Tupac Shakur’s stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, has died of cancer at age 72, NBC News reports.
Shakur’s July 7 passing comes six months after he was released on medical parole after serving 35 years of a 60-year sentence. TheGrio reported previously, citing a 2022 NBC News report, that Shakur was first arrested in 1986 on charges including conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, bank robbery, armed bank robbery, and bank robbery-murder.
In 1988, Shakur was convicted of charges related to a string of armed robberies throughout New York and Connecticut. His supporters and advocates believe he was targeted by government agencies in an effort to suppress his activism. Shakur’s additional convictions included helping Assata Shakur, previously known as JoAnne Chesimard, escape prison in 1979, according to NBC.
Shakur was known in his younger years for providing holistic health care to Black communities in the Bronx. He took over a part of Bronx’s Lincoln Hospital after studying acupuncture and collaborating with Black Panthers and the Young Lords activists. Together, they ran the Lincoln Detox Center, offering acupuncture treatment for drug addicts, political resources and education, according to The Washington Post.
“Mutulu’s life was transformative to the many people he organized, healed, mentored and inspired,” the New Afrikan People’s Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement said n a statement announcing Shakur’s death, NBC News reported.
A racial justice activist with the Black Liberation Army of the 1970s, Shakur was diagnosed in prison with stage-3 blood cancer and given less than six months to live by federal doctors. His attorney Brad Thomson previously revealed that he had COVID twice in the months leading up to his release, NBC News reports.
Shakur’s supporters urged the federal Parole Commission to release him so that he could spend his final days with his family. His previous appeals for release were repeatedly denied, but last October commission officials ruled him “so infirm of mind and body” due to his multiple myeloma diagnosis that he was “no longer physically capable of committing any Federal, State, or local crime.”
“I think being free does a lot for the spirit,” his son Mopreme Shakur told NBC News in January. “He gained like nine pounds in the first 10 days he was home.”
According to the outlet, Shakur was surrounded by his family in Los Angeles when he died.
“Mutulu transitioned free and with his family thanks to all of us,” Jomo Muhammad, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, told NBC News. “That gives our hearts a bit of peace.”
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