Shakur's parents, Afeni Shakur-born Alice Faye Williams in North Carolina-and his biological father, Billy Garland, had been active Black Panther Party members in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Shakur had an older stepbrother, Mopreme "Komani" Shakur, and a half-sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, two years his junior.
I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood."
Shakur's mother explained, "I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. He was named after Túpac Amaru II, the descendant of the last Incan ruler, Túpac Amaru, who was executed in Peru in 1781 after his failed revolt against Spanish rule. While born Lesane Parish Crooks, at age one he was renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur. Shakur was born on June 16, 1971, in the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City.