#13: Assata Shakur Escapes — 1979
Assata Shakur was serving a prison sentence in New Jersey when armed members of the Black Liberation Army entered the correctional facility posing as visitors in November 1979. During the operation, guards were taken hostage, and Shakur escaped. She remained underground for several years before eventually appearing in Cuba, where she received asylum. The breakout became one of the most politically controversial American escapes of the twentieth century, with supporters and law enforcement describing her story in radically different terms.
