Afeni Shakur, the mother of the late rapper Tupac Shakur has passed away at the age of 69.
According to TMZ the Marin County Sheriff’s Department responded to a cardiac arrest call at Shakur’s Sausalito, California home late last night.
She was transported to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
No official cause of death has been reported, but it is believed that Shakur died from a heart attack.
Though best known as the mother of one of the hip hop world’s most iconic rappers and the subject of his most touching song, Shakur was a noted activist and philanthropist who worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of the urban poor until her final days.
After a troubled childhood, during which she witnessed her father abusing her mother and fell into hard drug use, Shakur joined the emerging Black Panther movement in 1964 after meeting an associate of Malcolm X.
“They took my rage and channeled it,” she later said about her time with the Panthers.
“They educated my mind and gave me direction.”
Shakur and several other Panthers were arrested in 1969 on charges of conspiracy to bomb several police stations and department stores.
She was released on bail – during which time she conceived Tupac – but was shortly thereafter returned to jail to await trial.
Despite the objections of her codefendants, Shakur chose to represent herself in the now-famous Panther 21 trial.
To the surprise of many who watched the proceedings closely, Shakur conducted herself like a seasoned defense attorney, and her fierce intellect helped her to win her freedom in 1971.
Though she fell into the grips of crack cocaine addiction in the early 1980s, Afeni said she always put her children’s needs ahead of her own.
In 1984, she relocated her family to Baltimore.
There, she enrolled Tupac in the performing arts school where he would discover his love for music and acting.
Following Tupac’s tragic death in 1996 she set up the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, which continues to provide art education for at-risk young people.
