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H. Rap Brown was a civil rights activist and former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He became the Black Panther Party’s Attorney General and advocated for violent methods to achieve better treatment for African Americans. He also criticized undersold African Americans and published a book calling for revolution. Brown faced charges of inciting a riot and illegally transporting guns between states, disappeared before a trial, and was later convicted and sentenced. After release, he became a Muslim leader but was arrested in 2000 for shooting and killing a deputy sheriff, receiving a life sentence.
Born October 4, 1943, H. Rap Brown is best known as a former African American civil rights worker and rights activist. He served on the board of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1967, serving as chairman. He is perhaps most famous for his time as the Black Panther Party’s Attorney General. However, that’s not his only claim to fame. He is also known for calling American violence like apple pie and threatening to burn America down if it failed to recognize both the rights and plight of black Americans during the 1960s.
H. Rap Brown has not always believed in the violent ways of working for the rights of black Americans. Indeed, he was actually described as a pacifist in the run-up to his joining the Black Panthers. He was as a student at Southern University who was heavily involved with SNCC, a group known for its pacifist leanings. Eventually, however, SNCC’s reputation changed. As Brown gradually began to express his belief in more violent methods of getting better treatment for African Americans, the group’s reputation also began to move away from strict pacifism.
By 1968, H. Rap Brown seemed to have left pacifism completely behind. It was in that year that he joined the Black Panther Party, founded by Eldridge Cleaver. Shortly after joining, Brown rose from a mere member to Minister of Justice. His promotion came at a Black Panther rally in Los Angeles, at which Brown is said to have issued violent calls to action, ordering the oppressed to kill police and set fire to cities across the United States.
Interestingly, it wasn’t just Caucasian America that angered H. Rap Brown. He also took issue with African Americans whom he considered undersold. He apparently felt so strongly about the issue that he was forced to publish a book in 1969 letting readers know how he felt about black burnouts. While the book has been described as autobiographical, it has also been seen as a call to arms intended to push the black community towards revolution.
In the years following the publication of his book, things seemed to go downhill for H. Rap Brown. Shortly after he published his book, he faced charges of inciting a riot in Maryland. Less than a year later, he was convicted of illegally transporting guns between states. In 1970, he was due to go to trial in Maryland on another charge, but he mysteriously disappeared and did not appear for trial. He was finally arrested in 1972 when he was shot in a New York City saloon, after which he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced.
H. Rap Brown was released from prison in 1976. On probation, he set up business in Atlanta, Georgia. He also worked as a lecturer and writer in the late 1970s. After converting to Islam in prison and taking the name, Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, Brown also became a Muslim leader.
Though H. Rap Brown had moved on, his troubles weren’t over. In 2000, he was arrested for shooting and killing a deputy sheriff and wounding another. He was found guilty of the charges in 2002, receiving a life sentence. Surprisingly, both of the police officers Brown was convicted of shooting were African-American.
