Chokwe Lumumba, the seasoned human rights activist, attorney and mayor of Jackson, Miss., passed away last night. He was 66 years old.

Here’s how the Associated Press remembered him:

As an attorney, Lumumba represented Tupac Shakur in cases including one in which the rapper was cleared of aggravated assault in the shootings of two off-duty police officers who were visiting Atlanta from another city when they were wounded. Shakur died in 1996.

In 2011, Lumumba persuaded then-Gov. Haley Barbour to release sisters Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison after they served 16 years for an armed robbery they said they didn’t commit. Barbour suspended their life sentences but didn’t pardon them.

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Lumumba was involved with the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s and ’80s. He said in 2013 that the group had advocated "an independent predominantly black government" in the southeastern United States. Lumumba was vice president of the group during part of his stint. The group also advocated reparations for slavery, and was watched by an FBI counterintelligence operation.

Lumumba’s name bubbled to the surface of national discussion in recent years after he was elected mayor of Jackson, Mississippi in 2013 and had big aspirations for the city. "We are the right people at the right time," he told Laura Flanders at GRITtv.