Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, is an American human rights activist, Muslim cleric, black separatist, and convicted murderer who was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Best known as H. Rap Brown, he served as the Black Panther Party's minister of justice during a short-lived alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party.
H. Rap Brown in 1967
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections.
John Lewis representing SNCC at the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963
Fannie Lou Hamer (1964) speaks at a Democratic Convention regarding the plight of sharecroppers. She founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative, an independent food project to provide aid for sharecroppers.
Anne Moody in the 1970s
John Lewis representing SNCC at the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963