(Assata Shakur)

Born: July 16, 1947
AKA: Joan Davis, Justine Henderson

To the FBI, JoAnne Chesimard is an armed robber, a cop-killer, and a dangerous escaped criminal. To her supporters, she is a woman of action who has never received fair treatment from the law. Whatever she may be to others, Chesimard is—by her own description—a black revolutionary.

From New York to North Carolina

Chesimard was born JoAnne Deborah Byron in New York City on July 16, 1947. Until she was three, she lived with her parents, her aunt, and her grandparents in a house in Flushing, New York. Her father was an accountant for the federal government and her mother taught elementary school. When her parents divorced, Chesimard accompanied her grandparents, Frank and Lulu Hill, to Wilmington, North Carolina.

In a place where African Americans were barred from public beaches, her grandparents owned property and...