New Documentary Aims to Help Free Black Freedom Fighter
by Naba’a Muhammad, Contributing Columnist
As a child, I visited the Black Panther Party headquarters in Baltimore, learned Black history, and saw Angela Davis, with her full-blown Afro, as the most beautiful woman ever. Images of Panther leaders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale were seared into my psyche.
I read “Revolutionary Suicide,” Newton’s 1973 autobiography, as an early teen, and later, I read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” who impacted the Panthers.
They did phenomenal work: Political education classes to awaken us, fighting police brutality, running lunch and breakfast programs, free clinics, early sickle cell anemia testing, teaching Black children about themselves, race and oppression in America, and more.
Many still infuse the Panther spirit into boycotts, advocacy, political education, organizing Black youth, health services, and monitoring cops.
Panthers emboldened us with their courage, love, and militant style, complete with black leather jackets, sunglasses, and berets. But we must never forget their intense, continued suffering and slaughter.
According to the Jericho Movement, Black political prisoners languish in federal and state institutions, including Panthers and revolutionaries jailed 55 years ago.
Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as Black Panther and revolutionary H. Rap Brown, is among them. We must do more than quote him from 1967, “Violence is a part of American culture. It is as American as cherry pie.”
We must fight to make sure he doesn’t die in prison. That means giving money and exposure to a documentary, “What Happened To H. Rap Brown?” a project led by his family to bring attention to his case, help exonerate him, and get him released. The “true crime”-style film includes government misconduct and surveillance, plots, and a compelling story. Visit freeimamjamil.com for details and to help.
“As far as my father’s health goes, it is deteriorating relatively rapidly. We’re dealing with a situation now where we’re in real time watching the system murder my father,” said Kairi Al-Amin, who is the imam’s son and attorney. He talked about the life and death struggle last December during an online forum. A major effort got the imam into a federal prison in Butner, N.C., with a hospital, but he still suffers—and he should already be out of prison. This documentary can help. Money is needed to finish the project by May and shop it to a streaming service.
In the 1960s and 1970s, H. Rap Brown chaired the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and organized for Black voting rights and against segregation.
As a Panther, he demanded justice for Black and oppressed people and condemned U.S. evils at home and abroad.
After years of being hunted by the feds, local officials, and prosecutors, he served five years in a New York prison, where he converted to Islam in the 1970s, taking the name Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.
Upon release, he moved to Atlanta, setting up a mosque in the city’s West End, organizing against Violence, prostitution, and crime, and supporting the urban peace movement.
“The work of Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown) during the late 1960s, 1980s and ‘90s, with community-based and gang organization leaders and the development of an urban peace treaty and policy initiative resulted in a 10 percent drop in crime nationally and a 25 percent reduction in homicides among Black and Brown youth in the 1990s,” observed the Jamil Al-Amin Action Network. “Imam Al-Amin’s work in this area also gave him the opportunity to assist in initiating the national hip hop peace treaty and rappers pledge signed in Chicago which created peace between east coast and west coast rappers.”
In Atlanta, he was accused of fatally shooting one and injuring a deputy while facing minor charges. He was convicted in 2000 of murder despite another man confessing to the crime. The man matches a description the surviving officer gave and has a bullet wound in his shoulder that backs the surviving officer’s account, supporters say.
The 81-year-old suffers from cancer, problems with his eyesight, blood clots in his legs, and a massive swelling in his face. The growth makes it hard to eat solid food, unable to see out of one eye, and hard to hear.
We must work to free and keep one of our soldiers from dying of medical neglect inflicted by the same system that has always sought to destroy him—and us.
Naba’a Muhammad, award-winning Final Call Newspaper editor, is the host of “Straight Words With Naba’a Richard Muhammad, Bj Murphy, and James G. Muhammad,” which airs live Tuesdays, 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. Central Time, on WVON AM 1690 Black Talk Radio Chicago and is livestreamed at the iHeart Radio app and WVON.com. Get more at straightwords.com.
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