Condolences to Mutulu and Family on Passing of Afeni Shakur‏, mother of Tupac Shakur

Tupac Shakur with his mother, Afeni Shakur, in an undated photo.

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(CNN) Afeni Shakur Davis, the mother of one of hip-hop's most seminal and iconic figures, has died at age 69, the Marin County, California, sheriff's office said Tuesday.

Though she is best known as Tupac Shakur's mom, she was also a Black Panther as a young adult and an activist and philanthropist in her later years.

Deputies responded to a call reporting "a possible cardiac arrest" at her Sausalito home around 9:34 p.m. Monday, the Marin County Sheriff's Office said.

Shakur Davis was taken to the hospital where she died at 10:28 p.m., the office said.

"Sheriff's Coroners Office will lead investigation to determine exact cause & manner of Afeni Shakur's death," the office said in a tweet.

Information is still being gathered, and the sheriff's department will answer questions regarding her death later Tuesday morning, it said.

From drugs to arts

In a 2005 interview ahead of the opening of the now-shuttered Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Shakur Davis recalled how her life was almost derailed by drugs and how her son got it back on track.

Her drug use made her so oblivious to what was happening in her life that when someone told her in 1990 that her son -- then on the precipice of becoming the biggest name in hip-hop -- was going to be on "The Arsenio Hall Show," she thought the person was lying, she said.

In the mid-1980s, she was homeless in New York City and "messing around with cocaine," she said. Despite the drug use, she was still coherent enough to realize that Tupac would become a product of the streets if she didn't make different choices.

"I was running around with militants, trying to be badder than I was, trying to stay up later than I should," she said in the 2005 interview.

She decided to enroll Tupac in the 127th Street Ensemble, a Harlem theater group, something she called "the best thing I could've done in my insanity." They later moved to Maryland, where she enrolled him in the Baltimore School for the Arts, and then to a small town outside Sausalito.

It was there that Tupac confronted her about her cocaine use.

"He asked me if I could handle it, and I said yeah because I'd been dipping and dabbing all my life," she said during the interview. "What pissed him off is that I lied to him."

'Pac told the local drug dealers not to sell to her, she said, and he told his mother to get clean or to forget about being involved in his life.

'Arts can save children'

She got clean in 1991, she said, and when her son was gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996, she resisted the urges to delve back into her old bad habits. She instead founded Amaru Entertainment to keep her son's music alive.

Later, she realized that her life -- mistake-ridden as it may have been -- might serve as a lesson to others.

"Arts can save children, no matter what's going on in their homes," she said. "I wasn't available to do the right things for my son. If not for the arts, my child would've been lost."

She provided the majority of the money to begin the $4 million first phase of the arts center, while her Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation hosted poetry and theater camps for youngsters in the Atlanta area.

"I learned that I can't save the world, but I can help a child at a time," she said, pointing out that her new life of philanthropy wouldn't have been possible without the influence of her legendary son. "God created a miracle with his spirit. I'm all right with that."

And as much as she credited Tupac with inspiring her to help others, the tribulations she endured in raising him weren't lost on the multiplatinum artist. He regularly invoked her in his music, perhaps never as directly as in his chart-topping song, "Dear Mama."

In it, he rapped, "And even as a crack fiend, mama, you always was a black queen, mama/I finally understand, for a woman it ain't easy trying to raise a man/You always was committed, a poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did it/There's no way I can pay you back, but the plan is to show you that I understand."

Shakur Davis is survived by daughter Sekyiwa Shakur.

CNN's Jeffrey Acevedo contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE... Afeni Shakur: Three Black Panthers Remember The Multiple Sides Of The Revolutionary‏

Former Black Panther Party Members Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, Sekou Odinga and Bilal Sunni-Ali jointly recollect the life, times and legacy of the late revolutionary matriarch Afeni Shakur.

Afeni’s passing in the year that marks the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party founded in Oakland California, is a significant socio-political marker in the marginalization of Black Radicalism in America. Her passing as a universally recognized Hip-Hop Madonna and mother of the iconic Black Rapper Tupac Shakur and daughter Setchawa, practically obscures the formative years of her life as a Black girl from the rural South, transfigured in the Southeast Bronx into a Black teenage Fem Fatale and “Deb” in the Bronx Street set, Young Disciples/Disciples Sportsmen, as well as her transition from the harsh streets of the Southeast Bronx to the radical Black Nationalism of the Black Panther Party and Black Radicalism of the sixties.

Like a silent movie reel, Afeni’s passing means that the Black Panthers of Afeni Shakur’s generation of Black Radicals, Revolutionaries, and activists are etched in Time by a media that portrays them as – “Forever Young” – while the conditions that nurtured their radicalism, and inspired the Freedom Dreams of Afeni’s generation, are reduced to hashtag militancy and posture politics. We should not forget that she was a revolutionary leader and spokesperson for the Black Panther Party. Afeni’s real historical legacy, and ultimately to celebrate her Life depends on how we the living perceived that life.

The name Shakur further identifies her as at one with the legacy of the revolutionary family of the Shakur, Aba, Lumumba, Zaid, Mutulu, Assata, and their extended family of revolutionaries.

Because Afeni was one of us, one Verse in our generational bio-story who grew to adulthood during the “Cold War” of White America’s Empire, and White Supremacy’s Bloody domestic War on us, we not only mourn her passing but the marginalization of her “becoming” who she was. Across America, in every major Urban enclave populated by the descendants of Chattel Slaves, Freedmen and Women, a generation that would embrace Black Power, Black Self-determination, Black Pride that would typify the Civil and Human Rights struggles of the sixties and seventies came of age. Now Afeni’s generation time has passed, but not the legacy of their struggles, the radical legacy of the Afeni Shakur’s, Abdul Majid’s, Albert Nuh Washington’s, Zaid Shakur’s, are still accessible as long as their lives are not forgotten, or what made them who they became overlooked and ignored.

We Love you Dear Sister Afeni. Although you are gone you will never be forgotten. Long live the revolutionary spirit of Afeni Shakur!
~

LOVE,

Dhoruba Bin-Wahad

Sekou Odinga

Bilal Sunni-Ali
~

Sekou Odinga is a former member of the Black Panther Party and a political prisoner who served 33 years in prison before being released in 2014.

Dhoruba Bin-Wahad is a former member of the Black Panther Party and was also a part of the New York 21. He later served an additional 19 years in a separate case before being acquitted due to the use of COINTELPRO. Dhoruba won lawsuits against both the FBI and NYPD for their use of COINTELPRO. His case against the FBI led to a massive release of COINTELPRO documents.

Bilal Sunni-Ali is a former member of the Black Panther Party and musician. He was a member of Gil Scott Heron’s ensemble “Midnight Band” and is a celebrated saxophonist, composer and educator.

SOURCE:
New York City Jericho Movement
P.O. Box 670927
Bronx, NY 10467
www.jerichony.org

TRIBUTES: Homage and Praises