Huey P. Newton, national defense minister of the Black Panther Party, raises his clenched fist behind the podium as he speaks at a convention sponsored by the Black Panthers at Temple University’s McGonigle Hall in Philadelphia, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 5, 1970. He is surrounded by security guards of the movement. The audience gathered is estimated at 6,000 with another thousand outside the crowded hall. AP Photo

While I don’t have many childhood memories of growing up in Baltimore, one experience had a major impact on my life and thinking. As a youngster, I visited the Black Panther Party headquarters in the city, probably with my aunts or mother, where I learned about Black history through Golden Legacy comic books, and saw Angela Davis, on a poster with her full-blown Afro, as the most beautiful woman in the world.

What struck me most were the powerful images of Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton, as well as images of Newton with Bobby Seale  standing outside a Panther office.

I read “Revolutionary Suicide,” comrade Newton’s autobiography first published in 1973, in my early teens. Later as a teenager I read the “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” who was an inspiration for the Panthers.

The work of the Panthers, holding political education classes to awaken Blacks, standing against police brutality, running lunch and breakfast programs, free health clinics, early testing for sickle cell anemia, programs to teach and train Black children about themselves, race and oppression in America and beyond, was phenomenal.

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Many have been inspired by the bold examples of the Panthers and infused some of their activity into modern struggle, from boycotts, to prison advocacy, to political education and organizing, health awareness and services, to video monitoring of police and organizing Black youth.

We should respect the Panthers for their courage, love and even their militant style, complete with black leather jackets, sunglasses and berets, but we must never forget their intense suffering and slaughter.

We must also do more than just remember and lionize these soldiers in the Black Power and Black liberation struggle. According to the Jericho Movement, Black political prisoners languish in federal and state institutions, including Panthers and revolutionaries jailed some 55 years ago.

“Six Black radicals have endured decades of incarceration because of their 1970s membership in the Black Panthers or its offshoot, the Black Liberation Army. In 2018, there were 19 such political prisoners (and who knows how many before then).

After being incarcerated for 40 to 50 years, the other 14 were either released, died in prison, or died shortly after release. (Assata Shakur escaped prison, in 1979, to Cuba where she lives under asylum. She is now 76.),” said the Jericho Movement, which fights to free these freedom fighters.

“It is generally understood that the crimes for which these prisoners were arrested and convicted were pinned on them and/or led to disproportionate sentences by officials eager to neutralize and punish these political activists. They are political prisoners,” said the Jericho Movement.

Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as Black Panther and Black revolutionary H. Rap Brown, is among these prisoners. We need to do more than quote him from 1967, “Violence is a part of American culture. It is as American as cherry pie,” or talk about him during Black History Month.

We need to act now to save him.

The family and supporters of Imam Al-Amin are fighting to get him emergency medical treatment through a transfer to a different federal prison, one with a hospital. He was an enemy of the state according to the FBI and the U.S. government and was targeted as such.

Imam Jamil Al-Amin, on left, in prison. Photo courtesy of @_freeimamjamilInstagram

During the 1960s and 1970s, he chaired the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and organized for Black voting rights and against southern segregation.

A leader of the Black Panther Party, he demanded justice for Black and oppressed people and condemned U.S. evils at home and abroad.

After years of being hunted by federal authorities, local officials and prosecutors, he served five years in a New York prison, where he converted to Islam in the 1970s, taking the name Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.

Upon release, he moved to Atlanta, setting up a mosque in the city’s West End and organizing against violence, prostitution, crime and supporting the gang truce and urban peace movement of the 1990s.

“As far as my father’s health goes, it is deteriorating relatively rapidly. We’re dealing with a situation now where we’re in real time watching the system murder my father,” said Kairi Al-Amin, who is the imam’s son and attorney, alongside Atty. Maha ELKolalli. They talked about his life and death struggle in late December during an online forum hosted by the Islamic Circle of North America.

In Atlanta, he was accused of fatally shooting one and injuring another Fulton County deputy while facing some minor charges. He was convicted in 2000 of murder, despite another man confessing to the crime, say supporters. The man matches the description that the surviving officer gave and has a bullet wound in his shoulder the surviving officer said they put in him, they add.

Though convicted of a state crime, the imam served time in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado through an agreement where Georgia pays to have state inmates housed in federal institutions. Pressure led to his being moved to a federal penitentiary in Tucson, where he is still held far from his family and suffers today.

The 81-year-old imam’s medical issues include cancer, problems with his eyesight, blood clots in his legs, using a walker and massive swelling in his face, Kairi Al-Amin explained.

“He had a baseball-sized knot in his face and I’m just glad we were able to get that picture out to the public because saying is one thing, seeing it is another. They claim that they took him to the hospital for that knot,” he continued. But after talks with his father in December,  the son said Imam Al-Amin hadn’t seen a doctor since November.

“No hospital in America is going to see a human being walk in with a baseball on their face and tell them, ‘well, you should see another doctor in two months. Maybe they can do something about that.’

And that’s essentially what they’ve done to my father. Not essentially, that’s exactly what they’ve done to my father,” he added. Pressure from supporters moved the appointment with doctors up; it was supposed to happen in January.

According to his son and Atty. ELKolalli, the growth has increased, leaving the imam unable to eat solid food, unable to see out of one eye, and having difficulty hearing.

They are pushing for his transfer to a federal prison in Butner, N.C., which has a hospital. “We want him free because he didn’t do this. But we also have to make sure that while they are holding him, that he’s being cared for adequately and that also is not being done,” said Kairi Al-Amin.

“Unfortunately, you see that Cointelpro still lives; it’s alive and well and kicking. There are things that happen that you just kind of sit back and you say, ‘oh wow, this is interesting how this is playing out.’ This is really just a simple process of transferring this man to a hospital,” Atty. ELKolalli observed.

“We want to see an immediate transfer; we want to see immediate medical treatment. We want people to make the calls and send the emails,” she added.

Supporters of the imam are producing a documentary. It’s a fundraiser. The hope is the project will be completed by summer and ready for resubmission to Netflix or other streaming platforms.

For more information about the campaign or to support the documentary, “What Happened To H. Rap Brown,” visit freeimamjamil.com.

Naba’a Muhammad is editor-in-chief of The Final Call newspaper. He can be reached via www.finalcall.com and [email protected]. Find him on Facebook. Follow @RMfinalcall on X and Instagram.