Afeni Shakur

Afeni Shakur, a onetime Black Panther who guarded the legacy of her son, the perennially popular and controversial “gangsta” rapper Tupac Shakur, after his drive-by shooting death in 1996, died May 2 2016 at a hospital near her home in Sausalito, Calif. She was 69. Ms. Shakur gave birth to her son in 1971, a month after she and a dozen other members of the Black Panther black nationalist group were acquitted in New York on charges of conspiring to kill police officers and bomb police stations and department stores. She had spent a portion of her pregnancy in jail and represented herself in the high-profile legal proceedings that carried her briefly to national attention. After the trial, Ms. Shakur worked as a paralegal before descending into drug addiction. After the trial, Ms. Shakur worked as a paralegal before descending into drug addiction. After her son’s death, Ms. Shakur fought an extended legal battle over the rights to his unreleased recordings. She became chief executive of Amaru Entertainment/Amaru Records, which released albums of her son’s music. For a period, Ms. Shakur also ran the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation in Georgia. Ms. Shakur was born Alice Faye Williams in Lumberton, N.C., on Jan. 10, 1947. She grew up in New York, where she took the name Afeni Shakur around the time that she joined the Black Panther movement. She was married several times, most recently to Gust Davis. They were divorced. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.