H. RAP BROWN (JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN)
AMERICAN ACTIVIST, WRITER (1943-)
Former 60s radical H. Rap Brown now Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin was convicted of 13 counts related to a shooting in which Al-Amin killed an Atlanta police officer and wounded his partner. Al-Amin appeared first on the public stage as the fiery leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later Black Panther member who famously asserted that violence was "as American as cherry pie" and once claimed he might shoot Lyndon Johnson's wife. Brown was imprisoned several times in the late 1960s. In 1967 he was charged with inciting a riot and convicted of armed robbery in 1973. By the time of his release in 1976, Brown had converted to Islam and taken on the Al-Amin name. Until his latest legal problems, Al-Amin ran a grocery store and mosque on the west side of Atlanta.
Revised: July 18, 2013.
