Afeni Shakur, mother of the late rap star Tupac Shakur, has died. She was 69 years old.
The Marin County sheriff’s department in California confirmed her death on Twitter. The department wrote on Twitter that deputies responded to reports of a possible cardiac arrest at about 9.30pm local time at Shakur’s home in Sausalito, and that she died at the hospital about an hour later. They added that the coroner will investigate the cause of death.
Born in North Carolina as Alice Faye Williams, Shakur changed her name as an adult when she became a political activist and joined the Black Panther movement. She was pregnant with Tupac in 1971 and incarcerated while she and other Panthers were accused of plotting to bomb locations around New York City, including two police stations. She represented herself in the trial, and she and 20 other defendants were acquitted a month before she gave birth.
Shakur was an inspiration for her son’s music, notably the 1995 song Dear Mama, and oversaw his music catalog and legacy after his death. She was a political activist for most of her life, and after her son’s death campaigned for action against gun violence, alongside the mother of Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls, another rapper shot dead in the 1990s.
Tupac Shakur died in 1996 at age 25, the victim of a drive-by shooting. The murder remains unsolved.
His mother said that the murder inspired her activism later in life, particularly a 2003 film, Tupac Resurrection. “Whatever it is I’m doing I do because my son was murdered, and he was not able to complete his work,” she told CBS at the time. “So as his mother, my whole job and responsibility is to see to it that that happens for him, and I do that with love.”
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