H. Rap Brown did not wait for permission to define himself. Long before federal agents called him a menace and politicians wrote laws in his name, he was a young man from Baton Rouge, La., who believed the country needed an honest confrontation with its own history. Long before he died at 82 on Sunday, Nov. 23, in a federal prison medical facility, he had already become Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a name he adopted after turning to Islam inside Attica.
“Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie,” he said during the height of the Black Power movement.
Brown, who would become one of the most vocal leaders of the movement, grew up fighting his way to and from school. He was sent to a Catholic orphanage for discipline and learned early that resistance required both strength and wit. He earned the nickname “Rap” for his unmatched wordplay on the streets of Baton Rouge. His political direction began with his older brother, Ed Brown, who introduced him to the Nonviolent Action Group at Howard University, where Brown met future movement leaders like Courtland Cox, Muriel Tillinghast and Stokely Carmichael. Carmichael later described him as a serious and strong brother whose calm presence inspired confidence.
By 1967 Brown became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at just 23 and immediately pushed the group to remove the word “nonviolent” from its name. His speeches captured the rage of Black communities across America. He reminded audiences that Black people had waited a century after emancipation for promises that never came. “Black folk built America, and if it don’t come around, we’re gonna burn America down,” he told crowds from college campuses to street corners.
Federal authorities responded with surveillance and suppression. The FBI’s COINTELPRO counterintelligence program documents placed him on a list of four men considered top targets to disrupt. Congress passed the federal Anti-Riot Law in 1968 and openly called it the “H. Rap Brown Law.” When asked for comment, Brown rejected the idea that a statute could contain widespread fury. “We don’t control anybody,” he said. “The Black people are rebelling. You don’t organize rebellions.”
His arrest record grew as law enforcement pursued him across states. In 1971 he was wounded in a police shootout in New York. He denied the charges but was convicted of robbery and assault. He served five years in Attica. That time behind bars reshaped him. The foreword to his autobiography “Die Nigger Die,” published in 1969, describes his spiritual shift as a change rooted in self-discipline and study, noting that he embraced Islam and emerged committed to building a moral path forward.
After his release, now known as Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, he settled in Atlanta’s West End. He founded a mosque, ran a small grocery and health food store, organized youth programs and worked to rid the neighborhood of drugs. He preached self-control and responsibility. He explained that the Muslim’s duty began with teaching oneself and then guiding one’s family, adding that successful struggle required remembrance of the Creator along with the doing of good deeds.
For many in Atlanta, he became a trusted spiritual leader. A local Islamic civic leader called him a pillar of the Muslim community. To law enforcement, he remained the militant figure they had pursued in the 1960s. FBI agents infiltrated his religious circle. The New York Times reported that some investigations began shortly after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
In 2000, two Fulton County, Georgia, deputies were shot while serving an arrest warrant for Al-Amin at his store. One died. The surviving deputy identified Imam Al-Amin. He denied involvement but was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Federal inmate Otis Jackson later confessed repeatedly and under oath to being the shooter. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit interviewed Jackson but never moved to vacate the conviction.
Al-Amin died at Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, his widow, Karima Al-Amin, said Monday, Nov. 24.
A cause of death was not immediately available, but Karima Al-Amin told The Associated Press that her husband had been suffering from cancer and had been transferred to the medical facility in 2014 from a federal prison in Colorado.
Following Al-Amin’s death, the Council on American-Islamic Relations its Georgia chapter renewed their call for justice. Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, issued a statement that read, “To God we belong and to Him we return. Imam Jamil Al-Amin was a hero of the Civil Rights Movement and a victim of injustice who passed away in a prison, jailed for a crime he did not commit.”
Awad said the justice system should reopen the case and clear his name. “We pray that God rewards him with paradise for his good deeds and the injustices he suffered. We call on the justice system to reopen Imam Jamil’s case and clear his name. He deserves to be fully exonerated. We pray that God grants his family solace and justice,” the statement read.
Al-Amin’s life spanned eras of open segregation, mass rebellion, state repression, spiritual transformation, and community leadership. He understood that freedom movements required structure and purpose. In one of his clearest reflections on struggle, he said liberation movements had to rest on political principles that gave meaning and substance to the lives of the masses. “And it is this struggle,” he said, “that advances the creation of a people’s ideology.”
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
