Introduction Movements Eras Organizations Index Contributions
About Organizations
Black Panther Party Black Liberation Army American Indian Movement FALN Weather Underground Earth Liberation Front Animal Liberation Front MOVE Republic of New Afrika Symbionese Liberation Army Los Macheteros United Freedom Front May 19th Communist Organization Young Lords George Jackson Brigade Students for a Democratic Society Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Industrial Workers of the World Communist Party USA Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Brown Berets Socialist Workers Party African People's Socialist Party Nation of Islam
About Black Liberation Army
Emergence from the Panther Splits Killing of NYPD Officers Piagentini & Jones Killing of NYPD Officers Foster & Laurie Delta Flight 841 Hijacking New Jersey Turnpike Shootout & the Assata Shakur Case Assata Shakur’s Prison Escape The 1981 Brink’s Robbery Mutulu Shakur Prosecution Long-Term Political-Prisoner Campaigns
NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE SHOOTOUT & THE ASSATA SHAKUR CASE
New Jersey Turnpike Shootout & the Assata Shakur Case

On May 2, 1973, a New Jersey State Police stop on the Turnpike erupted into a shootout that left state trooper Werner Foerster and Black Liberation Army member Zayd Malik Shakur dead. Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard) and Sundiata Acoli were wounded and captured.

Assata Shakur — already the target of a series of prosecutions, most of which had ended in acquittals or dismissals — was convicted of Foerster's murder in 1977 in a case her supporters have long argued was deeply flawed, noting medical evidence that she could not have fired a weapon. Sundiata Acoli was also convicted and would spend nearly half a century in prison before his 2022 parole. The case became one of the central and most contested in the BLA's history.