H Rap Brown Quotes

The long-simmering anger at racism and economic injustice of alienated black youth in the ghettoes was erupting into violent and destructive urban insurrections. In every case these “riots” were triggered by police brutality or misconduct, most usually the killing or brutalizing of an unarmed black man.

Theirs was a strange generation. They grew up with headlines about marches, protests, and sit-ins; they watched the Vietnam War and Woodstock live on color television; they all wanted to be H. Rap Brown and Jane Fonda and Patty Hearst; and when they turned eighteen and felt the full conviction of their revolutionary duty, they all voted for a soft-spoken peanut farmer who was systematically humiliated from his earliest days in office until what seemed his very last.

In late March, King joined with a broad spectrum of Black leaders condemning the charges against SNCC leader H. Rap Brown for allegedly inciting a riot in Cambridge, MD. The fiery Brown had been shot by police after he’d spoken at a rally in Cambridge but now faced charges of incitement. Brown’s arrest was a threat to everyone’s liberty, King underscored: ‘[T]hose who sit silent while another’s rights are violated inevitably come to one of two ends…Either they ultimately compromise their principles to survive in a police state, or they are eventually crushed themselves when it is too late to resist.

COINTELPRO strategy designed to cripple radical organizations by misusing the courts. First, arrests of targeted activists on serious charges carrying potentially long sentences. It was of little importance to the government whether or not they had a legitimate case strong enough to secure a conviction. The point was to silence and immobilize leadership while forcing groups to redirect energy and resources into raising funds, organizing legal defenses, and publicizing these cases. It was a government subversion of the American justice system resulting in drawn-out Soviet-style political show trials that became commonplace in the America of the 1970s: the Chicago Seven, the Panther Twenty-One, etc., etc. Although the overwhelming majority of these cases did not result in convictions,3 government documents show that they were considered great tactical successes. They kept the movements off the streets and in the courts.

See, justice is a joke in this country, and it stinks of its hypocrisy.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.” - H. Rap Brown

I believed love was all you need. I believed you should be here now. I believed drugs could make everyone a better person. I believed I could hitchhike to California with 35 cents and people would be glad to feed me. I believed Mao was cute. I believed private property was wrong. I believed my girlfriend was a witch. I believed my parents were Nazi space monsters. I believed the university was putting saltpeter in the cafeteria food. I believed stones had souls. I believed the NLF were the good guys in Vietnam. I believed Lyndon Johnson was plotting to murder all the Negroes. I believed Yoko Ono was an artist. I believed Bob Dylan was a musician. I believed I would live forever or until I was 21, whichever came first. I believed the world was coming to an end. I believed the Age of Aquarius was about to begin. I believed the I Ching said to cut classes and take over the Dean's office. I believed wearing my hair long would end poverty and injustice. I believed there was a great throbbing web of cosmic mucus and we were all part of it somehow. I managed to believe Gandhi and H. Rap Brown at the same time. With the exception of anything my mom and dad said, I believed everything.