November 24, 2025
Former civil rights activist Jamil Al-Amin has died in prison at 82 while serving a life sentence.
Famed Black Power activist Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, has died in prison at 82 while serving a life sentence.
Kristie Breshears, communications director for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, confirmed his death at the Federal Medical Center, Butner, in North Carolina, on Nov. 23, The New York Times reported. She did not provide a cause, but it follows a February report that Al-Amin had multiple myeloma and was in declining health.
Al-Amin’s son announced his father’s death in a since-removed Facebook post through the Davis Bozeman law firm.
“On behalf of our entire family, I thank every single person who prayed, stood, marched, researched, wrote, advocated, and fought to clear my father’s name,” the statement read. “Your love sustained us. Your belief in his innocence strengthened us. We ask for your continued prayers as we mourn a father, a husband, a brother, a leader, and a servant of the people.”
Under the name H. Rap Brown, Al-Amin emerged as a leading voice in the Black militant wing of the 1960s civil rights movement. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and an admirer of the Cuban revolution, he pushed to remove “nonviolent” from the organization’s name, leading to its rebranding as the Student National Coordinating Committee.
Wearing his signature black beret and sunglasses, he championed armed resistance and separatism from white oppression, famously declaring, “Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie.”
As riots swept more than 100 American cities in the summer of 1967, the 6-foot-5 Al-Amin — standing nearly 7 feet with his afro — emerged as a cultural force, delivering impassioned speeches on street corners and college campuses that gave voice to the frustrations within the Black community after over a century of unfulfilled promises since the end of slavery.
“Black folk built America, and if it don’t come around, we’re gonna burn America down,” he said during countless speeches.
By the 1970s, Al-Amin had converted to Islam, changed his name, and settled into a quieter life as a Muslim cleric and shopkeeper until his 2000 arrest in the killing of a sheriff’s deputy. In 2002, he was convicted of murdering Fulton County Deputy Ricky Kinchen.
Kinchen and Deputy Aldranon English were attempting to serve an arrest warrant at Al-Amin’s home in Atlanta’s West End when gunfire erupted. The Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Imam Jamil Action Network, the Islamic Circle of North America, and other advocates later called on the Fulton County District Attorney to reopen the case, saying another individual had confessed to the shooting.
At the time of his death, Al-Amin was serving a life sentence without parole.
