Destination Cuba with Diallo Riddle

Hey guys, welcome to Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest.

True escape stories of all time.

On this episode, we're going to head back to the nineteen seventies for the daring daylight jailbreak of a true American revolutionary. I'm Mortcastro, and for this journey, I'm joined by the incredible talent, actor, writer, producer, and DJ Diallo Riddle.

Dallo Riddle. Am I saying your name completely right?

Or completely You said.

It completely right, Diallow Riddle. You know people sometimes mistake di'allo for Diablo. My mother in law said that my to b wife could not date me because but.

My mom did warm me about having the Diablo on Like I have questions.

Diablo was surprisingly available.

You know you're thinking, but right now the world's kind of fucked, so.

It seems really busy. He seems really busy.

May I ask the origin of your name?

So my name is d'allo nob uh two ills. Actually it's from West Africa. Diallo amir Riddle. It stands for bold prince riddle in a West African language known as Fulani Fulanilani.

So I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.

You know, my parents just wanted to give me a name from Africa because you know, black Pride, and that is how you end up with a bold Prince Riddle aka Diallo Amir Riddle.

Oh fantastic.

You know, at the beginning of my career, I did a few Nigerian films and they call them Nollywood. So anything from West Africa films they call it Nollywood. And it was amazing because you know, obviously, like we'd go off to shoot in Lowell, Massachusetts and they'd be like, come make we go a white boy, and.

I'm like, I'm not white. It looks like me, No, you want a white boy.

You know what's funny is on one of our shows, Sherman Showcase, we uh, you know, we just shot a proof of concept, which you know is a fancy industry term for essentially we shot like the best five or ten minutes of a script and showed it to the network and we got picked up the series.

But in that relations oh thank you.

In that proof of concept, we had a essentially what was a Nollywood movie trailer. And in that trailer, because we have we have we have a couple of Nigerian writers on our staff, and we thought it was so funny that they were. Like, if you watch enough of these Nigerian Nollywood movies, a lot of times the twist is that somebody is a witch in some way.

Every trailer it was she a witch.

Yeah, and it's usually the preacher who's also kind of a love interest, Like who reveals this story?

Tell me about your greatest escape.

It doesn't even have to be life threatening, it just has to be one of those like whoa I got away with that.

Very few people know this story.

But actually, when I was about seventeen, I'm filling out college applications and so I went to the store. Because you couldn't email the men back then, you had to like print them out on paper and send them in. So I go to the local drug store to pick up some paper.

I'm literally buying.

Paper to go to college and build a better life. When a guy came in and held up the convenience store and I remember he said, everybody on the floor, and I remember how like I had never seen a handgun wielded, you know, in person before, and I just

I thought, like, you know, he might be like no witnesses, you know, and what a thought.

And then somebody ran out the back like it was probably an employee, and just something about that emergency door jamming open, like the guy just grabbed a bunch of money out of the register and then ran back out the front. And then I got up and I picked up my paper, and I'm pretty sure I just walked down with my paper. I think I was like, they're going to have a lot of paperwork to fill out, and I don't know that I want to.

Hang out here.

I'm not here for it.

I'm not trying to be like, you know, I can't identify the guy. All I saw was a black glove on a gun. I'm out of here.

Have you ever wanted to get to Cuba? Have you ever been to Cuba?

Or I did? I really wanted to get to Cube.

I mean, like, oh, man, you know, Cuba is such a obviously it's such a complicated social political topic. But I've always wanted, in my heart of hearts there to be like a very simple way to just fly out of Lax you know, into Cuba and just you know, go and visit and go around and see the country. So it's one of those places I've really wanted to go. I feel like every time I get a chance to go something something comes up.

Now, Cuba is important in today's story for two reasons. Now, first the revolution in nineteen fifty nine that inspired a ton of people in the next couple of decades, and second, Cuba dozen extradye people today United States, which takes us back to the end of the nineteen seventies and one of the most significant prison escapes in American history.

It was November two, nineteen seventy nine.

Three men walked into the Correctional Facility for women in Clinton, New Jersey, sometime between one and four pm. Each of the visitors showed their ID and they gave their names and addresses and were entered into the prison visitor log, but none of the information they gave was so you see, this wasn't any old visit. These men were complete revolutionaries, and they arrived to pull off one of the most

Okay, that last part isn't true, but what that be awesome?

So if you were gonna help with the jail break, how would you disguise yourself?

Like, what would you be wearing for this?

Oh man? Probably all black?

Right, you gotta go like full you know what panthers slash, you know, calm cruise when he's like rappling in from the ceiling. That's that's what it is.

I would wear.

I would like wear like really thick eyebrows, because that's the one thing that people would describe me as.

They're like and then I just rip them off and you have these ones.

I couldn't have been here. I'm looking out. Then those zyebras are.

The first man alone. He was checked through the registration building in the minimum security area of the prison. Then he climbed into a van that drove him across the prison grounds to the South Hall. Now this was the prison's maximum security area. But and this is key, okay, he was not searched.

He wasn't.

No. Instead, he was let through the extra fencing around the South Hall, and then the guards led him down to the glass booth, where he sat down to visit with an inmate.

Now you got I got it.

Put seventies nineteen seventies security teams like I just feel like yeah.

They were just like, yeah, I don't care, you can go through. Who are you here to see? Yeah, okay, sure, go ahead.

Man.

It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where like mister Burns has to go through like eight levels of security to get down to the nuclear reactor, but then a cat wanders in through a broken.

So the next two men arrived soon after, and they did the same thing. They passed through registration without being searched, okay, and were shuttled into the prison van in the South Hall.

Literally, nobody gave a fuck.

Yeah, I mean it's the seventies.

Everybody was packing and nobody was checking.

When they came to the fence around the South Hall, and it was open for them. They sprang into their escape plan. They pulled out guns on the van driver while the gate hung open. Now inside the visiting booth, the first man turned to the prison guard who was watching the visit, and he whipped out two pistols out from under his jacket.

That one and like you know, shoved into his crotch or like literally two guns.

He was our own style.

Something must have given it away when he had like a bullet belt around him. So holding the garden there at gunpoint, he forced her to open the booth up from behind the glass walked activists, black panther and soldier of the Black Liberation Army a Sata shaquor.

That's right, yep yep Asadakor.

Suddenly free from herself, Asada and her visitor took the guard hostage and they marched outside. They climbed into the van with the other two men, and now the four revolutionary and their two hostages were able to drive the prison van right out of the main prison gate. They reached a nearby parking lot where their getaway cars were part waiting.

So Asauna and her rescuers left from.

The van and into the cards and just fucking peeled away. The prison guards were left handcuffed in the prison van, but unharmed. Now everybody started flipping the fuck out. Roadblocks were rushed out onto the highway to stop the escaping vehicles, but conflicting reports flew in right. Some said they were in a blue Pondiac and a blue Cadillac, and no, no, no, they were in a Ford Maverick and a two toll Lincoln. No no, no, they had massive eyebrows. Everybody had massive hours,

Asada Shakur was free.

It's insane, yellow.

What do you know about Asada Shagar's life and why she was in prison?

I mean, admittedly, you know, my my father was a painter in South Central now called South LA during the time of the Watts riots, and so you know, he used to, you know, do paintings and sculptures about you know, the ghettos in the in the hood back then.

You know.

And I always felt like even though he wasn't like a black panther. Growing up in our household, we definitely understood the point of view that like our community needed you know, uplift and it needed, you know, certain things to reach its full potential.

So the idea of like Asada Shakur.

And Mumia abou Jamal, like these were not random names to us, Like these were people who we knew.

In our household.

And and honestly, when Tupac Shakur first blew up, I was like, is that Asada son? And of course you know Asada Shakur was the godmother.

Of that's rights.

Yeah, and I think his mom, Afienie Shakur was a was a good friend of Asadas.

That's right.

And you know this is a little off topic, but let me ask you something because you bring up something interesting about I didn't know that about your father. Do you think that you got from him the desire to express yourself and surroundings and sort of your point of view through art, be it to a through a writer, acting perspective.

But no, you listen, you ask something that not many people have ever asked, but it's got a very very clear and strong answer, which is that absolutely one hundred percent. You know, my father started off at La City College doing still life, like he would paint pears, you know, in bowls and you know, light coming through a window on a villa.

But you know, at the end of the day.

Once the Watts Rice broke out, he was like, I can't do pears and bowls and still life anymore. I have to do art that means something. And he's sort of instilled, you know, in us. Even before I knew that I wanted to be an artist in my own way, even though before I knew I wanted to be creative with my profession, he always said that he felt like art without any social commentary had no interest to him.

You know.

He felt like everything that he did had to have some not message. He wasn't trying to be polemic, but it was just that he had a point of views. Yeah, it had to have a point of view. It had to have a very strong point of view. And I think that in my work to this day, everything from Sherman Showcase The South Side to some of the shows that we're working on now, I always think, what will this contribute to the world. It doesn't have to be anything like, oh, it's gonna get people to wake up

What a fascinating thing to be able to witness that. If you see your dad's paintings from before the riots and after the riots, and you know how you just climb.

And then suddenly so we're just watching it.

I love the moment where you watch an artist find find their voice, you know, and visually being able to witness it must be really fascinating and impactful as a young man.

Yeah, John Thomas Riddle, he's you know, his artwork is up at the California African American Art Museum and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

So it's it's you know, he had a great career.

Sadly, as many people who work in that field know, the second that he died, his art skyrocket in value.

Because there's not going to be anymore. That's the way I think about that.

We'll put up a link at the bottom of this episode, so people going to check out you dad's art. Man.

I think that'd be really cool.

Okay, so we've heard about ASADA's legendary prison escape, but now we're going to jump back and hear the story of the real person behind the legend. So, dell, well, you know a lot of this already, but for the listener, we're going to go way way back.

Okay. Asada was born in Queens, probably in the year nineteen forty seven, though the exact date is kind of lost.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

So she was born with the name Joanne and her family called her Joey. It was only later that you would leave it behind and become a Soda. Grew up with her mother and her on, and when she was three, her grandparents bought a beach property in Wilmington, North Carolina. So they moved south and they took a Soda with him. Now, and this is a really beautiful solo memory, I think. Asana says that while in Wilmington, the women in her grandmother's generation became her role models.

They would some rivers and.

Shoot the head off a snake and plant a garden, saw a pattern, kill a hog, and also quite a little fussing baby, all at the same time. Do you have any older women in your life that you consider bound asses like that?

Oh?

Yeah, I mean it's interesting. I have an aunt Joanne a relation to a soada. Oh shoot, now it comes out, that's what we got.

To come storming my booth. I'm like, I don't, what do you want with me?

They're so I mean, like every I feel like all the women in my family are badass in their own way.

But you know what's really.

Interesting about what you say about them moving from New York. I think you said Queen's to North Carolina. I grew up in Atlanta. And the thing about Atlanta is, I think we have more trees, you know, per square inch than any major city in the country.

Right.

We have these woods, and we have these really wild areas that are right in the heart of Atlanta.

And as a result, you know, me.

And my friends right there in the city limits, we learned how to fish and identify which makes are harmless and which ones will kill you. And there's like this this strait of wile, and I think that that's.

Really cool because unfortunately, every.

Time I see, you know, black people depicted on TV in any kind of like rural or like river strewn area, it's almost always like something about slavery. Like it's just like they're always like running away from dogs trying.

To like take them back into bondage.

And I'm like, guys, there are a lot of rural black people who like know how to like fish and do the wildlife, you know, outdoors thing.

You know, I love to hear stories like that.

Picking black joy in the outdoors is something too much of.

I totally hear you, dude.

Do Mike all alone in the archery club, like come join me? Please?

Did every time I see a Latino person in the desert, I'm like, oh, fuck, okay.

I know I know where this is going. I couldn't have just been out for a fucking hike. Yeah, I love hiking. Like every time everybody ever.

Catches me like outside like an out of a palm springs, there's something they're like, oh, I know where you came from.

No, you fucking go.

I came from the Ace Hotel, motherfucker, and I just went for a nice little stroll.

Fuck you. I was just on a doom buggy. Okay, forget y'all. That's right.

Okay, that's why I'm all fucking dirty and thirsty.

Okay, motherfucker, because I'm hungover.

So to paint a picture of like what Wilmington was like at the time, public beaches around Wilmington were whites only, So Asadast's grandparents moved onto their ocean front property and opened it for business. Right, so they welcome black visitors, sold refreshments, and rented umbrellas.

Smart.

Yeah, So her time on the.

Beach growing up became a sadast picture of what freedom really means, right, watching people enjoy themselves, sharing treats with them, dancing in the sand, kind of what we were talking about about minority joy that you hardly ever see. After elementary school, Asada moved back to New York, and after moving around so much as a kid, she was convinced that there wasn't a place in the United States where she could actually escape discrimination. You know, it was everywhere,

I don't think so. My time in New York was a little bit limited.

The only time I lived there was when I was a writer for Jimmy Fallon and that was about four years. And honestly, I went straight from my place in Upper West Side straight to thirty Rocks, So I never really got to know some parts of the city, like City College, and that's where I've.

Got my first play, and like I had a mentor who taught film classes there, so I'd come out auditors class. So it still had those feelings that whenever you walk into a place that has been really important to a city, you still feel sort of the ghosts of the past there. And that's what City College fell like to me of learning than most people don't ever talk about.

That's one of the best things about in New York is that you feel like the past is all around you. I will say that I think the ghosts of the past were very much alive in the basement of my New York building, Like I never wanted to go to that laundry.

Oh, it's that's fully haunted. Haunted.

In nineteen sixty seven, Assada joined other students at City College to protest the lack of black professors and black history being taught. Their entire group was arrested, and the violence of these arrests made one thing clear. Asada knew it would take a revolution for America to change. She made more friends in other radical groups and took a trip to California, which is the original home of the

Yeah, I mean again, my father was, you know, very much of that sort of generation. And I mean, like we to grow up in my household was to know Fred Hampton, Huey P.

Newton, you know my father.

Just to this day, I have a painting of his. It's called Fairbanks or Garvy, and it's got a prominent picture of Marcus Garvey, you know in the painting. You know, like you definitely instilled upon us that we should take great pride in our.

People, our accomplishments.

You know, one thing that he said to me back when I was young that didn't really register until I had my own kids was just this idea, and this applies to you and everybody who's listening, is that there have been so many wars and conflicts and genocides and plagues. Everybody alive today is a bloodline that survived all that from the beginning of freaking time. I think that's so amazing that all of us have an ancestor who was able to jump over a rhino, you know, survive a flood.

That's beautiful, man.

In nineteen sixty six, Hueing Newton and Bobby Seal founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland. By nineteen sixty nine, the Panthers had branches all across the country. They built networks of mutual aid, They ran medical clinics, they held educational programs and served breakfast for kids and poverty.

Yeah, I mean that was sort of the main appeal. I think.

You know, anytime you hear people talk about the Panthers nowadays, you always hear about that, you know, shout out to my friends, the Lucas brothers. I thought they did an amazing job on the script for Judas and the Black Messie.

If you watched that movie, I guarantee, first off, I think.

That you know, I know that Daniel got nominated for a lot of stuff in that movie. But to me, le Keith Stanfield is he's such a Robert de Niro at a young age, Like I just feel like the Keith is he disappears into this character.

He plays every level. If even if you just like a good movie.

I would actually recommend Judas in the Black Nosiah. But I'd also point out that that movie points out that the Panthers weren't It wasn't an organization that started like, yeah, we're gonna get a bunch of guns and kill people. That's not what it was really about.

And okay, great.

You know it represents that side of the story that you don't get told unless you, you know, do research.

It was nineteen seventy when Asada joined the Panthers in New York. By that point there were Panther offices in sixty eight cities.

Wow I saw.

His first role with the Panthers was running the children's Bakfast program in Harlem. She became the head of the Harlem office, responsible for the free clinics and the community outreach.

Okay, so Shakour is an Arabic name for thankful.

Many Panthers in New York took the name to represent their unity, and Asato was among them. When Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered by the Chicago police, many party members were convinced that mutual aid wasn't enough, you know, they had to fight back, literally, So some of the New York Panthers started to go underground, living under assumed names and keeping low profile. Asato was one of them.

I'd forgotten about the bank robberies. It's so interesting to me because as a storyteller and in somebody who loves movies and books and stuff, especially about true crime. You know, you sort of see a lionization of people like Billy the Kid and Mom Baker and Bonnie and Clyde, like you sort of see them as sort of held up a's like these were outlaws you.

Can root for. But you never really hear that.

Abouts too apparently, so you know, it just depends on sometimes, like how people feel about a person.

So in May nineteen seventy three, after she had lived for two years underground, Asada was captured. She was riding in the front seat of a white Pontiac with two other activists, say Malik Shakur and Sundiata Akali. They were traveling the New Jersey Turnpike when they saw police lights behind them. The police report says that it had a broken taylight. So there are two versions of what happened next.

From her own bullet wounds. And she never fucking cracked.

Yeah, dude, I would fucking like interrogation and me would break.

Bro, Like I don't, I wouldn't survive.

My aunt looks at me funny, and I'm like, I'll confess the shit I haven't even done.

Let me tell you first off, well that's that's that's actually the case to be made against torture, right. They always say experts on torture say torture doesn't actually work because at some point people just want the torture to end. So you can say, like you are Mickey Mouse, and people will be like, oh.

You know, like.

Handed, They're like, man, he's lost his mind. But I love it.

I mean, I always tell people I'm like, don't tell me anything because I will probably snitch, like you know, like I'll just like to keep my nose cleans out of speak because like you know, I.

Don't want to know.

I don't want to know, and I feel like I give off that energy.

So when she was finally strong enough to be moved, Asada left the hospital to the Middlesex County Workhouse, where she was the only female prisoner at the jail. It was the first of many men's prisons where she would be held while the charges against her went forward. They were extremely fucking scared of her. It's so wild that they have to keep her in a men's prison now her A Evelyn left her job at NYU and took

To lose but our change.

Evelyn spread the recording and it played on black radio stations all around New York. Magazines were printed it and white media figures of course, Wind and Wind about it. Reporters were actually banned from meeting with Asada. You see, her voice was so powerfull. Imagine that that the judges and the cops and the prison guards were just scrambling to keep up with her even though she was locked up.

Wow.

In nineteen seventy four, Assada finally went to trial, but guess what, she kept beating the charges.

First, she was acquitted of some robbery charges. A month later, she was tried for killing a police officer, but there was an evidence against her and the case was dismissed.

Wow.

In January nineteen seventy six, Assada faced a kidnapping charge and she beat that too. When she was finally tried for the Queen's Bank, the first case that had actually put her in the paper, Asada was easily acquitted.

Like what damn.

The photograph published by the police didn't look like her at all.

The bank manager who had been there for the robbery.

I'm sorry they did a drawing and it didn't look like her.

Well, the photograph that they put out of who had actually robbed the bank, you know, so it's sort of the photo evidence right off the bank didn't look like.

Her at all.

Yeah, it's really flimsy.

Charges And the bank manager who had been there for the robbery testified that Asada was not the woman who had held him at gunpoint.

There you go.

He's like, no, it was a redhead woman. And she was like, I'm Wendy, Like I don't I played like.

These these facial recognition features on some of the on some of the robots nowadays, like they have a harder time recognizing black people because the people who programmed them just didn't use a lot of black subjects. So like they're just like they look at me and they're like, ahh, that's Martin Luther King.

No, no, man, fuck, I don't really look like King anyway. Go ahead.

So, in nineteen seventy seven, the victories for Asada finally came to an end. Right she was found guilty of first degree murder along with many other charges, for the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike. Now halfway through the trial, ASADA's new lawyer, Stanley Cohen was found dead in his fucking apartment.

Is that I didn't even know announce it that. I'm lurry. I did not know that.

So he had been collecting evidence against the police witnesses, recruiting forensic chemists to show that there was no evidence of gunfire on Assata's hands, and uncovering what he believed were falsified documents in the prosecution's case. So fucked up, And the newspapers reported that Stanley died of natural causes.

So we're not saying that the police killed or are we, like, cause that'd be crazy.

You know, there were a.

Lot of suspicious deaths back in those days, and I do think that, you know, we have forensics have come a long way, right since nine seventy whatever this was. I mean like, but it is suspicious that he died of unknown causes. I mean, like, I don't even watch unsolved mysteries. Yeah, I like my mysteries and solved. The worst thing about unsolved mysteries is that like when they come to the other they're like, did they die or

But that's unsolved mysteries, which at least like come with a built in like I played myself, I fucking eat documentaries that are five fucking ninety minute episodes long. And then the it's like, we don't know if he faked his own death or he didn't tell me that at the beginning. Man. Now, once she was convicted, Asada was moved to yardbuilt prison in New Jersey. Her young daughter went to live with her mother in New York, and Asada and the other members of the Underground knew that

Sounded happy to be in Gula.

She called it a country of hope, and she ended her book with a series of poetic meditations on her life there, about the openness and beauty of Havana and of the Cuban culture. And there, beyond the reach of the US government, Asada was finally able to pick up a telephone, call home and talk with her family for the first time in five years. In twenty twenty two,

I think police organizations have to realize that there were some abuses that led to a lack of trust in these communities and that there's a lot of healing.

That has to take place.

It's not as simple as like, oh, this person did this thing, which, by the way, as you've pointed out in this podcast, is not cut and dry, you know.

In order for the healing to begin, like, the past needs to be acknowledged.

No, it's true, there's too much of that, Like, okay, guys, this is the ancient past.

Can we just please move on this? There's too much of that.

And I think if you don't acknowledge the past, and it's hard to move into the future, you know what I mean. And I think that's why it's so disturbing that there's so many places that are trying to whitewash history right now, and they do it under the rubric of this you know, basically law school centric concept of critical race theory, and then they pretend that, oh, if we teach people that America wasn't perfect.

Then that's critical race theory.

Like, no, you don't even know what You don't even know what critical race theory is.

If that's what you think.

You can love something and want to improve something and still acknowledge its flaws.

You can love your father but also be like, hey dad, stop drinking, stop drinking, stop thking.

Hey man, I am so honored to have had you here before we go. Do you have anything that you want to that you want.

Our listeners to look out for of yours? Coming up?

Man, there's so much coming up, from from the music and the comedy of Sherman Showcase to what I think is one of just the funniest uh you know, get to know the characters type show Southside on HBO Max. I think the easiest way for people to check out some of the work that I and but Sheer have done.

Uh, follow me on Instagram.

At Dallo, not Diablo and Dalloff.

That's a different account.

Diablo account gets all these followers now and they're like, I.

Don't know, man, this guy doesn't look like a DJ.

I gotta say he's pretty entertaining at d allo d I A L l O. And you'll you'll always know about like sort of what we're digging and what we're producing and uh and yeah, man, thanks thanks for having me on right.

Alred to have you, and thank you for being so open about your dad and his art. And it means a lot to us when when guests come on here and they share moments to shape them. So thank you so much for a friend of the show. You can come back anytime, brother, Thank you so much. Breh bye.