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Burn, Baby, Burn: The Life and Legacy of H Rap Brown
On a March night in 2000, two deputy sheriffs serving a warrant were shot in Atlanta, Georgia. One was severely wounded while the other would die a day later. The shooting kicked off a large manhunt in search of the alleged cop killer. Four days later in Alabama, authorities found their man—Jamil Al-Amin. He was a Muslim leader with the title of Imam in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta.
He was also the man formerly known as H. Rap Brown. He was a charismatic Black radical in the late '60s. He was a household name—poised to be the next Malcolm X, a vanguard in the Black freedom movement. The work he did made him a target—followed and harassed by the FBI—even being directly named by J. Edgar Hoover as a specific enemy in the illegal government surveillance program—COINTELPRO.
Now Imam Jamil is currently serving a life sentence in prison for the murder and shooting that night in Atlanta. To the federal government and the state of Georgia, he’s a man paying the price for his violent crime. To his family and supporters, his current conviction and life sentence is just the culmination of a decades-long federal campaign to crush him and they continue to fight for his freedom.
Join hosts Obaid Siddiqui and Noor Wazwaz as they explore the complicated story of the iconic and forgotten American leader H. Rap Brown.
The program is part of Audible's Podcast Development Program.
He was also the man formerly known as H. Rap Brown. He was a charismatic Black radical in the late '60s. He was a household name—poised to be the next Malcolm X, a vanguard in the Black freedom movement. The work he did made him a target—followed and harassed by the FBI—even being directly named by J. Edgar Hoover as a specific enemy in the illegal government surveillance program—COINTELPRO.
Now Imam Jamil is currently serving a life sentence in prison for the murder and shooting that night in Atlanta. To the federal government and the state of Georgia, he’s a man paying the price for his violent crime. To his family and supporters, his current conviction and life sentence is just the culmination of a decades-long federal campaign to crush him and they continue to fight for his freedom.
Join hosts Obaid Siddiqui and Noor Wazwaz as they explore the complicated story of the iconic and forgotten American leader H. Rap Brown.
The program is part of Audible's Podcast Development Program.
- GenresHistory
Audible Audio
Published January 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 16, 2026
I've never heard about him! One thing for sure, if you are doing something positive for the Black Community they will come after you!! FRED HAMPTON and the BLACK PANTHER PARTY, who only helped our community!
March 4, 2025
Yet another bit of history all Americans ought to know but undoubtedly won’t. A sad commentary on a tiny part of the innumerable injustices inflicted on African Americans.
April 23, 2025
Before Black Lives Matter there was the sixties' Black is Beautiful and Black Power. How did the 1964 Civil Rights Act come about? Resistance to oppression. Acts of civil disobedience. Burn, Baby, Burn was a controversial expression during the sixties, connected to the riots that erupted in rage in various US cities, and a call for violence was part of the mix of perspectives on how to create a more just society for people of color, for women, for the poor.
But the Black Power movement, which is the focus of Burn, Bay, Burn: The Legacy of H. Rap Brown (2025), which I listened to on Audible, makes it clear that violence as a means to respond to injustice was considered as an option among a variety of debated perspectives, including Martin Luther King’s Gandhi-inspired non-violent resistance to Malcolm X’s By Any Means Necessary. There were a range of groups including but by no means limited to The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers, the NAACP. The Black Liberation Army, which came out of the Revolutionary Action Movement. Besides Dr. King and Malcolm X other names were in the news: Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, Fred Hampton, Ralph Abernathy, Bobby Searle (from the Chicago Seven) and H. Rap Brown, the focus of this series of podcast stories, history, biography.
It’s all a little confusing: There were a swirl of ideas in the moment, a time in which demands from all sectors indicated: The Time to Act, to Change the World is now. Guerrilla warfare in the US? No? Well, there was that little Revolutionary war (about taxes and tyranny) that kick-started this country. You might recall John Brown in an uprising against slavery. The Monkeywrench Gang of Edward Abbey against Big Oil? Oh, we have a long list. Did some folks think Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma was some kind of revolutionary? The January 6 Insurrection? Were the killings of King, JFK and RFK political killings? I just mention all this because the call to violence in the service of change has always been with us.
"Violence is as American as cherry pie" and "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." "Negroes should organize themselves, and carry on guerilla warfare in all the cities." They should, "make the Viet Cong look like Sunday school teachers." H. Rap Brown said these things, in the sixties, and he and others like him were seen--not surprisingly--as domestic terrorists. The FBI’s clandestine Cointelpro program was intended to disrupt civil rights leaders like Brown and find reasons to take them out of commission, either through jail, or. . . other (some people think) means.
Brown always thought his mouth was going to get him killed, as he made clear in one of his autobiographies: Die Nigger Die!
Brown was convicted of robbery and served five years (1971–76) in Attica, where he converted to Islam. He formally changed his name from Hubert Gerold Brown to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. The nickname Rap? He liked to talk, or rap, and was particularly good at public speaking. He could get a crowd wound up to act.
In 2000, while he owned a grocery store, he was convicted of murdering two sheriff’s deputies, and is still (in his eighties) serving a life sentence. This report on his life makes it clear that the authors do not believe he was rightfully convicted (and many people agree with this, that he was by then a man of peace, no longer a proponent of violence--he preached as an Imam against drugs and gambling in his community) but I doubt any time soon he will be released. Not on 47's list, I'm guessing.
Regardless of your opinion about the Black Panthers or the Black Power movement generally, or about the uses of violence to attain one’s desired ends, you might find this an nevertheless an interesting trip back to the sometimes violent sixties. I am a lifelong pacifist, but am reading a bit into the history of and arguments for American political violence, but not because I am planning anything!).
But the Black Power movement, which is the focus of Burn, Bay, Burn: The Legacy of H. Rap Brown (2025), which I listened to on Audible, makes it clear that violence as a means to respond to injustice was considered as an option among a variety of debated perspectives, including Martin Luther King’s Gandhi-inspired non-violent resistance to Malcolm X’s By Any Means Necessary. There were a range of groups including but by no means limited to The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers, the NAACP. The Black Liberation Army, which came out of the Revolutionary Action Movement. Besides Dr. King and Malcolm X other names were in the news: Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, Fred Hampton, Ralph Abernathy, Bobby Searle (from the Chicago Seven) and H. Rap Brown, the focus of this series of podcast stories, history, biography.
It’s all a little confusing: There were a swirl of ideas in the moment, a time in which demands from all sectors indicated: The Time to Act, to Change the World is now. Guerrilla warfare in the US? No? Well, there was that little Revolutionary war (about taxes and tyranny) that kick-started this country. You might recall John Brown in an uprising against slavery. The Monkeywrench Gang of Edward Abbey against Big Oil? Oh, we have a long list. Did some folks think Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma was some kind of revolutionary? The January 6 Insurrection? Were the killings of King, JFK and RFK political killings? I just mention all this because the call to violence in the service of change has always been with us.
"Violence is as American as cherry pie" and "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." "Negroes should organize themselves, and carry on guerilla warfare in all the cities." They should, "make the Viet Cong look like Sunday school teachers." H. Rap Brown said these things, in the sixties, and he and others like him were seen--not surprisingly--as domestic terrorists. The FBI’s clandestine Cointelpro program was intended to disrupt civil rights leaders like Brown and find reasons to take them out of commission, either through jail, or. . . other (some people think) means.
Brown always thought his mouth was going to get him killed, as he made clear in one of his autobiographies: Die Nigger Die!
Brown was convicted of robbery and served five years (1971–76) in Attica, where he converted to Islam. He formally changed his name from Hubert Gerold Brown to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. The nickname Rap? He liked to talk, or rap, and was particularly good at public speaking. He could get a crowd wound up to act.
In 2000, while he owned a grocery store, he was convicted of murdering two sheriff’s deputies, and is still (in his eighties) serving a life sentence. This report on his life makes it clear that the authors do not believe he was rightfully convicted (and many people agree with this, that he was by then a man of peace, no longer a proponent of violence--he preached as an Imam against drugs and gambling in his community) but I doubt any time soon he will be released. Not on 47's list, I'm guessing.
Regardless of your opinion about the Black Panthers or the Black Power movement generally, or about the uses of violence to attain one’s desired ends, you might find this an nevertheless an interesting trip back to the sometimes violent sixties. I am a lifelong pacifist, but am reading a bit into the history of and arguments for American political violence, but not because I am planning anything!).
February 16, 2025
Outstanding!!! I love reading/listening about unknown history and this was definitely that! Such a sad story too!
March 10, 2025
This country is soooo crooked. But why would I expect less. Unfortunately, it's still probably the best country to live in. 🥺
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews