Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the Black Power activist previously known as H. Rap Brown, died Sunday in a North Carolina federal prison hospital. Al-Amin, one of the key figures of the militant Black Power movement that became prominent in the late 1960s, had maintained his innocence in the crime he was convicted of committing, and supporters had long advocated for his release.
Black Power leader and battles with authorities
Al-Amin was born Hubert Gerold Brown in 1942 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, gaining the nickname “Rap” as a child. After attending college, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee alongside his brother, Ed Brown, and future SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Toure), who became one of the main proponents of “black power.” Al-Amin, then known as H. Rap Brown, succeeded Carmichael as chairman of SNCC and pushed the organization to drop the “nonviolent” label, changing its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee. Rejecting the strictly peaceful tactics of the Civil Rights Movement, Al-Amin advocated armed resistance to racism and white supremacy, famously quipping that violence was “as American as cherry pie.”
The FBI targeted Al-Amin with surveillance and harassment, and Congress passed the “H. Rap Brown Federal Anti-Riot Act” in 1968, making it a crime “to incite, organize, promote or encourage” rioting. Al-Amin, who also served as a leader within the Black Panther Party, had several serious run-ins with law enforcement. He was charged with inciting a 1970 riot in Cambridge, Maryland, despite having already left the city after being shot by a sheriff deputy during a speaking engagement. While imprisoned for a different charge, Brown converted to Islam and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. He later moved to Atlanta, where he became an imam and opened a grocery store. In 1995, Al-Amin was charged with shooting a man outside of his Atlanta-area grocery store, but charges were dropped when the victim recanted his identification and claimed that authorities had pressured him to say that Al-Amin shot him.
Murder conviction despite evidence he did not commit fatal shooting
In 2000, two sheriff deputies were shot, one fatally, while attempting to serve Al-Amin with a warrant at his grocery store. The surviving officer identified Al-Amin as the shooter, leading to a manhunt for Al-Amin, who was captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the shooting. Al-Amin maintained his innocence, and significant evidence called his conviction into question. Al-Amin had not been shot, as the deputy had claimed, and the trail of blood supposedly left by the shooter did not belong to Al-Amin, who also did not completely fit the deputy’s physical description of the gunman. Additionally, another federal inmate has confessed to being the shooter. Despite these questions surrounding the case, the Supreme Court declined in 2020 to take up his case, letting his conviction stand.
As Al-Amin maintained his innocence, his case became a cause célèbre among Black activists and entertainers; for instance, Al-Amin was referenced in multiple songs by the group Public Enemy. The national headquarters and Georgia branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations released a statement on Al-Amin’s death, calling him a “civil rights icon” and stating that he “passed away in prison today after spending 23 years in jail for a crime he did not commit.” CAIR called for Al-Amin’s conviction to be overturned, citing the confession of a different federal inmate for the crime, and also “condemned the federal prison service for failing to properly treat Imam Al-Amin’s cancer.” With his death occurring while he was under incarceration, Al-Amin leaves behind a complicated legacy. His detractors label him an unrepentant cop killer. His supporters, however, see him as one of the key figures of the Black Power Movement and as a wrongfully convicted political prisoner whose case highlights the continuing problems present in the criminal justice system.