H. Rap Brown, known after his conversion to Islam in prison in the mid-1970s as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on October 4, 1943. As a student at Southern University, Brown joined the civil rights organization known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). While SNCC was initially known as a pacifistic organization, its reputation became increasingly tarnished as Brown himself began to lean toward a more violent approach to the civil rights struggle. In 1966, Brown became the group's Alabama project director and followed Stokely Carmichael into the role of national director in May 1967 when Carmichael left the organization.

Brown abandoned any notions of nonviolence by 1968 when he joined the Black Panther Party, the radical group founded by activist Eldridge Cleaver. Brown was quickly made minister of justice at a Black Panther party rally in the Los Angeles Sports Arena where his early calls to...