thinking of miss shirley, the black trans woman who took took care of a teenaged assata shakur after she ran away from home in the early 1960s.

“i knew it all the time,” part mother and part seer, miss shirley’s sight and care sharpened assata’s young mind to think of herself with precision and protection. assata writes every lesson from miss shirley with the bright reverence of a child glad to have found her kin.

before either of their lives were swept and captured by the crises of AIDS and COINTELPRO, they spent days laughing and imagining an impossible way into the next hour— not knowing their moment would carry for generations.

it’s an exchange of sweetness only black girl survivors know. and assata was clear that this, too, was a site for black revolutionary potential.

light and progress to the spirits of all of our revolutionary mothers. aşe