Black Actresses Are Carrying One Battle After Another

After seeing One Battle After Another for the first time, I walked out of Chicago’s Music Box Theatre into an unseasonably balmy fall afternoon and learned that Assata Shakur had died. Shakur was a legendary revolutionary with the Black Liberation Army who in May 1977 was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in a shoot-out that left her wounded and another comrade dead. Two years later, Shakur, aided by other BLA members, escaped from prison and was granted political asylum in Cuba in 1984, where she resided until her death. During Barack Obama’s presidency, she was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, and her bounty doubled to $2 million. She long proclaimed her innocence.

Teyana Taylor cited the complicated, controversial Shakur as a touchstone for her perfor