Assata Shakur holds the manuscript of her autobiography with Old Havana, Cuba, in the background on October 7, 1987. (Ozier Muhammad/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said.

Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement . Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, also confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.

Born in Queens, New York in 1947, Shakur briefly relocated to Oakland as a young woman in the late

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