Tupac
HA~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shakur was born on June 16, 1971, into an
African-American family in the
East Harlem section of
Manhattan in
New York City.
[14] His birth name was Lesane Parish Crooks.
[15][16][17] The following year, he was renamed after
Túpac Amaru II,
[18][19] the 18th-century
Peruvian revolutionary who was executed after leading an
indigenous uprising against
Spanish rule.
[20]
His parents,
Afeni Shakur (born Alice Faye Williams in North Carolina) and Billy Garland, were active members of the
Black Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
[21] Lesane was born a month after his mother was acquitted of more than 150 charges of "Conspiracy against the
United States government and New York landmarks" in the New York
Panther 21 trial.
[22][23]
Many people in Shakur's life were involved with the
Black Liberation Army; some were convicted of serious criminal offenses and imprisoned, including his mother. His godfather,
Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a high-ranking
Black Panther, had been convicted of murdering a school teacher during a 1968 robbery, although his sentence was later overturned. His stepfather,
Mutulu Shakur, spent four years at large on the
FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, beginning in 1982. Mutulu was wanted for having helped his friend (no relation)
Assata Shakur (also known as Joanne Chesimard), Tupac's godmother, to escape from a penitentiary in New Jersey in 1979. She had been imprisoned since 1977 for killing a
state trooper in 1973. She lived as a fugitive for several years before gaining asylum in Cuba in 1985. Mutulu was caught in 1986 and eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for the 1981
robbery of a Brinks armored truck, during which two police officers and a guard were killed.
[24]
Shakur had an older stepbrother,
Mopreme "Komani" Shakur, and a half-sister, Sekyiwa, two years his junior. Mopreme performed in many of his recordings.
[25]