susie day / SPECTRE
In the late 1960s, H. Rap Brown’s incendiary speeches lit up the US civil rights movement—which, though instrumental in passing such groundbreaking legislation as the Voting and Civil Rights Acts, had only begun to confront the racism embedded in the US government, as well as in US society. Whether Americans thrilled or shuddered to his words, Rap Brown became a mainstream news headliner, remembered for declarations like, “If America don’t come around, we’re gonna burn it down” and “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”
These words, especially coming from H. Rap Brown, Chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—a formidable Black, antiwar organization at the time—caught the eye of law enforcement agencies, notably J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, whose Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was already busy “neutralizing” liberation movements like the Black Panther Party. In 1971, COINTELPRO succeeded in sending Rap to prison for five years on a phony robbery charge. Then, in prison, Rap converted to Islam. After that, he seems to have largely fallen out of media headlines and disappeared from the world…