, Yeah, my
Speaker 4: father's lesson would have been just that, you know, take
Speaker 4: pride in what human stock you come from, and try
Speaker 4: to instill that same pride in your children.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful, man.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty six, Hueing Newton and Bobby Seal founded
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party in Oakland. By nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the Panthers had branches all across the country. They built
Speaker 1: networks of mutual aid, They ran medical clinics, they held
Speaker 1: educational programs and served breakfast for kids and poverty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was sort of the main appeal.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: You know, anytime you hear people talk about the Panthers nowadays,
Speaker 4: you always hear about that, you know, shout out to
Speaker 4: my friends, the Lucas brothers. I thought they did an
Speaker 4: amazing job on the script for Judas and the Black Messie.
Speaker 3: If you watched that movie, I guarantee, first off, I think.
Speaker 4: That you know, I know that Daniel got nominated for
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff in that movie. But to me,
Speaker 4: le Keith Stanfield is he's such a Robert de Niro
Speaker 4: at a young age, Like I just feel like the
Speaker 4: Keith is he disappears into this character.
Speaker 3: He plays every level. If even if you just like
Speaker 3: a good movie.
Speaker 4: I would actually recommend Judas in the Black Nosiah. But
Speaker 4: I'd also point out that that movie points out that
Speaker 4: the Panthers weren't It wasn't an organization that started like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're gonna get a bunch of guns and kill people.
Speaker 4: That's not what it was really about.
Speaker 3: And okay, great.
Speaker 4: You know it represents that side of the story that
Speaker 4: you don't get told unless you, you know, do research.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen seventy when Asada joined the Panthers in
Speaker 1: New York. By that point there were Panther offices in
Speaker 1: sixty eight cities.
Speaker 3: Wow I saw.
Speaker 1: His first role with the Panthers was running the children's
Speaker 1: Bakfast program in Harlem. She became the head of the
Speaker 1: Harlem office, responsible for the free clinics and the community outreach.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Shakour is an Arabic name for thankful.
Speaker 1: Many Panthers in New York took the name to represent
Speaker 1: their unity, and Asato was among them. When Panther leader
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton was murdered by the Chicago police, many party
Speaker 1: members were convinced that mutual aid wasn't enough, you know,
Speaker 1: they had to fight back, literally, So some of the
Speaker 1: New York Panthers started to go underground, living under assumed
Speaker 1: names and keeping low profile. Asato was one of them.
Speaker 1: She disappeared from her family and friends. She knew that
Speaker 1: her aunt, her mom, and her grandparents were all being
Speaker 1: watched by the police. So ASADA's name started to hit
Speaker 1: the headlines in the early nineteen seventies. So the police
Speaker 1: wanted her for bank robberies, bombings, and the murder of
Speaker 1: police officers. She seems to have been in so many
Speaker 1: places at the same time, you know, like, how could
Speaker 1: she have hid banks in the Bronx and in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and in New Orleans is so close together. Apparently the
Speaker 1: police didn't really care so much about the timelines because
Speaker 1: they didn't add up.
Speaker 4: I'd forgotten about the bank robberies. It's so interesting to
Speaker 4: me because as a storyteller and in somebody who loves
Speaker 4: movies and books and stuff, especially about true crime. You know,
Speaker 4: you sort of see a lionization of people like Billy
Speaker 4: the Kid and Mom Baker and Bonnie and Clyde, like
Speaker 4: you sort of see them as sort of held up
Speaker 4: a's like these were outlaws you.
Speaker 3: Can root for. But you never really hear that.
Speaker 4: Abouts too apparently, so you know, it just depends on sometimes,
Speaker 4: like how people feel about a person.
Speaker 1: So in May nineteen seventy three, after she had lived
Speaker 1: for two years underground, Asada was captured. She was riding
Speaker 1: in the front seat of a white Pontiac with two
Speaker 1: other activists, say Malik Shakur and Sundiata Akali. They were
Speaker 1: traveling the New Jersey Turnpike when they saw police lights
Speaker 1: behind them. The police report says that it had a
Speaker 1: broken taylight. So there are two versions of what happened next.
Speaker 1: The first one says that when the state police officer
Speaker 1: told the driver to get out of the car, Asada
Speaker 1: started shooting from the passenger seat. A firefight ensued and
Speaker 1: in the storm of bullets, two police officers were shot
Speaker 1: and one was killed alongside, said Shakor. After shooting two
Speaker 1: police officers, Asada was hid in the chest and the shoulder,
Speaker 1: and that was what the police said happened. But Asada
Speaker 1: remembers it very differently. She says that when the police
Speaker 1: stopped them, her hands were up and as the shooting
Speaker 1: started around them, she was hit by a bullet before
Speaker 1: she could even leave the seat in her car. She
Speaker 1: says that she never even had a gun let alone
Speaker 1: and fired one. A Colliue was able to jump back
Speaker 1: in the car and race another five miles down the turnpike,
Speaker 1: chased by three police cars. Now, when the road was
Speaker 1: closed and a Collie was finally forced to pull over,
Speaker 1: he jumped out of the car and race into the woods.
Speaker 1: Assada stepped out and slowly approached the police covered in blood.
Speaker 1: She was arrested and rushed to the hospital, and her
Speaker 1: years of imprisonment began. She was held under armguard for
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, and in her later writings,
Speaker 1: Asada would describe the ways that she was tortured by
Speaker 1: the New Jersey State Police while off to a hospital bed,
Speaker 1: all the while she was fighting to recover.
Speaker 2: From her own bullet wounds. And she never fucking cracked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I would fucking like interrogation and me would break.
Speaker 2: Bro, Like I don't, I wouldn't survive.
Speaker 1: My aunt looks at me funny, and I'm like, I'll
Speaker 1: confess the shit I haven't even done.
Speaker 4: Let me tell you first off, well that's that's that's
Speaker 4: actually the case to be made against torture, right. They
Speaker 4: always say experts on torture say torture doesn't actually work
Speaker 4: because at some point people just want the torture to end.
Speaker 4: So you can say, like you are Mickey Mouse, and
Speaker 4: people will be like, oh.
Speaker 3: You know, like.
Speaker 2: Handed, They're like, man, he's lost his mind. But I
Speaker 2: love it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I always tell people I'm like, don't tell
Speaker 4: me anything because I will probably snitch, like you know,
Speaker 4: like I'll just like to keep my nose cleans out
Speaker 4: of speak because like you know, I.
Speaker 3: Don't want to know.
Speaker 4: I don't want to know, and I feel like I
Speaker 4: give off that energy.
Speaker 1: So when she was finally strong enough to be moved,
Speaker 1: Asada left the hospital to the Middlesex County Workhouse, where
Speaker 1: she was the only female prisoner at the jail. It
Speaker 1: was the first of many men's prisons where she would
Speaker 1: be held while the charges against her went forward. They
Speaker 1: were extremely fucking scared of her. It's so wild that
Speaker 1: they have to keep her in a men's prison now
Speaker 1: her A Evelyn left her job at NYU and took
Speaker 1: on ASADA's legal case full time. That July fourth, Evelyn
Speaker 1: brought a tape recorder with her and recorded A. Sada's
Speaker 1: most famous statement, which came to be known as to
Speaker 1: my People. She introduced herself to the world as Asada Shakur,
Speaker 1: Black Revolutionary. She said, there is and always will be
Speaker 1: until every black man, woman and child is free a
Speaker 1: black liberation army. And it was closed with a line
Speaker 1: from the communist manifesto, we have nothing.
Speaker 2: To lose but our change.
Speaker 1: Evelyn spread the recording and it played on black radio
Speaker 1: stations all around New York. Magazines were printed it and
Speaker 1: white media figures of course, Wind and Wind about it.
Speaker 1: Reporters were actually banned from meeting with Asada. You see,
Speaker 1: her voice was so powerfull. Imagine that that the judges
Speaker 1: and the cops and the prison guards were just scrambling
Speaker 1: to keep up with her even though she was locked up.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, Assada finally went to trial, but
Speaker 1: guess what, she kept beating the charges.
Speaker 2: First, she was acquitted of some robbery charges. A month later,
Speaker 2: she was tried for killing a police officer, but there
Speaker 2: was an evidence against her and the case was dismissed.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: In January nineteen seventy six, Assada faced a kidnapping charge
Speaker 1: and she beat that too. When she was finally tried
Speaker 1: for the Queen's Bank, the first case that had actually
Speaker 1: put her in the paper, Asada was easily acquitted.
Speaker 2: Like what damn.
Speaker 1: The photograph published by the police didn't look like her
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: The bank manager who had been there for the robbery.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry they did a drawing and it didn't look
Speaker 4: like her.
Speaker 1: Well, the photograph that they put out of who had
Speaker 1: actually robbed the bank, you know, so it's sort of
Speaker 1: the photo evidence right off the bank didn't look like.
Speaker 3: Her at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really flimsy.
Speaker 1: Charges And the bank manager who had been there for
Speaker 1: the robbery testified that Asada was not the woman who
Speaker 1: had held him at gunpoint.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, it was a redhead woman. And she
Speaker 1: was like, I'm Wendy, Like I don't I played like.
Speaker 4: These these facial recognition features on some of the on
Speaker 4: some of the robots nowadays, like they have a harder
Speaker 4: time recognizing black people because the people who programmed them
Speaker 4: just didn't use a lot of black subjects. So like
Speaker 4: they're just like they look at me and they're like, ahh,
Speaker 4: that's Martin Luther King.
Speaker 3: No, no, man, fuck, I don't really look like King anyway.
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: So, in nineteen seventy seven, the victories for Asada finally
Speaker 1: came to an end. Right she was found guilty of
Speaker 1: first degree murder along with many other charges, for the
Speaker 1: shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike. Now halfway through the trial,
Speaker 1: ASADA's new lawyer, Stanley Cohen was found dead in his
Speaker 1: fucking apartment.
Speaker 3: Is that I didn't even know announce it that. I'm lurry.
Speaker 3: I did not know that.
Speaker 1: So he had been collecting evidence against the police witnesses,
Speaker 1: recruiting forensic chemists to show that there was no evidence
Speaker 1: of gunfire on Assata's hands, and uncovering what he believed
Speaker 1: were falsified documents in the prosecution's case. So fucked up,
Speaker 1: And the newspapers reported that Stanley died of natural causes.
Speaker 2: So we're not saying that the police killed or are we, like,
Speaker 2: cause that'd be crazy.
Speaker 3: You know, there were a.
Speaker 4: Lot of suspicious deaths back in those days, and I
Speaker 4: do think that, you know, we have forensics have come
Speaker 4: a long way, right since nine seventy whatever this was.
Speaker 4: I mean like, but it is suspicious that he died
Speaker 4: of unknown causes. I mean, like, I don't even watch
Speaker 4: unsolved mysteries. Yeah, I like my mysteries and solved. The
Speaker 4: worst thing about unsolved mysteries is that like when they
Speaker 4: come to the other they're like, did they die or
Speaker 4: did they just disappear? And then they start rolling the
Speaker 4: crash They're like that's not satisfying.
Speaker 1: But that's unsolved mysteries, which at least like come with
Speaker 1: a built in like I played myself, I fucking eat
Speaker 1: documentaries that are five fucking ninety minute episodes long. And
Speaker 1: then the it's like, we don't know if he faked
Speaker 1: his own death or he didn't tell me that at
Speaker 1: the beginning. Man. Now, once she was convicted, Asada was
Speaker 1: moved to yardbuilt prison in New Jersey. Her young daughter
Speaker 1: went to live with her mother in New York, and
Speaker 1: Asada and the other members of the Underground knew that
Speaker 1: they couldn't rely on justice from the courts. Instead, they
Speaker 1: planned her prison breaks. So let's do a cool little
Speaker 1: recap of the prison break. As I understand it, three
Speaker 1: people went in. They never got searched. One went particularly
Speaker 1: to visit Asada, pulled out two massive pistols. He had
Speaker 1: a Mexican bandido gun belt as well. That part I
Speaker 1: added myself. There were seventies music playing. Everybody had Cyeburns,
Speaker 1: they had afros. They jumped into the van, they like
Speaker 1: sped off and they got away with it. So far,
Speaker 1: so good, great. I really hope Benju adds really cool
Speaker 1: seventy music to the background of all that. After Asada
Speaker 1: was busted out, the FEDS put her back on their
Speaker 1: most wanted lists, and just like the years before, they
Speaker 1: started linking her to a series of crimes, right saying
Speaker 1: they spotted her at the scenes of shootings and burglaries
Speaker 1: and other stuff like that. After a few years past,
Speaker 1: the FBI started getting reports that Asada had made it
Speaker 1: to Cula, the home of the revolution that inspired the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers in the beginning. When Asada published a biography
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, she described her life of imprisonment
Speaker 1: and exile, but she actually.
Speaker 2: Sounded happy to be in Gula.
Speaker 1: She called it a country of hope, and she ended
Speaker 1: her book with a series of poetic meditations on her
Speaker 1: life there, about the openness and beauty of Havana and
Speaker 1: of the Cuban culture. And there, beyond the reach of
Speaker 1: the US government, Asada was finally able to pick up
Speaker 1: a telephone, call home and talk with her family for
Speaker 1: the first time in five years. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: Assada celebrated her seventy fifth birthday in Cuba. The US
Speaker 1: government is still working today to extra at her from
Speaker 1: Cuba and in prison her again so Asada continues to
Speaker 1: say that she also has a duty as long as
Speaker 1: she lives, she's going to carry on the black liberation
Speaker 1: struggle and despite everything, to continue to be human, to
Speaker 1: be giving, and to be loving. What do you take
Speaker 1: away from stories of panthers like Asda.
Speaker 4: I think police organizations have to realize that there were
Speaker 4: some abuses that led to a lack of trust in
Speaker 4: these communities and that there's a lot of healing.
Speaker 3: That has to take place.
Speaker 4: It's not as simple as like, oh, this person did
Speaker 4: this thing, which, by the way, as you've pointed out
Speaker 4: in this podcast, is not cut and dry, you know.
Speaker 2: In order for the healing to begin, like, the past
Speaker 2: needs to be acknowledged.
Speaker 4: No, it's true, there's too much of that, Like, okay, guys,
Speaker 4: this is the ancient past.
Speaker 3: Can we just please move on this? There's too much
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 4: And I think if you don't acknowledge the past, and
Speaker 4: it's hard to move into the future, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. And I think that's why it's so disturbing
Speaker 4: that there's so many places that are trying to whitewash
Speaker 4: history right now, and they do it under the rubric
Speaker 4: of this you know, basically law school centric concept of
Speaker 4: critical race theory, and then they pretend that, oh, if
Speaker 4: we teach people that America wasn't perfect.
Speaker 3: Then that's critical race theory.
Speaker 4: Like, no, you don't even know what You don't even
Speaker 4: know what critical race theory is.
Speaker 3: If that's what you think.
Speaker 1: You can love something and want to improve something and
Speaker 1: still acknowledge its flaws.
Speaker 4: You can love your father but also be like, hey dad,
Speaker 4: stop drinking, stop drinking, stop thking.
Speaker 1: Hey man, I am so honored to have had you
Speaker 1: here before we go. Do you have anything that you
Speaker 1: want to that you want.
Speaker 2: Our listeners to look out for of yours? Coming up?
Speaker 4: Man, there's so much coming up, from from the music
Speaker 4: and the comedy of Sherman Showcase to what I think
Speaker 4: is one of just the funniest uh you know, get
Speaker 4: to know the characters type show Southside on HBO Max.
Speaker 4: I think the easiest way for people to check out
Speaker 4: some of the work that I and but Sheer have done.
Speaker 3: Uh, follow me on Instagram.
Speaker 4: At Dallo, not Diablo and Dalloff.
Speaker 3: That's a different account.
Speaker 1: Diablo account gets all these followers now and they're like, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, man, this guy doesn't look like a DJ.
Speaker 4: I gotta say he's pretty entertaining at d allo d
Speaker 4: I A L l O. And you'll you'll always know
Speaker 4: about like sort of what we're digging and what we're
Speaker 4: producing and uh and yeah, man, thanks thanks for having
Speaker 4: me on right.
Speaker 1: Alred to have you, and thank you for being so
Speaker 1: open about your dad and his art. And it means
Speaker 1: a lot to us when when guests come on here
Speaker 1: and they share moments to shape them. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for a friend of the show. You can
Speaker 1: come back anytime, brother, Thank you so much. Breh bye.
Speaker 1: Gratist Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation
Speaker 1: Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio or executive producers for
Speaker 1: me or Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Papelka from
Speaker 1: Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Winning Donaldson from Gilded Audio,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan from I Radio. The show is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
Speaker 1: our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
Speaker 1: technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein,
Speaker 1: Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
Speaker 1: a rating or review. My mom will call you each
Speaker 1: personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next
Speaker 1: week