WEBVTT - Fire 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:03.960 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely 0:00:04.000 --> 0:00:07.840 those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.400 and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or their employees. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:14.840 This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:15.880 suitable for everyone. 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:16.640 Listening to. 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:21.880 Discretion is advised. Radical is released every Tuesday and brought 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.840 to you absolutely free, but if you want to add 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:28.840 free listening and early access to next week's episode, subscribe 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:34.720 to tenderfoot Plus. For more information, check out tenderfootplus dot com. 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:40.239 Enjoy the episode. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:57.720 Campsite Media. 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:03.640 Atlanta, Georgia, was one commercial crossroads of the Confederacy then 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.720 decades after the Civil War. In the middle of the 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:12.280 twentieth century, it became something dramatically different, the seat of 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.880 the country's black political leadership that was at the height 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.759 of the Civil rights movement. The city's business elite called 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:23.040 Atlanta the City too Busy to Hate. There are other 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.160 nicknames too, the Black Mecca, the city in a forest, 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:33.000 the atl My name is Mosey's Secret and for me, 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:35.200 Atlanta is my hometown. 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:37.360 It's where I grew up. 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.120 Within the city, there's a neighborhood called the West End 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:47.840 that was once a rich white enclave with bungalows, Victorian homes, 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:52.200 and a leafy tree canopy. In the fifties and sixties, 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.920 after desegregation, white people took flight to the suburbs like 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.040 in so many other American cities, and black people moved 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:04.040 in institutional neglect, urban decay, and the crack epidemic followed. 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:07.200 That was the West End in the eighties when I. 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:09.720 Was growing up in Atlanta, pretty rough. 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.520 But it was also around that time that black people, 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.480 African American Muslims in particular, began to create a thriving 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:22.519 religious community in the West End. It turned the neighborhood 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.959 into something radically different from the rest of Atlanta, unique 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.880 even in the country. It was self led and to 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.600 a large extent, self policed, but it was not removed 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.720 from the city in the country's problems. There was tension 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:43.480 and there were clashes. Then on the nine of March sixteenth, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.799 two thousand, it all came to a deadly explosive head. 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:59.960 That confrontation is what this story is about. It happened 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.320 around West End Park, the namesake park in the neighborhood. 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.000 Across a small street south of the park, there's a 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.280 one story wooden building. It looks like a house, but 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.359 people in the community have used it as their mosques 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.200 since the late seventies. I like to use the Arabic 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:20.800 word for mosque, masjed. On March sixteenth, two thousand, around 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.600 eight pm the Adan, the Muslim call to prayer was 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:29.800 broadcast throughout the West end those bungalows and Victorians African 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:33.040 American Muslims lived in them. Now the neighborhood was like 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.200 a little Muslim village, and at the call to prayer 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.920 that night, like always, men wearing thebes and coofies walked 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:45.640 from their homes to the masjed. They took off their 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:47.760 shoes and got ready for prayer in the front room, 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.160 shouldered to shoulder, toe to toe. That's a Muslims prey 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.040 or makes a lot lined up facing the city of 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:59.160 Mecca as they recite Versus from the Koran. A seventeen 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:01.440 year old kid, just a few years younger than me 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:05.040 at the time, joined the prayer. And after Salat that night, 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.760 when most of the men walked home, abduced samat Jahad 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:10.640 stuck around for a math lesson. 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.560 Were going over fractions and I think also were dealing 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.680 with a little trigger number tree or algebra, something like that, 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:20.160 and I was having problems real bad. 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.839 The streets in the neighborhood are small, it's quiet, especially 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.279 at night. The match was normally a great place for 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:30.360 up just samat to focus on algebra. 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:33.799 You didn't hear nobody's saying anything. You didn't hear nobody 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:38.480 speaking anything. It was just completely silence, and then all 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:44.960 of a sudden gunfire. So naturally me, I don't know 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:47.279 what's going on. I'm sitting down doing math and they 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:49.960 I just know the teacher jumped on top of me, 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.840 and you know, say get down because it sounded so close. 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:56.720 I'd samot and the tutor lay still on the floor. 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.400 All I knew was it was scary, you know, it 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.280 was scary to hear. I didn't know what was going on. 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:05.600 I was just saying, oh God, I thought somebody Honestly, 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.280 when they already shooting, I thought somebody was doing the 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:10.279 drive by on the Master, trying to shoot up on 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:12.560 the Master while I was in so I thought he 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:14.120 jumped on me. I was just a god, don't let 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.160 me get shot in the head or get shot by 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:18.479 my stray bullet. I thought somebody was doing the drive 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:20.200 by that's why he jumped. 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:21.000 On top of him. 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:25.360 They weren't hit and it wasn't a drive by, but 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.160 with shots still ripping through the air, someone dragged u 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:30.440 Duce some mat into a closet and told them, no 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:32.320 matter what, stay put. 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.880 And then after that the gunshots continued and continued and 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:38.640 continue to continue. It was like almost like an overkill, 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:40.440 like it was a war zone out there. Who would 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.720 shoot that many tonight? No one, I mean, no one 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:44.240 would do that. 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.599 When the gunfire finally stopped, Abduce crept out of the 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.200 closet through a window. He saw the street was flooded 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.240 with cops, and then a few moments later he heard 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:00.919 his father calling for him. They lived right next to 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:05.240 the mass jed, so he hurried home. So you spent 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:06.640 the rest of the night looking out the window. 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.800 Huh well yeah, basically, yeah, yeah, looking out the window. 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:11.760 And then my dad put me to sleep. He said, hey, 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.080 you got to go to school in the morning. 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.600 The responding officers found the aftermath of a shootout. There 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:24.000 were dozens of shellcasings strewn about and two black men 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.479 lying on the ground. They were bleeding, one in the 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.320 street and another in the grass next to the mass Jed. 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:34.440 The men were uniform deputies from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.839 the county that includes most of Atlanta. Someone had shot 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:45.719 the cops. The sheriff's deputies were there to arrest a 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:50.279 man named Jamil Abdullah Elamine on some relatively small charges. 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.080 He lived right across the street from the mass jed. 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.560 In fact, he was the imam it's leader and the 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:01.400 de fact the leader of the whole neighborhood. When investigators 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.479 arrived at the crime scene, a Maam Jamil, as he 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.760 was known in the neighborhood was nowhere to be found. 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:08.840 It wasn't a leap for the. 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.200 Investigators to suspect he shot the deputies. And that's the 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:14.480 story that's still in the public record about what happened 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:19.040 that night in March sixteenth, two thousand. I was away 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.280 at college when it happened. Then I began working as 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.680 a journalist. I've been doing that for more than twenty 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:28.120 years now, and by some strange twist of fate, this 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.960 story about a Maam Jamil in the shootout, it found me. 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.400 A Maam Jamil was convicted of the shooting after a tense, 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:43.120 high profile trial. Some of the evidence against him was shaky, 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:48.200 and a prosecutor was accused of misconduct. Ma'am Jamil insisted 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:52.280 he was innocent, and his family and supporters they're still 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:57.720 making that case. In the last year or so, I've 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.760 learned that the story in the public record it's not complete. 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.200 There's much more to a man Jamil, and more to 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:08.720 what happened that night, more than law enforcement has cared 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.720 to acknowledge, and more than Muslims in Atlanta had cared 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:17.200 to acknowledge. Somehow, when I started asking questions, the timing 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:23.680 was right for a new narrative to emerge. A Mam 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.960 Jmil was not an ordinary man, or even in ordinary 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:31.560 a man. He was legendary, the stuff of myth, the 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.439 kind of person people tell stories about. Some of those 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:38.760 stories people need them to find the courage to face 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:44.160 their own lives. Some of those stories people fear, fear 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:49.640 their danger in their violence. But all the stories, regardless 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:54.360 of their basis, in fact, tend to grow. Over the 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:56.600 course of his life, a man Jamil became more and 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.360 more of a hero, even as he became more and 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.040 more of a villain. And even the tallest of those 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.200 tales had a way of becoming real as people lived 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:12.400 with them, acted on them. Sorting through this tangle I've 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:16.640 just described bringing this story to you, it required me 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:18.559 to come to grips with how I let stories take 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.160 shape in my own mind and just how I'm willing 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.079 to pass them on. This is one I'm going to 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:26.640 tell you and the way I'm going to tell it. 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:28.760 That's what I want to pass on. 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:40.440 From Campsite Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart podcasts. This is Radical, 0:09:41.520 --> 0:10:00.720 I'm Mostly Secret. Episode one Fire and ma'am Emil Elmine's 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:04.160 story begins in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he was born 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.680 into a black family in nineteen forty three. He was 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:09.880 the third and final child of a man off fighting 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.280 in the Second World War and a woman who worked 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.280 two jobs as a teacher at the local orphanage and 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.840 as a maid. The parents named their youngest Hubert Gerald Brown. 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:22.880 As a kid, he was drawn to the young bloods 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.400 on the corner, the bad mother focus who made a 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:29.040 profession of hanging out all day, playing the dozens, the 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:32.880 ones who excelled at sports like he did. These were 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.960 the guys who stood firmous against the establishment. Brown thought 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.320 against Jim Crow they didn't give a shit about white values. 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.480 The kid could talk trash with the best of them, 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:46.599 and they took the calling him Rap a moniker. That 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.920 stuck as he rose to public life. Most of the 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.520 folks I spoke with who knew AmAm Demil before he 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.439 became Muslim, they called him rap h Rap Brown. 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:58.360 So that's what I'll do too. 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.080 Rap bristled at Jim Crow's efforts to control his movements, 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.040 to limit the idea of what he could be, and 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:08.440 he bucked the system in the brashest way possible at 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:15.560 every opportunity. In his first book, a memoir called Die 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:20.520 Nigger Died not my favorite book title, Rap wrote that 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.719 he once went to a boy scout circus. It was segregated, 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:25.920 but nobody was going to warn Rap Brown that he 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.040 couldn't go see what the white boys were up to. 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:32.320 He walked over there and heard a white boy holler out, nigger, 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.640 you have been sentenced to death, and the boy started 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.240 shooting him with a B begun. The next year, Rap 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:45.360 brought his own bbgun to the circus. Rap grew up 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:48.480 to be a tall man, distinguished by his height six 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:53.400 foot five. He was thin, lanky, with dangling arms and 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:57.320 long fingers, but he moved smoothly through the world, almost 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:01.600 gliding as he walked his own kind of swat. He 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.480 was light skinned, a complexion that black folks used to 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:08.280 call red, similar to Malcolm X. He grew a short 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.480 afro and a mustache, wore a lot of dinnim, sometimes 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:16.080 a leather jacket. In the sixties, Rapp followed his brother 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:20.120 to Howard University in DC and got involved in organized activism. 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.200 He read thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois and 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.360 Franz Feron and Frederick Douglass for the first time, and 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:29.600 eventually became a part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.440 that's the s NCC or SNICK. It was the most 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.920 prominent student group of the movement. While Rapp was a 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.200 part of SNICK, he grew close to a fellow fire 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.360 brand named Willie Rix or Mucassa Dada as he's known 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.920 these days. Mucassa eighty years old now hasn't lost much 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:47.439 of his fire. 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:53.520 Rap was always around and you would have encountered him personally. 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:55.280 You met him and hung out with him. 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:59.679 I met him with him smoked. 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.160 We used to smoke out herb and whatever and party 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:04.959 and whatever, and we fought together. 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:09.920 And Rap was a fighter and a warrior, and he 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:11.319 was in many, many battles. 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.360 Inside of Snick, the organization was working in the Black Belt, 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.760 a mostly rural swathe of counties across the South that 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.880 got its name from the black fertile soil there and 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:23.800 the Black people who live in the land since the 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:28.880 end of their enslavement. But despite their demographics, these mostly poor, 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.920 majority black counties were still controlled by white people. So 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.960 Snickson and organizers Mucasa was one of them, and so 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:37.559 was Rap. 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:41.200 The first thing organized have to do is find a 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.680 place to eat, find a place to sleep, and also 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:46.600 find local leadership. 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:49.200 If not there, you have to creating. 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.920 Lowndes County, Alabama, where both a RAP and Mucasa worked, 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.960 was the center of the struggle. Black folks there lived 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.360 in wood shacks out on the flat grassy plains, sometimes 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.120 near pine and oak forests. 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:07.559 The outnumbered white. 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:09.719 People four to one, but few, if any, of the 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:12.480 more than five thousand eligible black voters in Lowndes County 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.440 were registered to vote. Landowners evicted black people who tried 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.200 to register, and night writers fired shots into the. 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:23.160 Homes of local leaders. While Snick was organizing. 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.480 In Lowndes County, a sheriff's deputy killed a volunteer working 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:31.360 closely with the organization. In the nineteen sixties, at least 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:34.920 twenty civil rights activists were killed, a conservative estimate that 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:37.800 doesn't include the hundreds of people who were injured and threatened. 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:43.920 SNICK is widely remembered for non violence. Of course, it 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.640 did have the word non violent in its name, but 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.720 as I've learned more about the organization, that's really only 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.880 part of the story. Mukasa puts it pretty simply. 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.240 We used none violent as a tactic, where doctor King 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:00.320 used it as a will of life and what whatever. 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:02.240 And we said if we'd do it in front of 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:04.400 let a white man hit us in front of a camera, 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:06.480 but if they hit us in the camera and there, 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:08.880 we're gonna fuck him up. If they file us around 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:10.240 the column, we're gonna fuck him up. 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.840 Mucassa isn't speaking for everyone. Other SNICK organizers may have 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:18.680 seen it differently, but Mucassa and rap they were prepared 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:23.480 to defend themselves with violence if necessary, and this was 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:25.400 in line with many of the locals they were working with, 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.160 Black people living in the Black Belt in Lownes County 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:32.920 kept shotguns next to their front doors or handguns next 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:36.280 to their beds, and some snack activists carried guns with them. 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.680 Yeah, we U should go out and fit in the backyards 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:42.840 and practice shooting and all that cast up all the time. 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.080 But did you ever have to fire your weapon in 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:45.920 the confrontation? 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:48.200 Absolutely about tamen. 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.480 Yeah, we'd we'd ride down the street and white folks 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.040 jump behind us and started shooting. 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:55.240 We ain't out there and started shooting back. 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:59.200 Rap had carried a gun for years, got us first 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.640 one at fourteen after a run in with some white boys. 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.440 He stole it from a sporting goods store. Rap wrote 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.280 in his autobiography, give me a gun before you even 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.280 give me somebody to work with. A gun won't fail you. 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.520 People will who costs us of it. Once, when Rap 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:18.000 was organizing in the Alabama, some of the black folks 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.120 who had registered to vote were kicked off their land. 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.000 So they set up a tense city and then white 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:25.240 people attacked. 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:29.240 And the white wo come by attens and shooting an attense. 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:31.560 So Rap, you should have fire him back up. 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.760 Some white man got shot over there, wrapped their Hell yeah, 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:35.680 we shouted. 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.000 Rap gained a reputation within Snick and across the Black 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.760 Belt for fearlessness and for his speeches that encouraged and 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:48.440 inspired people to stand up for themselves. A year after 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.240 Snick started working in Lowndes County in Earnest, the local 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.600 leaders organized their own political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.560 They made a black panther their symbol, inspiring activists in 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:04.399 Californi who would later found the Black Panther Party. In 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:09.119 nineteen sixty six, despite intimidation, sixteen hundred people in Lounges. 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:10.199 County voted for the new party. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.520 They wanted to take down the sheriff given the violence 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.720 against black people, and elect their own candidate, but no 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:22.080 one on the party ticket won. It was this same 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:25.200 year that Snick began peeling away more publicly from doctor 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.520 Martin Luther King Junior in his rallying cry of freedom. 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:34.440 Now Snick's new rallying cry was black power. The next year, 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:38.840 in nineteen sixty seven, rap became Snick's chairman and was 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:44.760 named an honorary officer of the Black Panther Party. Now 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:47.480 Rapp wasn't just traveling around the Black Belt. He was 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:52.000 chairman traveling around the nation at speeches and press conferences 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:55.520 like this one, he shocked many Americans black and. 0:17:55.400 --> 0:18:00.280 White violence is a plot of America's culture, is as 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:04.280 American as cherry pie. We will use that violin to 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.119 rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.120 And his speeches, rap boldly explained the mindset he thought 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.800 was necessary for real change in the country where racism 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:14.840 was a part of the bedrock. 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:17.919 We did not make the laws in this country. We 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.840 are neither, Marley, not legally confined to those laws, those 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:23.960 laws that keep them up keep us down. 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:25.880 You got to begin to understand that. 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.439 It was a revolution and the object was not for 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.160 black people to simply replace white people at the top 0:18:36.240 --> 0:18:40.680 of the heap. Rapid As comrades wanted to toss out 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.800 the systems the country ran on capitalism and all they 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:47.600 saw a grand conflict between black people and the government 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.080 controlled by white people, a government that used police and 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:55.120 law enforcement like a domestic military force to maintain control. 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.320 And wan end in the Swahili saying, it says losima 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.320 to sinda be lost you eli shakak which means we 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:03.800 shall concer without a doubt. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:04.600 Black power. 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:14.600 Mukasa was Wrap's right hand man. 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:19.879 I was assigned to travel rap wherever he would go. 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:23.919 And that we started traveling, and as we traveled throughout 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:27.800 different areas everywhere would go to cities would be on fire, 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:32.920 catching on fire. Right after we leave, he would go 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.320 out in the battlefields and go out there with them 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:39.880 folks doing five arms and fighting and burning and whatever. 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.800 And he would always ready to go do that. And 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:45.760 whenever he talked, he go with him. And when the 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.800 rebellions started wrapped beyond the front line. 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.040 In nineteen sixty seven, there were at least seventy five 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:57.159 uprisings or rebellions and cities across the country, from San 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.200 Francisco to Cincinnati to New York. 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:01.160 People took to the streets. 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:06.159 Even Doctor King and his organization field rep Brown so 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.560 much that even if he wasn't nowhere around, that was 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:13.040 gonna be somebody in the crowd let's say black power 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.520 and throw a brick or throw a brick at the police. 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.080 And the police didn't discriminate, they didn't running there and 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:20.120 stop beating them all. 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.560 As part of cointelpro the FBI's program aimed at preventing 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.439 the rise of a so called black messiah. The Bureau 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.959 used dirty tricks to disrupt SNICK and other black power groups. 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:34.520 Agents began surveilling. 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:37.240 A Rap and apparently targeted him with trumped up or 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:41.359 entirely fabricated criminal charges. The conflict seemed to reach a 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.879 climax when a car bomb exploded, killing two SNACK activists. 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.200 There were conflicting theories about what happened, but it looked 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:48.919 like the bomb was. 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.240 Meant to assassinate Rap. He went into hide it. 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:59.280 Police departments, the United States government and their agents they 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:01.399 hated reput all the way to death. 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.840 In nineteen seventy one, after more than a year underground, 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:10.720 Rap was arrested in New York City. I won't get 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.600 into the particulars of that arrest now, just know that 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.679 he got popped on an arm robbery charge. He and 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:18.920 some friends were sticking up a lounge to help further 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:22.119 their activities in the movement, a caper that ended in 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:23.800 a shootout with cops. 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:25.480 Rap twenty eight. 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.800 Years old, went to jail Rikers Island and eventually landed 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.399 at Attica Prison. Tough places to say the least, but 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:34.680 it's hard to imagine Rap living much longer if he 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:38.119 hadn't stepped back from the front lines. Death was certainly 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:50.520 something he prepared for and maybe even welcomed. In that autobiography, 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:53.560 it was published two years before rap was locked up, 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:58.120 he wrote, America, if it takes my death to organize 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:01.359 my people to revolt against you, and to organize your 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.800 jails to revolt against you, and to organize your troops 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:08.080 to revolt against you, and to organize your children to 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:11.679 revolt against you, and to organize your God to revolt 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:15.080 against you, and to organize your poor to revolt against you, 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:19.520 and to organize your country to revolt against you, and 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:23.080 to organize mankind to rejoice in your destruction and ruin, 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:30.520 then here is my life. But within weeks, maybe months, 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.640 of his arrest, that seemed to change. He converted to Islam. 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:39.480 A transformation was underway. Some would even say the creation 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:46.520 of a new man, Jamil, Beautiful Abdullah, servant of God, 0:22:47.119 --> 0:23:10.119 Alamin the Trustworthy. My own conversion to Islam happened in 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:16.400 the fifth grade. We'd been Baptist and Pentecostal, and then 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.840 my father found new faith and he wanted all of us, 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:24.159 my mom and two younger siblings to follow suit. My 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:26.159 parents put me out of public school and sent me 0:23:26.200 --> 0:23:29.560 to a Muslim private school. I got so being out 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:32.240 of shape by the change that during my second week 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:34.520 at the new school, I got super sick and had 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:38.359 to stay home. When I felt better, my parents finally 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:40.320 let me go back to public school and joined my 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:45.280 old friends. In time, I accepted Islam for a good while. 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:46.879 Anyway, I made. 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:50.639 My salots and facet for Ramadan, but I always occupied 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:53.920 this weird in between spot, not fitting in all the 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:56.280 way with the Muslim kids and feeling different from my 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:00.480 non Muslim friends. An insider, outsider in both way worlds, 0:24:01.119 --> 0:24:07.080 an observer. When I went to college, I studied comparative religion, 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:11.280 trying on other beliefs. I realize pretty young that what 0:24:11.320 --> 0:24:14.000 we believe, the way we structure our worlds, and the 0:24:14.040 --> 0:24:17.080 stories we tell ourselves, all of that can be totally 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:18.679 changed with the flip. 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:18.960 Of a switch. 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:24.200 Part of why I pursued writing when I graduated college, 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:26.879 and why I'm so drawn to complex stories like this, 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:29.639 is because I sense the power stories. 0:24:29.240 --> 0:24:30.960 Have over our lives. 0:24:31.480 --> 0:24:34.080