Death of H. Rap Brown Reopens Debate Over His Legacy, Life Sentence and Long-Contested Trial
H. Rap Brown, former chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later minister of justice for the Black Panther Party, died Sunday at 82 while serving a life sentence in a federal prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina.
His widow, Karima Al-Amin, confirmed his death Monday and said he had been suffering from cancer. He had been moved to the medical facility in 2014 after previously being held in Colorado. A cause of death was not immediately available.
Brown, known for his fiery rhetoric during the upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was among the era’s most vocal critics of policing in Black communities. He once famously said that violence was “as American as cherry pie,” arguing in a 1967 news conference that the country had taught Black people violence and that it might be used “to rid ourselves of oppression, if necessary.”
He became chair of SNCC and later, in 1968, was appointed minister of justice of the Black Panther Party. His activism was followed by a 1971 arrest in connection with a robbery in New York that ended in a shootout with police. He was convicted and served five years in prison.
During that sentence, he converted to Islam, joined the Dar-ul Islam movement, and took the name Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. After his release, he moved to Atlanta in 1976, opened a grocery and health food store, and became an Imam for the local Muslim community. Speaking in 1998 in Kansas City, he said that while he didn’t regret his earlier actions, Islam had clarified his purpose and deepened his commitment to community welfare.
On March 16, 2000, Fulton County deputies Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English went to Al-Amin’s Atlanta home to serve a warrant tied to charges of driving a stolen vehicle and impersonating a police officer.
English testified that Al-Amin opened fire with a high-powered rifle as they attempted to arrest him, then used a handgun to shoot Kinchen three times in the groin as he lay wounded. Kinchen died from his injuries. Prosecutors said Al-Amin fled and was arrested days later in Alabama.
At trial, the state portrayed him as a calculated killer, while his defense argued that he was a respected community leader targeted because of his militant past. Al-Amin insisted he was innocent. He was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.
For years, his legal team and supporters questioned the fairness of the trial. Al-Amin challenged his conviction in federal court in 2019, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case in 2020.
His family said Monday that newly surfaced evidence, including FBI surveillance files, inconsistent eyewitness testimony, and third-party confessions, reinforced their concerns that he did not receive the constitutional protections guaranteed at trial.
