Former Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown dies in prison hospital at 82

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: ABC News/AP

November 24, 2025, 1:43 PM


BUTNER, N.C. -- H. Rap Brown, one of the most vocal leaders of the Black Power movement, has died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence for the killing of a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. He was 82. Brown died Sunday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, his widow Karima Al-Amin said Monday.

A cause of death was not immediately available, but Karima Al-Amin told The Associated Press that her husband had been suffering from cancer and had been transferred to the medical facility in 2014 from a federal prison in Colorado. Like other more militant Black leaders and organizers during the racial upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Brown decried heavy-handed policing in Black communities. He once stated that violence was “as American as cherry pie.”

“Violence is a part of America’s culture,” Brown said during a 1967 news conference. “... America taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression, if necessary. We will be free by any means necessary.”

Brown was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a powerful civil rights group, and in 1968 was named minister of justice for the Black Panther Party. Three years later, he was arrested for a robbery that ended in a shootout with New York police.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/former-black-panther-leader-rap-brown-dies-prison-127832830

---

DAMN. This story was buried so deep that I needed a backhoe to retrieve it.

I lost track of what happened to him - probably because he was in prison (had been sentenced to life in 2002).

[niyad]

1. Thank you forr finding this for us.

[KT2000]

2. Speaking truth

[moniss]

3. A few months back I posted a few of

the things from Carmichael and Brown (Jamil Abdullah al-Amin) during that period. SNCC was started long before them and was more on the spectrum of non-violent resistance, voting rights, desegregating lunch counters, access to facilities etc. The other major civil rights organizations wanted SNCC to be under their umbrella but SNCC wanted to maintain independence. As things wore on in the '60's the activists who wanted to take a more forceful approach took hold in SNCC. Basically the people like Brown, Malcom X, Carmichael etc. were of the school of thought that people shouldn't have to "wait" for the rights that are supposed to be theirs and they felt that the Ghandi approach was taking too long.

Which way was right or wrong is not for me to say because I wasn't being oppressed and beaten. I do know that the white reactionary bigots held up people like Brown as an excuse for increasingly violent actions by police. I believe the murder of Fred Hampton is an example of that heavy reaction. They painted Hampton as though he was Castro and the devil rolled in to one and that the Chicago Black Panthers were going to be rampaging through the streets.

I don't condone any bad things the activists of that time did later on but during that time they spoke truth to power and for that I will always remember them. RIP Jamil Abdullah al-Amin.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. "I believe the murder of Fred Hampton is an example of that heavy reaction."

There was an interesting film about Hampton that I had watched a few years ago (Netflix had aired it when it was out of the theaters).

Judas and the Black Messiah

I know that historically, a lot of focus had been on the California (Oakland) Black Panthers but this really focused on what was happening in Chicago and Fred Hampton.

[moniss]

5. Thanks for this. nt

[KT2000]

6. Fred Hampton was the next leader

who had the charisma, intelligence, and support that they had to stop him.

How different things would be now if the Black Panthers had been allowed to be successful. They had to stop the best and the brightest and they did.