H. Rap Brown
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H. Rap Brown (born October 4, 1943) came to prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights worker, black activist, and Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party. He is perhaps most famous for his proclamation during that period that "violence is as American as cherry pie".
Brown was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Hubert Gerold Brown, and now goes by the name Jamil Abdullah al-Amin.
His activism in the civil rights movement included involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), of which he was named chairman in 1967. That same year, he was arrested in Cambridge, Maryland, and charged with "inciting to riot" as a result of a fiery speech he gave there. He left SNCC and joined the Black Panthers in 1968.
He appeared on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List after avoiding trial on charges of inciting riot and carrying a gun across state lines. He was arrested in a shoot-out in 1971 in New York.
He spent five years (1971-1976) in the Attica Prison after a robbery conviction. In prison, Brown converted to Islam and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. After his release, he opened a grocery store in Atlanta, Georgia and became a Muslim spiritual leader, preaching against drugs and gambling.
In 2002, he was found guilty of killing a Fulton County, Georgia sheriff's deputy and wounding another in a gunbattle at his store. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
External link
- Bio and Sound Clip (http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_397.html)
- Video and Audio of Imam Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) (http://panafrican.tv/index.php?cPath=21_41)
- Jamil Al-Amin; another view (http://www.jamiat.org.za/whatsnew/imamjamil.html)