A highly celebrated actor and rapper, the late Tupac Amaru Shakur was born Lesane Parish Crooks in Brooklyn, New York City, on June 16, 1971, to Afeni Shakur, a member of the Black Panthers. Serving jail time on bombing charges while pregnant with Tupac, she faced a possible sentence of up to three hundred years in prison, but was released one month before Tupac was born as she acted as her own attorney. About his biological father Tupac said, "I never knew where my father was or who my father was for sure." His step father Metulu, to his knowing, was a drug dealer and was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, whom he said was not always around to give him the discipline he needed. Impoverished during most of his childhood, Afeni took him and his half-sister Sekyiwa moving around to homeless shelters and various places around New York City. Such condition caused Tupac retained few friends and relied on writing poetry and diary entries to keep himself busy. At the age of 12 he joined a Harlem theatre group and acted as Travis in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." One year later, in 1984 Tupac's