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A Retrospective on
H. Rap Brown's Die Nigger Die!
By Amin Sharif I don't really remember when I met H.
Rap Brown. I believe it was in the Baltimore SNCC office [432 E.
North Avenue]. It might have been down in D.C. or maybe in New
York. But I remember what Rap looked like--slender as a reed,
huge afro and defiant as hell. I remember that he called me
"blood" and spoke a few words to whomever I was with.
The next time I saw Rap was on TV. Then, along with Huey P.
Newton, Rap was considered one of the most dangerous black men
in America. That was when America's cities were burning and
Martin Luther King was dead.
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That's who Rap was. And, for some, that's who
Rap will always be. To see H. Rap Brown as an Imam of Islam,
which he has now become, is for some like seeing a fundamental
law of nature altered. It is as if being told that the speed of
light is no longer 186,282 miles per second or that the law of
gravity no longer applies to the earth. Knowledge of Rap's
change in character is as shattering as was the fact, for the
Vatican of the Dark Ages, that the sun, not the earth, is the
center of our solar system.
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But the H. Rap Brown we knew in the 1960s is
gone. Time changes everything. And I like many others, am going
to miss the old H. Rap Brown. I know, nevertheless, that
whatever changes Rap has made have been for the better.
Die Nigger Die!
(his autobiography) is
now a requiem, not only for H. Rap Brown, but also for entire
revolutionary movement of the 1960s. There are no longer angry
protests, nor the fiery black student movement that fought Jim
Crow election laws in the South. There are no white radicals
called Weathermen or Yippes (International Youth Movement).
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Revolutionary sentiment has all
but vanished from the earth. The new sentiment is to become Yuppies or
Buppies.
Those who once wore the red, black, and green pins of
revolutionary black nationalism now sport pins declaring their
allegiance to a decided non-revolutionary brand of Afrocentrism,
or, even worse, have become cronies of the Republican Party.
All the "true believers" of real
changes are dismissed or are buried in their graves. It is
almost as if the collective consciousness of the country has
forgotten why black people burned the cities. It has been lost
why King and Malcolm died. |
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We have only the books and the voices
of those few who are left alive from that turbulent time to make
us remember when a decidedly more racist country looked at every
living black face and screamed--"Die Nigger Die!"
H. Rap Brown was born on October 4, 1943. In
his autobiography he describes his birth. He describes the world
outside his mother's belly as the first moments of his suffering
at the hands of a white person:
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My first contact with
white america was marked by her violence, for when a
white doctor pulled me from between my mother's legs and
slapped my wet ass, I, as every negro in america,
reacted to this man-inflicted pain with a cry. A cry
that america has never allowed to cease; a cry that gets
louder and more intense with age; a cry that can only be
heard and understood by others who live behind the color
curtain. |
The "Color Curtain" like the
"Iron Curtain" was a feature of a bygone age called
the "Cold War." Lasting from the end of the second
World War to the recent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold war
sought to defeat the worldwide Communist movement and to make
every white soul free. The "Color Curtain," however,
was raised when the first African slave landed on the shores of
America. It divided the country forever into two classes--one
white and free; the other black and oppressed.
It was into this divided and unequal world
that H. Rap Brown was born. It is behind the "Color Curtain
that he began his war with racist America.
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Revolutionaries are not born full blown from
the head of Jove. H. Rap Brown did not become a
revolutionary over night. The revolutionary process begins
when one makes the observation that he is forced to live
against his will under an unjust order. Slowly, the
potential revolutionary comes to know where he stands in
the order of things.
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In
Die Nigger Die!
Rap describes this
step in the conversion process:
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If one examines the
structure of this country closely he will note that
there are three basic categories: they are white america,
negro america, and Black America . . . [and that] Color
is the first thing Black people become aware of. |
For Rap, white America is the oppressor
class. Negro America is the class filled with those of African
descent who are trapped behind the Color Curtain. And Black
America is the force of revolutionary change. Rap, also, makes
the early observation that there is no "real" reason
for America to be divided into two classes--one white and free
and the other dark and oppressed. The division is solely
arbitrary. It exists only to keep some in power and others
enslaved. Rap describes this absurdity of black existence:
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In and of itself,
color has no meaning. But the white world has given it
meaning--political, social, economic, historical,
physiological and philosophical. Once color has been
given meaning an order is thereby established. |
In a world where everything is defined by
color, there quickly is established an alliance between certain
forces within Negro America and White America to keep Black
America from obtaining the power to change the existing order.
This alliance is rooted in fear and enforced by terror. Negro
America believes that it cannot resist the power of White
America. But Black America is different. In
Die Nigger Die!
Rap clarifies this crucial philosophical perspective:
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The biggest difference
between being known as a Black man or a negro is that if
you're Black, then you do everything you can to fight
white folks. If you're negro, you do everything to
appease them |
But every moment for a potential
revolutionary is not filled with zeal. There are times when the
potential revolutionary is engaged in the under culture that
surrounds him. H. Rap Brown grew up in a Southern city like any
other brother on the streets. Gifted with a quick tongue and
scathing wit, Rap earned his nickname by being a master at
"playing the dozens and "signifying."
Now for those who don't know, the masters of
the dozens and signifying were the first street poets of Black
America. The dozens is a merciless game aimed at "totally
destroying" one's opponent with words, usually by insulting
his mother. Signifying is more humane in that one restricts
one's verbal attack to one's opponent rather than extend it to
his ancestry.
In the word game of the dozens, one scores
points by coming up with the funniest and most entertaining
character assassination of the opponent's mother. And, to make
matters more difficult, each player must sometimes use a rhyme
scheme to accomplish his task. For those who have seen the
dozens played by true masters, there is no doubt about the skill
and viciousness involved in the game. It is no small testimony
to his poetic and oratory skills that Rap won his nickname under
these circumstances.
If revolutionaries do not spring full blown
from the head of Jove, then what is the process that makes their
conversion experience a "true one"? Political
education, not mere observation, is the key. But not just any
political education will suffice the true revolutionary. Only
political education borne of authentic struggle will do. Rap's
political education was initiated by his brother Ed.
It was Ed who pulled Rap into the growing
"sit-in" movement and who got him involved with
Non-Violent Action group (NAG). It was Ed that got Rap reading
Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, and Richard Wright.
And it was Ed Brown who got Rap involved with the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the organization that
broke away from the civil rights movement to explore
"revolutionary politics" and "Black Power."
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From sit-ins, voting rights campaigns,
and marches, Rap learned that there was an authentic
spirit to be found among some of those who lived in the
Black Belt of the South. Here racism was uncompromising,
naked, and brutal. Water hoses, vicious dogs, and white
mobs often met black and white students who attempted to
desegregate lunch counters, motels and other public
accommodations.
Struggling with black Americans who
were ready, if necessary, to give up their lives for the
cause of freedom and the brutal response to that effort by
conservative and liberal whites alike began to have a
profound impact on Rap's thinking. He began to see
"integration" as "impractical." |
It was somewhere during this
period that Rap's revolutionary conversion took hold. And at
that moment, he no longer saw the current order as one that
could be reformed. racism was rooted too deeply into the fabric
of America to be laid to rest by the changing of a few laws.
Change, if it was to mean anything to those trapped behind the
Color Curtain, had to be all-pervasive and not dependent upon
the good graces of the oppressor class.
"We cannot allow
the government to be an outlaw, particularly when the crime is
against the people," Rap declares in
Die Nigger Die!
The evidence of Rap's revolutionary
conversion came on a fateful day in 1965. Several black leaders
were called to the White House to meet with President Johnson
concerning matters pertinent to the civil rights movement. In Die
Niger Die! Rap describes the scene:
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Johnson was arrogant
as hell and mad 'cause we were there. His whole attitude
was "What you niggers doin' here taking up my
time." |
It seems that all the "negro
leaders" were entirely too passive for Rap's liking. For
instance, when they brought up the fact of their human rights in
the South, none of them answered when Johnson cut them off
saying, "Speaking of deprivation of rights, my two
daughters couldn't sleep last night because of all that
picketing noise out in front of the White House."
It was only Rap who came up with a righteous answer to the
Johnson quip:
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So I told him, "I
don't think anyone here is interested in whether your
daughters could sleep or not. We are interested in the
lives of our people. Which side is the federal
government on?" |
From then on Rap was a marked man. He was
called up for the draft after his meeting with Johnson, caught
up in a shoot-out with police in Cambridge, Maryland, arrested
and re-arrested in Virginia. Then Rap went underground in March
of 1970.
For eighteen months Rap eluded the FBI and other law
enforcement agencies. There were rumors Rap was in Cuba, West
Africa, and Algeria. No evidence has ever surfaced proving or
disproving that Rap Brown was ever in any of these places. Then,
in 1973, Rap surfaced. he was wounded in an alleged shoot-out
with police in "an uptown Manhattan bar."
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Since Rap has never given any specific details concerning the
shoot-out, we can only speculate as to what his role was in the
affair. It is here that Rap Brown disappears and Imam Jamil
Abdullah Al-Amin emerges. After serving five years of a fifteen
year sentence, the revolutionary black nationalist
becomes a Muslim. Today, a very different H. Rap Brown (Jamil
Abdullah Al-Amin) sits in jail convicted of murder. To say
the least, the entire affair smells of an old 1960s
frame-up. We have Imam Al-Amin's sworn word that he did
not commit the crime. After invoking the Name of Allah,
the Imam said: "Let me declare before the families of
these men, before the state, and any who would dare to
know the truth, that I neither shot or killed
anyone."
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Still the State of Georgia holds Imam Al-Amin
in custody for the shooting and killing of a Fulton County
Sheriff's deputy. Whether or not Imam Al-Amin is able to prove
his innocence and one day walk among us again will be determined
by future events.
But there is one thing we know, H. Rap Brown
or Imam Al-Amin is till one of the most dangerous black men
alive because he seeks truth and fights injustice. He will
remain dangerous because he is struggling for the good of his
people in a racist country that screams out to every living
black face "Die Nigger Die!" *
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Die Nigger Die!
A Political
Autobiography
By H. Rap
Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin)
foreword by
Ekweueme Michael Thelwell
Introduction
by Don L. Lee
"A powerful
autobiographical and revolutionary statement . . . written with precision
and a poetic flow of language."
-- Gilbert Osofsky, Chicago Daily
News
"It
requires exceptional courage to read Die Nigger Die! but failure to read
this book is the kind of cowardice that could destroy
America."
--Claude Brown
"A bold
portrait of a bold man." -- Playboy *
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updated 3 October 2007 |
