H RAP BROWN
Life for H Rap Brown had not sanctioned much peace. After enrolling in
college at Southern University in 1960, the roar of munitions of war in the fight against racism and racial
discrimination suited Brown up in civli rights fatigues, tied his boot straps to the hope for independence and
strapped him down with a causerie, the rap spoken to the people, fueling his fight in the plight for inequality,
unknown freedom and civil justice that had not , yet, been realized.
Amidst what had been meant to be an era of non-violent protests, Brown had seen
his share of violence. The civil rights war era, by then, had occured during an off season, a time purposed to
engender peace and was meant to overshadow the tension which eminated from repeated marches and vigils, sit-ins and chant
sessions, frequently lead by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Yet, waged against protestors, police brutality
had been witnessed in Birmingham and Selma, and felt by Joan Trampauer Mulholland, Ann Moody and thier friend, Norman, who
had been kicked until unconscious and by whites and blacks who sat together in segregated restaurants and suffered injury.
These civil rights proponents had been cut, smattered and splattered with bottles, food and racial aspersions.
Pearlena Lewis, Lois Chaffee, James Beard, George Raymond, and Walter Williams were all witness to the hatred and familiar
with the pain of violence in the fight for civil rights .
H. Rap Brown launched his career avant-garde in a path that had been
tread upon by other leaders of culture movements. Leaders such as Carl Marx and the anti-capilalism
movement-- men like Marx and Brown, Rockafeller were frontrunners who supported radical social
concepts, setting trends for reaching people through the spoken word and effective actions. Though their
words were meant to enlighten and inform, light was shed on some of the hidden baneful events and upon those which, by
the news media, had been suppressed, particulary during the civil rights movement.
Rap Brown's voice rang in the ear of supporters as softly as the words spoken
by Moses and his purpose weighed as heavily at the doors of a changing society as the ultimate victory at doors of Egypt.
H Rap Brown took full advantage of the aroma of the era, filtering his speeches in to large groups of people,
informing on the issues, disclosing the truth about events which had occured in far off places. The
events about which Brown spoke were resonantely close as civil rights worriers had seen
their brothers, leaders and rights warriors being sent to jail. Rap's reports involved tales of police brutality,
and frequenly he would comment about some unsavory act he believed had been carried out of or carried forth
in the nation's capitol--a favorite target for critique was 'Tricky Dick', refering to former President Richard
Nixon's Watergate Hotel scandal--and other such tales of events that, otherwise, might have gone unmentioned
to the massive groups of African Americans who repeatedly gathered to learn about their fate through Rap's message.
Many of Brown's accounts were unconfirmed and were, by the pundits of the era, often considered as not
much more than any other banal issues that, like egg on a wall, were slipped within the midst of his rap sessions, sliding down one
side of a bulwark of spectators after, rather crudely, being cracked against the heads of the disparate
dispositions and the pain-stricken faces of Rap Brown's many fans and followers. That was Rap's style.
"...But
black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers.
We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep
them up, keep us down."
-H.Rap Brown
Ok, if Brown is talking about
Jim Crow laws and the laws that, prior to the Antibellam era, stated that blacks were only 3/5 a person--but this was
the civil rights era. This was a war during a time when laws were being fought for.
