H. Rap Brown

Everybody in the black community must organize, and then we decide whether we will have alliance with other people or not, but not until we are organized.

There is no such thing as a black middle class.

The poverty program was not designed to eliminate poverty.

The only thing that's going to free Huey is gun powder.

The man does not beat your head because you got a Cadillac or because you got a Ford; he beats you because you're black!

So black people all across this country are uniting. They must unite, and they must organize themselves.

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

See, it's no in between: you're either free or you're a slave.

In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that's the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people.

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

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.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

There has to be a social commitment, a social consciousness that joins men together. On the basis of their coming together, they do not transgress against themselves and they do not transgress against others.

When you understand your obligations to God then you can understand your obligations to society.

To be successful in struggle requires remembrance of the Creator and the doing of good deeds. This is important because successful struggle demands that there be a kind of social consciousness. There has to be a social commitment, a social consciousness that joins men together.

My name is Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown. I am a devoted servant of Allah, and an unwavering devotee to His cause. For more than 30 years, I have been tormented and persecuted by my enemies for reasons of race and belief.

Attack those concepts such as 'third world.' Think about it. If we look at it in terms of numbers, then people of color are the majority in this world. We should be the 'first world.'

We happen to be the vanguard of that revolutionary struggle because we are the most dispossessed.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

If America don't come around, we're gonna' burn it down.

Look at the newborn baby. It struggles to breathe after living in the womb. And yet, growth comes as a result of struggle. Even when we talk about jihad. We need to attach consciousness to struggle. This struggle has to be both individual and collective.

No such thing as a Dixiecrat.

Black people must address itself to the causes of poverty. That's oppression in this country.

The first responsibility of the Muslim is as teacher. That is his job, to teach. His first school, his first classroom is within the household. His first student is himself. He masters himself and then he begins to convey the knowledge that he has acquired to the family. The people who are closest to him.