Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

Texas in the backwoods. When the conference ended, i was a different person. I felt much stronger and i didn't feel alone.
    I don't know when, but somewhere along the way i started to collect the metal cups we were given to drink from. At first i think it was just my slow way of drinking that caused the cups to accumulate. I was none too popular with the guards, especially the men. Most of them hadn't said boo to me and vice versa, but they hated my guts. To them, i was a cop killer and they were cops. Something told me to be real careful. They had given me a little table to eat and write on, and at night, before i went to sleep, i pushed the table up next to the bars and stacked the cups precariously on top of it. The bars opened into the cell, and the slightest movement would send the whole stack of cups clanging to the floor. I would push the wooden bench behind the table. In that way, anyone who tried to come in would have to apply some real pressure. I went through this routine every night, feeling slightly foolish but compelled.
    One night, in the middle of the night, the cups came crashing down. I immediately awoke to find four or five male guards stand ing in the doorway of my cell.
    I screamed, "What do you want? What are you doing in my cell?" loud enough for someone to hear me. The guards stood in the doorway like they didn't know what to do. Finally one of them locked the door and said, "We heard a noise and we came to investigate. We were just checking it out." They weren't even sup posed to be in the women's section. The female guard on duty that night, the slimiest one in the prison, was nowhere in sight. After that, no matter what jail i was in, i always found some way to barricade my cell. In prisons, it is not at all uncommon to find a prisoner hanged or burned to death in his cell..No matter how suspicious the circumstances, these deaths are always ruled "suicides." They are usually Black inmates, considered to be a "threat to the orderly running of the prison." They are usually among the most politically aware and socially conscious inmates in the prison.
    When Eva came to the workhouse it was something of an event. Usually she occupied the cell i was in. (The rest of the women were housed in two open dormitories.) The guards didn't know what to do with her. She had been in that jail many times before and she was known as a hell raiser. Everybody said she was crazy.
    My first encounter with Eva was when she came over to the bars and sat down outside my cell and told me she could astro travel. She called it something like astro-space projection.
    "I can go anywhere I want to, whenever I want to," she told me. "I've just come from Jupiter."
    "How was it?" i asked her.
    "Oh, it was fine. They had these cute little people. They were purple with crocodile skin and blue hair. You can go anywhere you want to," she told me. "You just have to project yourself."
    "Can you show me how to project myself the hell out of here?"
    "Oh, that's easy," she said, "I do that all the time. As a matter of fact, I'm not here now."
    "No," i said, "that's not good enough. I want to project my mind and my body out of here."
    "You'll be in jail wherever you go," Eva said.
    "You have a point there," i told her, 'but i'd rather be in a minimum security prison or on the streets than in the maximum security prison in here. The only difference between here and the streets is that one is maximum security and the other is minimum security. The police patrol our communities just like the guards patrol here. I don't have the faintest idea how it feels to be free."
    Eva told me that she knew how i felt. She had to know. Any Black person in amerika, if they are honest with themselves, have got to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially. We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a Black person in amerika isn't even free to walk down