H. Rap Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

Contributing Writer

WASHINGTON — H. Rap Brown did not wait for permission to define himself. Long before federal agents called him a menace and politicians wrote laws in his name, he was a young man from Baton Rouge who believed the country needed an honest confrontation with its own history.

Long before he died Nov. 24 at 82 in a federal medical facility in North Carolina, he had already become Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a name he adopted after turning to Islam inside Attica.

“Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie,” he said during the height of the Black Power movement.

Brown grew up fighting his way to and from school. He was sent to a Catholic orphanage for discipline and learned early that

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