Jamil Abdullah al-Amin
Biography
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown) was chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a Black Panther leader. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover himself named H. Rap Brown – along with Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford – as targets of COINTELPRO.
al-Amin spoke at a Civil Rights Movement rally in Cambridge, Maryland on July 24, 1967 (during the "Long Hot Summer of 1967"). Police reported that gunfire broke out later, and both Brown and a police officer were wounded. A fire started that night expanded across city blocks and al-Amin was charged with inciting a riot, due to his speech. However, a secret 1967 FBI memo had called for "neutralizing" Brown; and historian Dr. Peter Levy found that there was no riot, al-Amin was shot by a police officer without provocation, and the fire was unrelated, having spread so drastically because the city's fire department refused to respond to the predominantly Black neighborhood. After the attempt on his life, al-Amin disappeared for 18 months.
In a October 1971 standoff with police, he was shot and seized, and spent five years in Attica prison. From 1992 to 1997, the FBI closely surveilled al-Amin, generating pages of 44,000 documents. In 2000, two sheriffs came to al-Amin’s store with a warrant for failure to appear in court for a case later thrown out. Both were shot and one killed. al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole, even though Otis Jackson confessed to the shootings. al-Amin has filed for multiple appeals, only for them to be denied despite his old age, blindness and cancer diagnosis.
Hubert Gerold Brown, known as H. Rap Brown in the late 1960s and as Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin after his 1971 conversion to Islam, was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1967-68), the Minister of Justice of the Black Panther Party in 1968, the author of Die Nigger Die! (1969), and one of the most prominent Black Power figures of the late 1960s. After his prison conversion to Sunni Islam he became the imam of the Atlanta Community Mosque and a leading figure in the Imam Jamil Action Network and Dar ul-Islam mosque movement. The Atlanta community mosque he led at the West End drew thousands and was widely credited with reducing drug-related crime in the neighborhood.
On March 16, 2000, Fulton County Sheriffs Deputies Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English approached him outside his West End store to execute a warrant. Gunfire was exchanged; Kinchen was killed and English was wounded. He fled and was apprehended four days later in White Hall, Alabama. On March 9, 2002 he was convicted by a Fulton County jury and on March 14, 2002 sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
His defense and supporters consistently maintained that the conviction relied on disputed eyewitness identifications and that another man — federal inmate Otis Jackson — had repeatedly confessed under oath to having committed the killings. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Imam Jamil Action Network, and other Muslim civil rights organizations called for the case to be reopened. He died at FMC Butner in North Carolina on November 23, 2025, age 82, while still serving the life sentence.
Former SNCC chairman imprisoned at Green Haven on a 1971 robbery and assault conviction; The Black Panther Vol. 15 (1976) reports he won parole and that a federal appeals court overturned his federal gun conviction after the trial judge was overheard making a racist remark.
The Militant, January 29, 1971 published an interview with assistant prosecutor Richard J. Kinlein concerning H. Rap Brown's 1967 Cambridge arson indictment. Kinlein said chief prosecutor William B. Yates told him at a luncheon on or about May 7, 1970 that the arson charge had been invented to enable a federal unlawful-flight warrant and FBI involvement, since the other two alleged offenses were misdemeanors. The report said SNCC described Brown as alive and underground. This is attributed prosecutorial testimony as reported by the newspaper, not a new arrest date or adjudicated dismissal. Source: https://www.themilitant.com/1971/3503/MIL3503.pdf#page=2
A September 24, 1976 notice, printing H. Rap Brown, reports his request for review of parole eligibility in the Manhattan nightclub robbery prosecution. Attorney Lennox Hinds cited his civil-rights contributions. The report describes a five-to-fifteen-year term and says the minimum had already been served, but supplies no actual parole discharge; the pending review is not a release. Source: https://themilitant.com/1976/4036/MIL4036.pdf#page=2
The newspaper reports that H. Rap Brown was being held in New York under $200,000 bail. Its related trial report names Sam Petty, Arthur Young and Levi Valentine in the armed-robbery and attempted-murder prosecution. This is an observation during the existing New York custody episode, not proof of a new arrest. Liberated Guardian, vol.III no.8, February 1973 (masthead copyright1972 does not match January1973 events), original PDF page 10. Source: https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Attica/510.liberated.guardian.February1973.pdf#page=10
The September 1972 Liberated Guardian reports that New York officials had transported H. Rap Brown by small plane to New Orleans earlier that summer for resentencing in his federal gun case, despite an infected groin wound and a court order. It says the Fifth Circuit had reversed the previous five-year sentence as excessive, that another five-year sentence was imposed and that the new sentence was being appealed. These are reported sentencing and transport developments, not proof of five years actually served. The pending New York proceedings remained separate. Source: https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Attica/510.liberated.guardian.September1972.pdf#page=13
The CCR annual-report extract, printed pages 4–5 reports that H. Rap Brown was granted parole in October 1976 following a New York robbery conviction and a five-to-fifteen-year sentence. This documents an earlier episode distinct from the later Georgia prosecution. The report does not supply an exact physical release day or establish the prison admission date; neither has been invented from the parole month.
The October 2, 1976 Black Panther reported that H. Rap Brown was then imprisoned at Green Haven after a New York robbery-and-assault conviction carrying five to fifteen years. It described the start of service there as April 1973 and reported a parole grant, while treating October 21 as only a possible future release. That state prosecution was separate from the federal gun conviction then overturned on appeal. The report does not establish his initial jail booking or actual discharge date.
The Black Panther’s October 30, 1976 issue reported that H. Rap Brown had been paroled from Green Haven the previous week after the federal gun charges were dropped in New Orleans. The Green Haven robbery-and-assault imprisonment is distinct from that federal gun prosecution and his later Georgia prosecution.
The Black Panther, October 30, 1976, volume XV no.29, PDF page 5.
A February 21, 1968 prison letter quoted in John Jones’s RAM history places H. Rap Brown in Parrish Prison, New Orleans. Inner City Voice (March 1968) independently describes him in a New Orleans prison and reports a hunger strike lasting two weeks. This is a distinct 1968 custody episode, separate from the 1970s New York and 2000 Georgia cases. The letter date and the reported hunger strike establish actual confinement but do not establish his admission or release dates.
Printed as H. Rap Brown, he is reported convicted on March 29, 1973 of armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon after an eleven-week trial, with the jury deadlocked on attempted murder. Sentencing was scheduled for May 3 and is not reported accomplished. The eleven weeks measures trial proceedings, not necessarily complete custody. The story also recalls the separate 1967 Cambridge and interstate-rifle prosecutions without merging their episodes.
Washington Area Spark, Vol. 2 No. 9, April 13–May 11, 1973, PDF page 11.
The republished account describes a July 30, 2007 state-to-ADX transfer, approximately seven years in solitary, July 2014 medical transfer to Butner, later Canaan placement in general population, and return to federal Tucson by early 2016. These are transfers and conditions within continuing custody, not releases. Pages 39–40 also report a May 31, 1999 traffic-stop arrest, disputed trial evidence, alleged Otis Jackson confessions and a dismissed 2002 federal shooting allegation; those defense claims are attributed and not silently made judicial findings. The report identifies Stephanie B. Manis as the state trial judge; its discussion of denied interviews concerns the 2018 situation.
The Dragons Fire, National Jericho Movement Newsletter, vol. 6, July–August 2018, PDF page 38.
The 2019 birthday entry places him at USP Tucson, #99974-555, serving life without parole. An August article reports recovery from a mild stroke and unsuccessful federal relief; the October conference and effort to return him to Georgia do not establish an actual transfer or release.
The documentary appeal is signed by son Kairi al-Amin and describes a fundraising and legal-support campaign. The requested new trial and release are campaign goals, not completed dispositions or new custody events.
The Dragons Fire, March 15–April 15, 2024, vol. 72, PDF page 15.
In testimony reprinted in the Congressional Record on July 8, 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported that H. Rap Brown had received a five-year sentence and $2,000 fine under the Federal Firearms Act. Hoover said Brown was free on bond pending appeals or trials. This earlier federal-gun proceeding is separate from the later New York robbery case; the imposed term does not establish time actually served.
Congressional Record, July 8, 1969, printed page 18781 (PDF page 67).
