In late September, Black revolutionary Assata Shakur died in Cuba a free woman. Orisanmi Burton celebrates her life and her unceasing dedication to the revolutionary struggle for liberation from U.S. empire and all that it entails.

Republished here is an excerpt from Orisanmi Burton’s “Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt,” a crucial revision of the prevailing, myopic understanding of the Attica Prison revolt and its historical and political context.