[3][4][5] After university, he became a computer analyst for NASA working at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

[3][6] Acoli was radicalised by the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968 and that same year joined the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party as its finance minister.

[3][5] He was arrested on April 2, 1969, in the Panther 21 conspiracy case,[5] in which members were accused of planned coordinated bombing and long-range rifle attack on two police stations and an education office in New York City.

[9] On May 2, 1973, at about 12:45 a.m.,[10] Acoli, along with Zayd Malik Shakur (born James F. Costan) and Assata Shakur (born JoAnne Chesimard), were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick for driving with a broken tail light by State Trooper James Harper, backed up by Trooper Werner Foerster in a second patrol vehicle.

[10] It is at this point, with the questioning of Acoli, that the accounts of the confrontation begin to differ (see the witnesses section of the Assata Shakur article).

[10] At Acoli's trial, Harper testified that the gunfight started "seconds" after Foerster arrived at the scene.

[10] A jury convicted Acoli of first-degree murder in 1974 and sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole until after 25 years served.

On November 21, 2017, the appeals board denied parole, and Acoli was not scheduled to be eligible to apply again until 2032 when he would have been 94 years old.

[26] Sundiata Acoli is hailed in the song "Sunshine" by hip hop music artist Yasiin Bey alongside Mumia Abu Jamal and Assata Shakur.