59
after a protest outside of Al-Amin’s prison
in Arizona—he finally received his sur-
gery, gaining his sight back.
Prisoner No. 99974-555 quietly exists,
still alive, increasingly sick but refusing
to die, eager to speak but largely unheard
from.
I’ve been in touch with his wife and
son for months, and they say he wants
to speak. In September, the jail finally
replied to my repeated requests to talk
to Al-Amin for this story and told me to
apply for an interview. I emailed once,
twice and finally six times, but still
nothing. If the goal of the system was
to silence Al-Amin, it may have finally
worked.
Karima says the family is still asking
for release but would also be fine with a
new trial. “We’re in a time fight,” she says.“Whether he dies or not right now has a
lot to do with medical neglect. So we want
to get him out. They’ve said he will die in
prison and be forgotten. We’re saying he’s
not going to be forgotten.”Al-Amin, who turned 78 in October,
sits in prison, serving a life sentence with-
out the possibility of parole. Few figures
in American history have simultaneously
received such local, national and inter-
national praise and respect, fear and vil-
lainization. The reality is that Al-Amin
hasn’t been discussed on a scale that fits
the magnitude of the man.
Following a year of uprisings, an at-
tack on the Capitol, and an election cycle
that further illuminated a flawed govern-
ment and a divided nation, in a society
that freely questions the abolishment of
the police, and amid a culture war that
only intensifies—the revolutionary life,
words and trials of Jamil Al-Amin must
be considered, in all of their discomfort.△
Brown is greeted by well-wishers after
being released from jail in Alexandria,
Va., on $10,000 bail, in 1967Our world is juggling a collection of
breaking points, but it’s not the first time
we’ve been here. And it’s helpful to hear
from those who thought the most clearly,
during the most tumultuous times.
And though he’s absent from many
history books, missing from many Black
History Month programs, and the feats of
his life remain largely unknown, his im-
pact continues to be felt. In May 2020,
following the killing of George Floyd by
a Minneapolis police officer, St. Louis
activist Mike Avery, a Black man, drove
560 miles to join the protests. Three
days later, he was arrested by the FBI
and charged with violating the Anti-Riot
Act, a law that makes it a federal crime to
cross state lines to incite a riot. The FBI
cited Avery’s Facebook posts as the rea-
son for the arrest. (His lawyer said those
posts were “completely mischaracter-
ized,” and the charges were dropped.)
The act is also known by another
name, tacked on as a compromise in
the historic 1968 Civil Rights Act: the
Rap Brown Law.
It’s the same law that the Chicago 7
were charged with, along with many oth-
ers, following the 1968 Democratic Na-
tional Convention—a story dramatized in
the Academy Award–nominated 2020 film
The Trial of the Chicago 7. And in the Acad-
emy Award–winning 2021 film Judas and
the Black Messiah, a biographical drama
about Fred Hampton and the lengths to
which the FBI went to silence Black lead-
ers who could organize, mobilize and in-
spire, the first person we see speaking in
archival footage, within the first two min-
utes, about Black people, is H. Rap Brown.
“Those are not riots. Those are rebel-
lions,” we watch him say. “People are re-
belling because of conditions, not because
of individuals. No individual creates a re-
bellion. It’s created out of the conditions.”
For more than 50 years, a man and a
system have been at odds, with neither
willing to truly wave the white flag. It’s a
true American story, one about law and
order, about the consequences of out-
right, unwavering dissent, and the estab-
lishment’s continued need to neutralize
unbought, unbossed Black thought that
catches fire.
In this fight, there are no winners, and
there is no justice. This is a story of how
far we haven’t come. —With reporting by
GETTY IMAGES Nik PoPli and SimmoNe Shah