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0:41

Campsite Media.

0:58

Atlanta, Georgia, was one commercial crossroads

1:01

of the Confederacy then

1:04

decades after the Civil War. In the

1:06

middle of the twentieth century, it

1:08

became something dramatically different, the

1:11

seat of the country's black political leadership

1:15

that was at the height of the Civil rights movement. The

1:18

city's business elite called Atlanta the City

1:20

too Busy to Hate. There are

1:22

other nicknames too, the Black

1:25

Mecca, the city in a forest,

1:28

the atl My

1:30

name is Mosey's Secret and for me,

1:33

Atlanta is my hometown. It's

1:36

where I grew up. Within

1:40

the city, there's a neighborhood called the West

1:43

End that was once a rich white enclave

1:45

with bungalows, Victorian homes,

1:47

and a leafy tree canopy. In

1:51

the fifties and sixties, after desegregation,

1:54

white people took flight to the suburbs like in so

1:56

many other American cities, and

1:58

black people moved in

2:00

institutional neglect, urban decay,

2:02

and the crack epidemic followed. That

2:05

was the West End in the eighties when I was growing

2:07

up in Atlanta, pretty rough.

2:11

But it was also around that time that black

2:13

people, African American Muslims

2:15

in particular, began to create

2:18

a thriving religious community in the West End.

2:21

It turned the neighborhood into something radically different

2:23

from the rest of Atlanta, unique

2:25

even in the country. It

2:28

was self led and to a large extent,

2:30

self policed, but it

2:32

was not removed from the city in the country's problems.

2:36

There was tension and there

2:38

were clashes. Then

2:42

on the nine of March sixteenth, two thousand, it

2:45

all came to a deadly explosive head.

2:49

That confrontation is what

2:51

this story is about. It

2:59

happened around West End Park, the

3:01

namesake park in the neighborhood.

3:04

Across a small street south of the park, there's

3:06

a one story wooden building. It looks

3:09

like a house, but people in the community

3:11

have used it as their mosques since the late seventies.

3:14

I like to use the Arabic word for mosque,

3:16

masjed. On

3:18

March sixteenth, two thousand, around eight

3:21

pm the Adan, the Muslim

3:23

call to prayer was broadcast throughout

3:25

the West end those bungalows

3:27

and Victorians African American

3:30

Muslims lived in them. Now the

3:32

neighborhood was like a little Muslim village,

3:35

and at the call to prayer that night, like

3:37

always, men wearing thebes and coofies

3:39

walked from their homes to the masjed. They

3:45

took off their shoes and got ready for prayer in the

3:47

front room, shouldered

3:49

to shoulder, toe to toe. That's

3:51

a Muslims prey or makes a lot

3:53

lined up facing the city of Mecca as they

3:55

recite Versus from the Koran. A

3:58

seventeen year old kid, just a few years

4:00

younger than me at the time, joined the prayer.

4:03

And after Salat that night, when most

4:05

of the men walked home, abduced

4:07

samat Jahad stuck around for a

4:10

math lesson. Were going over fractions

4:12

and I think also were

4:14

dealing with a little trigger number tree or algebra,

4:17

something like that, and I was having problems

4:19

real bad. The streets

4:21

in the neighborhood are small, it's quiet,

4:24

especially at night. The

4:26

match was normally a great place for up

4:28

just samat to focus on algebra. You

4:31

didn't hear nobody's saying anything. You didn't

4:33

hear nobody speaking anything. It

4:35

was just completely silence, and

4:38

then all of a sudden gunfire.

4:42

So naturally me, I don't know

4:45

what's going on. I'm sitting down doing math

4:47

and they I just know the teacher jumped

4:49

on top of me, and you know, say

4:51

get down because it sounded so close.

4:54

I'd samot and the tutor lay still on the

4:56

floor. All I

4:58

knew was it was scary, you know, it was

5:00

scary to hear. I didn't know what was

5:02

going on. I was just saying, oh God, I thought somebody

5:05

Honestly, when they already shooting,

5:07

I thought somebody was doing the drive by on the Master, trying

5:09

to shoot up on the Master while I

5:11

was in so I thought he jumped on me. I was just a god, don't

5:14

let me get shot in the head or get shot by

5:16

my stray bullet. I thought somebody was doing the drive

5:18

by that's why he jumped on top of him.

5:21

They weren't hit and it wasn't

5:23

a drive by, but

5:25

with shots still ripping through the air, someone

5:27

dragged u Duce some mat into a closet and told them,

5:30

no matter what, stay put. And

5:32

then after that the gunshots

5:34

continued and continued and continue to continue.

5:37

It was like almost like an overkill, like it was a

5:39

war zone out there. Who would shoot that many

5:41

tonight? No one, I mean,

5:43

no one would do that. When

5:48

the gunfire finally stopped, Abduce

5:50

crept out of the closet through

5:53

a window. He saw the street was flooded with

5:55

cops, and then a few moments later

5:57

he heard his father calling for him. They

6:00

lived right next to the mass jed, so

6:02

he hurried home. So

6:04

you spent the rest of the night looking out the window. Huh

6:07

well yeah, basically, yeah, yeah, looking out

6:09

the window. And then my dad put me to sleep. He said,

6:11

hey, you got to go to school in the morning. The

6:17

responding officers found the aftermath of a

6:19

shootout. There were dozens

6:21

of shellcasings strewn about and

6:23

two black men lying on the ground. They

6:25

were bleeding, one in the street

6:28

and another in the grass next to the mass Jed. The

6:31

men were uniform deputies from the Fulton County

6:33

Sheriff's Office, the county that includes

6:35

most of Atlanta. Someone

6:38

had shot the cops. The

6:43

sheriff's deputies were there to arrest a man named

6:46

Jamil Abdullah Elamine on

6:48

some relatively small charges. He

6:51

lived right across the street from the mass jed. In

6:54

fact, he was the imam it's

6:56

leader and the de fact the leader of

6:58

the whole neighborhood. When

7:00

investigators arrived at the crime scene, a

7:03

Maam Jamil, as he was known in the neighborhood

7:05

was nowhere to be found. It

7:08

wasn't a leap for the investigators to suspect he

7:10

shot the deputies. And that's the story

7:12

that's still in the public record about what happened that

7:14

night in March sixteenth, two thousand.

7:18

I was away at college when it happened. Then

7:21

I began working as a journalist. I've been

7:23

doing that for more than twenty years now, and

7:26

by some strange twist of fate, this

7:28

story about a Maam Jamil in the shootout,

7:31

it found me. A

7:35

Maam Jamil was convicted of the shooting after a

7:38

tense, high profile trial. Some

7:41

of the evidence against him was shaky, and a

7:43

prosecutor was accused of misconduct. Ma'am

7:47

Jamil insisted he was innocent, and

7:50

his family and supporters they're still

7:52

making that case. In

7:55

the last year or so, I've

7:57

learned that the story in the public record it's

8:00

not complete. There's

8:02

much more to a man Jamil, and more

8:05

to what happened that night, more

8:07

than law enforcement has cared to acknowledge,

8:10

and more than Muslims in Atlanta had cared to acknowledge.

8:13

Somehow, when I started asking questions,

8:16

the timing was right for a new narrative to emerge.

8:23

A Mam Jmil was not an ordinary man, or

8:26

even in ordinary a man. He

8:28

was legendary, the stuff of myth,

8:31

the kind of person people tell stories about. Some

8:35

of those stories people need them

8:37

to find the courage to face their own lives.

8:40

Some of those stories people fear,

8:43

fear their danger in their violence. But

8:47

all the stories, regardless of their basis,

8:50

in fact, tend to grow. Over

8:54

the course of his life, a man Jamil became more

8:56

and more of a hero, even as

8:58

he became more and more of a villain. And

9:02

even the tallest of those tales had a way of becoming

9:04

real as people lived with them,

9:07

acted on them.

9:11

Sorting through this tangle I've just described

9:13

bringing this story to you, it

9:16

required me to come to grips with how I let stories

9:18

take shape in my own mind and

9:20

just how I'm willing to pass them on. This

9:23

is one I'm going to tell you and

9:25

the way I'm going to tell it. That's

9:27

what I want to pass on. From

9:35

Campsite Media, Tenderfoot TV,

9:37

and iHeart podcasts. This

9:39

is Radical, I'm Mostly

9:42

Secret. Episode

9:44

one Fire and

9:59

ma'am Emil Elmine's story begins in

10:01

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he

10:03

was born into a black family in nineteen

10:05

forty three. He was the third

10:08

and final child of a man off fighting in the Second

10:10

World War and a woman who worked two

10:12

jobs as a teacher at the local

10:14

orphanage and as a maid. The

10:16

parents named their youngest Hubert

10:19

Gerald Brown. As

10:21

a kid, he was drawn to the young bloods on the corner,

10:24

the bad mother focus who made a profession of hanging

10:26

out all day, playing the dozens, the

10:29

ones who excelled at sports like he did.

10:32

These were the guys who stood firmous against the

10:34

establishment. Brown thought against

10:36

Jim Crow they didn't give

10:39

a shit about white values. The

10:41

kid could talk trash with the best of them, and

10:44

they took the calling him Rap a

10:46

moniker. That stuck as he rose to public

10:48

life. Most of the folks

10:50

I spoke with who knew AmAm Demil before

10:52

he became Muslim, they called him

10:54

rap h Rap Brown. So

10:57

that's what I'll do too. Rap

11:00

bristled at Jim Crow's efforts to control his

11:02

movements, to limit the idea of what

11:04

he could be, and he bucked the system

11:06

in the brashest way possible at every opportunity.

11:13

In his first book, a memoir called

11:15

Die Nigger Died not my favorite

11:17

book title, Rap

11:20

wrote that he once went to a boy scout circus.

11:22

It was segregated, but nobody was going to warn

11:25

Rap Brown that he couldn't go see what the white

11:27

boys were up to. He walked

11:29

over there and heard a white boy holler out, nigger,

11:32

you have been sentenced to death, and

11:35

the boy started shooting him with a B begun. The

11:37

next year, Rap brought his own bbgun

11:40

to the circus.

11:44

Rap grew up to be a tall man, distinguished

11:47

by his height six foot five. He

11:50

was thin, lanky, with dangling

11:52

arms and long fingers, but

11:55

he moved smoothly through the world, almost

11:57

gliding as he walked his own

11:59

kind of swat. He

12:01

was light skinned, a complexion that black

12:03

folks used to call red, similar

12:05

to Malcolm X. He grew a

12:08

short afro and a mustache, wore

12:10

a lot of dinnim, sometimes a leather jacket.

12:13

In the sixties, Rapp followed

12:15

his brother to Howard University in DC and

12:18

got involved in organized activism. He

12:21

read thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois

12:23

and Franz Feron and Frederick Douglass for the

12:25

first time, and eventually became a

12:27

part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

12:30

that's the s NCC or SNICK.

12:32

It was the most prominent student group of the movement.

12:36

While Rapp was a part of SNICK, he grew close

12:38

to a fellow fire brand named Willie Rix or

12:40

Mucassa Dada as he's known these days.

12:43

Mucassa eighty years old now

12:46

hasn't lost much of his fire. Rap

12:48

was always around and you would have

12:51

encountered him personally.

12:53

You met him and hung out with him. I met

12:55

him with him

12:59

smoked. We used to smoke out herb

13:01

and whatever and party and whatever,

13:03

and we fought together. And Rap

13:06

was a fighter and a warrior, and he

13:10

was in many, many battles. Inside of Snick,

13:13

the organization was working in the Black Belt,

13:15

a mostly rural swathe of counties across

13:18

the South that got its name from the black

13:20

fertile soil there and the Black

13:22

people who live in the land since the end of their

13:24

enslavement. But

13:26

despite their demographics, these mostly

13:28

poor, majority black counties were still

13:30

controlled by white people. So

13:33

Snickson and organizers Mucasa

13:35

was one of them, and so was Rap.

13:37

The first thing organized have to do is

13:40

find a place to eat, find a

13:42

place to sleep, and also find

13:45

local leadership. If not there,

13:48

you have to creating. Lowndes

13:53

County, Alabama, where both a RAP

13:55

and Mucasa worked, was the center

13:58

of the struggle. Black

14:00

folks there lived in wood shacks out on the flat

14:02

grassy plains, sometimes near

14:04

pine and oak forests. The outnumbered

14:07

white people four to one, but few,

14:09

if any, of the more than five thousand eligible black

14:11

voters in Lowndes County were registered to vote.

14:14

Landowners evicted black people who tried to

14:16

register, and night writers fired

14:18

shots into the homes of local leaders. While

14:22

Snick was organizing. In Lowndes County, a

14:24

sheriff's deputy killed a volunteer working closely

14:26

with the organization. In

14:29

the nineteen sixties, at least twenty civil

14:31

rights activists were killed, a conservative

14:34

estimate that doesn't include the hundreds of people

14:36

who were injured and threatened. SNICK

14:40

is widely remembered for non violence. Of

14:43

course, it did have the word non

14:45

violent in its name, but

14:47

as I've learned more about the organization, that's

14:50

really only part of the story. Mukasa

14:52

puts it pretty simply. We

14:55

used none violent as a tactic, where

14:57

doctor King used it as a will of life and

14:59

what whatever. And we said if we'd do it

15:01

in front of let a white man hit us in front of

15:03

a camera, but if they hit us in the

15:05

camera and there, we're gonna fuck him up. If

15:08

they file us around the column, we're gonna fuck him up.

15:11

Mucassa isn't speaking for everyone. Other

15:13

SNICK organizers may have seen it differently, but

15:16

Mucassa and rap they were prepared

15:18

to defend themselves with violence

15:20

if necessary, and

15:23

this was in line with many of the locals they were working

15:25

with, Black people

15:27

living in the Black Belt in Lownes County kept

15:29

shotguns next to their front doors or

15:32

handguns next to their beds, and

15:34

some snack activists carried guns with them.

15:36

Yeah, we U should go out and fit in the

15:38

backyards and practice shooting and

15:41

all that cast up all the time. But did

15:43

you ever have to fire your weapon in the confrontation?

15:46

Absolutely about tamen. Yeah,

15:49

we'd we'd ride down the street and white folks

15:51

jump behind us and started shooting. We ain't

15:53

out there and started shooting back. Rap

15:56

had carried a gun for years, got

15:58

us first one at fourteen after a run in with

16:00

some white boys. He stole it from

16:02

a sporting goods store. Rap

16:05

wrote in his autobiography, give

16:07

me a gun before you even give me somebody to work

16:09

with. A gun won't fail you. People

16:12

will who costs us of it.

16:14

Once, when Rap was organizing in the Alabama,

16:17

some of the black folks who had registered to vote were kicked

16:19

off their land. So

16:21

they set up a tense city and then white

16:24

people attacked, and

16:26

the white wo come by attens and shooting

16:28

an attense. So Rap, you should have

16:30

fire him back up. Some white man got shot

16:32

over there, wrapped their Hell yeah, we shouted,

16:37

Rap gained a reputation within Snick and

16:40

across the Black Belt for fearlessness

16:43

and for his speeches that encouraged and inspired people

16:45

to stand up for themselves. A

16:48

year after Snick started working in Lowndes County

16:50

in Earnest, the local leaders organized

16:52

their own political party, the Lowndes

16:54

County Freedom Organization. They

16:56

made a black panther their symbol, inspiring

16:59

activists in Californi who would later found

17:01

the Black Panther Party. In

17:04

nineteen sixty six, despite intimidation,

17:07

sixteen hundred people in Lounges County voted for

17:09

the new party. They wanted to take down

17:11

the sheriff given the violence against black

17:14

people, and elect their own candidate,

17:17

but no one on the party ticket won. It

17:21

was this same year that Snick began peeling

17:23

away more publicly from doctor Martin Luther

17:25

King Junior in his rallying cry of

17:28

freedom. Now Snick's

17:30

new rallying cry was black power.

17:33

The next year, in nineteen sixty

17:35

seven, rap became Snick's chairman

17:38

and was named an honorary officer of the Black

17:40

Panther Party.

17:44

Now Rapp wasn't just traveling around the Black Belt.

17:47

He was chairman traveling around the nation at

17:50

speeches and press conferences like

17:52

this one, he shocked many Americans

17:54

black and white

17:57

violence is a plot of America's culture, is

18:00

as American as cherry pie.

18:02

We will use that violin to rid ourselves

18:05

of oppression if necessary. And

18:08

his speeches, rap boldly explained the mindset

18:10

he thought was necessary for real change in the country

18:13

where racism was a part of the bedrock. We

18:16

did not make the laws in this country. We are

18:18

neither, Marley, not legally confined to

18:20

those laws, those laws

18:22

that keep them up keep us down. You

18:24

got to begin to understand that it

18:30

was a revolution and the object

18:33

was not for black people to simply replace

18:35

white people at the top of the heap. Rapid

18:39

As comrades wanted to toss out the systems the

18:41

country ran on capitalism and all

18:44

they saw a grand conflict between black people

18:46

and the government controlled by white people, a

18:49

government that used police and law enforcement

18:51

like a domestic military force to maintain

18:54

control and wan end in the Swahili

18:56

saying, it says losima to sinda

18:59

be lost you eli shakak which

19:01

means we shall concer without a doubt.

19:04

Black power. Mukasa

19:13

was Wrap's right hand man. I

19:17

was assigned to travel rap wherever he would

19:19

go. And that we started traveling,

19:22

and as we traveled throughout different

19:24

areas everywhere would go to cities

19:26

would be on fire, catching on

19:28

fire. Right after we leave, he

19:32

would go out in the battlefields

19:34

and go out there with them folks

19:36

doing five arms and fighting and

19:38

burning and whatever. And he would always

19:41

ready to go do that. And whenever he

19:43

talked, he go with him. And when

19:45

the rebellions started wrapped beyond the front

19:47

line in

19:50

nineteen sixty seven, there were at least seventy

19:52

five uprisings or rebellions and

19:54

cities across the country, from

19:57

San Francisco to Cincinnati to New York.

20:00

People took to the streets. Even

20:02

Doctor King and his organization field

20:05

rep Brown so much that even if

20:07

he wasn't nowhere around, that was

20:09

gonna be somebody in the crowd let's

20:11

say black power and

20:14

throw a brick or throw a brick at the police.

20:16

And the police didn't discriminate, they didn't running

20:18

there and stop beating them all. As

20:22

part of cointelpro the FBI's

20:24

program aimed at preventing the rise of a so called

20:26

black messiah. The Bureau used

20:28

dirty tricks to disrupt SNICK and other

20:31

black power groups. Agents

20:33

began surveilling a Rap and apparently

20:35

targeted him with trumped up or entirely

20:37

fabricated criminal charges. The

20:40

conflict seemed to reach a climax when a car bomb

20:42

exploded, killing two SNACK activists.

20:45

There were conflicting theories about what happened, but

20:47

it looked like the bomb was meant to assassinate

20:50

Rap. He went into hide

20:52

it. Police

20:54

departments, the United States

20:56

government and their agents

20:59

they hated reput all the way to death.

21:03

In nineteen seventy one, after more

21:05

than a year underground, Rap

21:07

was arrested in New York City. I

21:10

won't get into the particulars of that arrest now,

21:13

just know that he got popped on an arm robbery

21:15

charge. He and some friends were

21:17

sticking up a lounge to help further their activities

21:19

in the movement, a caper that ended

21:22

in a shootout with cops. Rap

21:24

twenty eight years old, went to jail Rikers

21:27

Island and eventually landed at Attica Prison.

21:30

Tough places to say the least, but

21:32

it's hard to imagine Rap living much longer

21:34

if he hadn't stepped back from the front lines. Death

21:37

was certainly something he prepared for and

21:40

maybe even welcomed. In

21:49

that autobiography, it was published

21:51

two years before rap was locked up, he

21:54

wrote, America, if

21:56

it takes my death to organize my people

21:58

to revolt against you, and to

22:00

organize your jails to revolt against you, and

22:03

to organize your troops to revolt against

22:05

you, and to organize your children

22:08

to revolt against you, and to

22:10

organize your God to revolt against you,

22:12

and to organize your poor to revolt against

22:15

you, and to organize your country

22:17

to revolt against you, and

22:19

to organize mankind to rejoice

22:21

in your destruction and ruin, then

22:24

here is my life. But

22:28

within weeks, maybe months,

22:30

of his arrest, that seemed to change. He

22:33

converted to Islam. A transformation

22:36

was underway. Some would

22:38

even say the creation of a new

22:40

man, Jamil, Beautiful

22:44

Abdullah, servant of God,

22:47

Alamin the Trustworthy.

23:07

My own conversion to Islam happened

23:10

in the fifth grade.

23:13

We'd been Baptist and Pentecostal,

23:16

and then my father found new faith and

23:18

he wanted all of us, my mom and two

23:21

younger siblings to follow suit. My

23:24

parents put me out of public school and sent me to

23:26

a Muslim private school. I

23:28

got so being out of shape by the change that

23:31

during my second week at the new school, I

23:33

got super sick and had to stay home. When

23:36

I felt better, my parents finally let

23:38

me go back to public school and joined my old

23:40

friends. In time,

23:43

I accepted Islam for a good while.

23:45

Anyway, I made my salots

23:47

and facet for Ramadan, but

23:49

I always occupied this weird in between

23:51

spot, not fitting in all the way

23:54

with the Muslim kids and feeling different from

23:56

my non Muslim friends. An

23:58

insider, outsider in both way worlds, an

24:01

observer. When

24:04

I went to college, I studied comparative religion,

24:07

trying on other beliefs. I

24:09

realize pretty young that what we believe,

24:12

the way we structure our worlds, and the stories

24:14

we tell ourselves, all of that can

24:16

be totally changed with the flip of a

24:18

switch. Part

24:21

of why I pursued writing when I graduated college,

24:24

and why I'm so drawn to complex stories like

24:26

this, is because I sense the power

24:28

stories have over our lives.

24:31

What are myths but stories we believe in? With

24:33

cosmic stakes

24:39

and Ma'am Jimille's conversion, his

24:42

flip of that switch was obviously

24:44

pivotal in his life. But

24:47

what kind of man did it make him? Rap,

24:50

the man who was throwing fire bombs in the streets,

24:53

who people believe escaped an assassination attempt

24:56

by the federal government. I can

24:58

imagine him shooting sheriff's deputies coming into

25:00

his neighborhood to arrest him. But

25:02

a Mam Jamil, all these years

25:05

later, that was much less

25:07

clear. Converting

25:10

to Islam. It was something I shared

25:12

with a Ma'am Jamil, something my family

25:14

shared with him, and something that connected

25:17

us to lots of other African Americans. We

25:20

believe anywhere from twenty to thirty

25:22

percent of the African slaves

25:25

were either Muslim or exposed

25:27

Islam in West Africa. This

25:30

is a man Pleman Elamine, maybe

25:32

the most prominent elder in Atlanta's African

25:34

American Muslim community and

25:37

the peer of a Mam Jamil. A

25:39

man Pleman believes that through our ancestors,

25:41

Black people have a deep and innate connection

25:44

to Islam, like it's somewhere

25:46

in our DNA.

25:49

And when Rap became Muslim in jail, he was

25:51

joining something ever tradition. Because

25:53

the history of African American Islam is

25:56

linked to incarceration and

25:58

to the Nation of Islam, the black

26:00

nationalist organization found in the nineteen

26:03

thirties. The Nation did a

26:05

lot of ministry in prisons. Its

26:07

message that the white man was a devil

26:10

resonated with black people living under the yoke

26:12

of oppression. Malcolm

26:14

extrajoined the Nation when he was in prison, and

26:16

after he got out, eventually became

26:18

its spokesperson. But

26:20

like many others, he left the organization

26:23

for Sunni Islam, which is more closely

26:25

based on the Qur'an. The

26:27

vast majority of the world's Muslims are Sunni,

26:31

and as new sects of Sunni Islam developed

26:33

in the United States, they also

26:35

recruited in prisons. When

26:38

people in prison, they have to have to think, you

26:40

know, really, that's Malcolm. He came to Islam

26:42

by being in prison and just studying

26:45

and reading and trying to come with some solutions.

26:47

So that's been a tradition in

26:50

our community and

26:52

where gangs are really dominant

26:54

in prisons, and many folks see the salvation

26:56

as being a Muslim, so

26:59

they get the protection of the brotherhood

27:01

or even the sisterhood. And it's

27:04

also a great productive

27:07

way of spinning your time

27:09

organizing your time, organizing your days. Yeah,

27:11

yeah, yeah.

27:14

It was a Sunni movement called dar Ul Islam

27:17

that reached Rap. Darul

27:19

was based at Amasthid in the Beverid Stuyvesant neighborhood

27:21

of Brooklyn, not far from where I live

27:23

now. Actually, Daroul

27:26

used to send men to minister to inmates of the notorious

27:28

Rikers Island jail where Rap was being

27:30

held, and those

27:32

men met Rap at a moment when he was trying to make

27:35

sense of what was happening in him and around

27:37

him. Rapp said

27:39

the fact that Malcolm X converted to Islam made

27:41

him take it more seriously. The

27:44

men from dar Oul organized Friday Juma services

27:46

at Rikers and Rap attended. In

27:49

nineteen seventy one, he took the Shahada,

27:51

the oath to become Muslim. When

27:55

he got out of prison. In nineteen seventy six,

27:57

a man Jamil made the pilgrimage to Mecca and completed

28:00

the Hodge. He moved to Atlanta,

28:02

and not long after he arrived he founded the Western

28:05

Community Master, and Man

28:07

Cleman was a leader at another Master across town.

28:10

I had the role of

28:12

keeping a relationship with AmAm

28:15

Jamil always found him very

28:17

very Islamic,

28:20

but always very polite and

28:23

uh wonderful

28:25

hospitality, and

28:28

it's really very

28:30

decent person. How much of what

28:32

he was doing in the West End did you see as a continuation

28:35

of who he had been before or was it a departure.

28:38

Yeah, No, he made a complete change.

28:40

He made a complete change. But I

28:43

see it as the prophet at my

28:46

question reminded the man cleman of a hadith a

28:48

teaching from the prophet. Behind came a

28:51

follower asked a prophet a question. We

28:54

all have genes. The gen that is

28:58

really is the identity that earth the devil

29:02

is this fiery nature, the passionate

29:04

nature that is willing to reject

29:07

God. And the prophet said,

29:09

yes, we all have gens, even myself.

29:12

But I've made my gin a Muslim.

29:15

So there's Mohammed the prophet saying that he's made his

29:17

gin a Muslim. So I see

29:20

Jamil in the same way that he

29:22

had this fiery nature of h rap brown,

29:25

and he didn't just give

29:28

it up and let it go. He just made it a

29:30

Muslim. So he got the advantages

29:32

of having that passionate, fiery

29:34

pod, but it was always

29:37

under a control then, and

29:40

he was made a total conversion.

29:44

If a man Jamil had made a total conversion, if

29:47

his gin his devil, his

29:49

fire was always under control. It

29:52

was hard to see him shooting two sheriff's deputies.

29:55

But if he ever let the fire of rap Brown loose,

29:58

I thought I might find the embers burning in the West

30:01

the community a manager Meal founded and led Rahap's

30:04

vision that at least seems to have made

30:06

its mark on the new Muslim village. So

30:09

much of what the community aspired to be and often

30:11

became a place of their own where black

30:13

people could govern themselves, where they could

30:15

thrive and feel safe to raise their children. That

30:18

echoed the black nationalist's ideal. But

30:20

that kind of utopia didn't just materialize.

30:24

There were too many obstacles. It took

30:26

work, faith, passion. Had

30:29

a manmaged Meal ever leaned on his old demons

30:31

too. I

30:50

spent some time around the weston mass Yet when

30:52

I was a kid, maybe popping in

30:54

with my father to make prayer a few times, but

30:56

mostly I would have seen a manager Meal at the e the

30:59

islam holidays when Muslims from all over

31:01

the city would gather to pray, and

31:04

Mama Jamil always stood out there among

31:06

thousands because he carried this sword

31:10

like a scimitar, and

31:12

he towered over everyone. He's six

31:15

foot five. Imagining

31:18

that as a kid, and

31:20

I did go to this week long military

31:22

style boot camp wanted a Maam Jamil used

31:24

to organize in the North Georgia Mountains. I

31:27

must have been twelve or thirteen, and

31:29

I could not have been more out of my element. I

31:32

don't know how to put this politely, but a lot of

31:34

the other boys were drawn to life in the streets,

31:37

and that was the last thing I was interested in. Later

31:40

I would learn that some of them were already in the streets

31:43

shooting, robbing. There

31:46

was something different about the Muslim boys from the West

31:48

End. Most

31:51

often I would see them on sports teams. Abdusamad

31:55

Jahad, the kid who was in the matchet

31:57

on the night of the shootout, we were on the

31:59

track team together. He

32:01

reminded me about his mother, sister Jamila,

32:04

who always came to our meets. He

32:07

told me that she would be a great person to talk with

32:09

about what it was like living in the West End while

32:11

a Ma'am Jamil was leading the community. Hi,

32:13

how are you doing? Yes?

32:16

Now, your face looks familiar. Wow,

32:23

now I remember you. Sister.

32:27

Jamila grew up in Atlanta and went to Clark Atlanta

32:29

University. It's one of the historically

32:31

black colleges that bordered the West End. When

32:34

she was still in college, Jamila took the shahada

32:36

from my mam Jamil. We

32:42

went into the mess yet and he

32:44

asked me, why anyone forcing me to become

32:46

Muslim. I said no, you know, so

32:48

he told me, you know, to testify

32:50

that there's no guard but a law, you know. And

32:53

I became Muslim. I felt free.

32:56

I felt so happy, and he became

32:59

more like a uncle father

33:01

figure for me because I

33:03

was eighteen and I was

33:06

you know. He had a corner store at that time,

33:09

so I would go into the store and talk

33:11

to him, and I felt

33:14

like, Okay, this is my new family,

33:16

you know. And Mam Jamil ran

33:19

that corner store Jamila mentioned, just across the street

33:21

from the mass Jed and across another street

33:23

from Weston Park. During

33:25

the day, a Mam Jamil might play basketball with kids

33:28

from the neighborhood. Everyone says he could

33:30

really ball. He talked to people

33:32

who came into the store or chill outside,

33:35

maybe sitting at a picnic table, greeting

33:37

neighbors as they walked by, offering them

33:39

counsel and

33:41

the Mam Jamil led the daily prayers in the mass Jed

33:44

and delivered sermons during their Friday Juma services.

33:49

A member of the mass Jed shared some recordings of his

33:51

sermons with us. How

33:54

do we increase our remembrance of a law? It

33:58

is through the establishment of lot, through

34:01

the prayer and the maintaining

34:03

of the prayer and the punctuality

34:06

in coming to prayer. The message

34:08

he was giving to the faithful, attend prayer

34:10

as much as you can take care of your families

34:13

and care for others in the Masjed. You

34:15

have to begin to practice your prayer now

34:18

in congregation because

34:21

this is afforded to you. But when

34:23

the repression comes, it might be a

34:25

situation where you might as in many different

34:27

countries, you have to move around and move

34:30

your places of congregational prayer. But

34:33

right now you don't have to do that, But

34:35

that might be the case. AmAm

34:38

Demil tried to create something like a village in the

34:40

West End. The Masjed hosted

34:42

festivals and barbecues. Jamila

34:44

started a summer camp for elementary school kids

34:46

and hired teenagers as counselors. It

34:49

was all centered around the masjed and around

34:51

the daily prayers five times each

34:53

day. Jimill remembers

34:56

that part of the community most fondly. It

34:58

was a beautiful thing. Means to see the brothers

35:01

going to prayer, you know, but

35:03

a dyn call and you see the brothers walking

35:06

to the messget brothers coming

35:08

out of the house. You know. It

35:11

was a beautiful thing. A

35:13

man and Jamil also assign a group of men to do

35:16

armed security patrols of the neighborhood

35:18

to establish a perimeter to keep out the drug

35:20

dealing and the prostitution. The

35:22

eighties and nineties, this was the height of the crack

35:25

epandemic in the community.

35:27

The Mastered they were right in the thick of it.

35:30

There are some of the busiest drug corners on the West Side.

35:33

Addicted people used to roam the streets like

35:35

zombies. A few people told me, but

35:38

west End Park, a public park, remember,

35:41

became known as Holy Land. You

35:43

better now tread on that land if you have no business

35:45

being there. There were consequences.

35:50

The rules for members of the community were strict

35:52

too. The women wore long

35:54

dresses and hijab. Men

35:56

wore thogues and coofies. Women

35:58

were supposed to get permission from their husband before

36:01

leaving the house, but for Jamilla,

36:03

at least, that's not how it worked in practice.

36:06

She was close enough to a Mama Jamil to have some

36:08

sway. His sisters used to come to

36:10

me and ask email Jamil, can

36:13

we do such and such? I said, okay,

36:15

you know, so like I said that uncle

36:18

father figured. And he was almost

36:20

often all the time he said yes,

36:22

yes, go ahead. You know, Ma'am

36:26

Jamil was in control, and

36:28

he could monitor what was happening near the mast,

36:30

did in his corner store, and on the

36:33

streets and in the houses that surrounded the park. I

36:36

asked a man cleaning about the amount of authority in

36:38

Mama Jamil seemed to have over the West End.

36:42

Madam Jamil took

36:44

it literally that

36:48

in that community. Now, not saying internationally

36:51

all over the world or whatever, but in his community

36:54

he was the representative of the prophet Mahobbit

36:56

Press peace Field Honey, and so he

36:59

expected the same kind of respect from

37:01

his community as

37:05

they would give to the prophet. And

37:07

then it became an issue

37:09

when somebody was ignoring

37:12

that leadership or going against that leadership.

37:16

Over time, a man Jamil gained

37:18

a reputation in Atlanta for quote

37:20

cleaning up the West End. From

37:23

the outside, at least it appeared that

37:25

he had secured his peace without violence.

37:29

It was family, orented. You

37:31

know, everyone was close knit. It

37:34

was really

37:41

close. I'm sorry, Oh

37:43

yeah,

37:46

it was family. Everyone

37:49

loved each other, everyone cared. The

37:51

sisterhood were very strong, and

37:54

no matter what happened, we

37:57

was there for one another. You

37:59

know, we

38:01

was there for women him. I'm sorry,

38:03

yeah, you moved. I'm sorry. Yeah.

38:06

Yeah.

38:08

Now I'm hearing what Sister

38:10

Jamila is saying about the beauty and peace of

38:12

the community, and I'm

38:14

hearing what a man Pleman is saying about rap making

38:17

his fiery nature, his gin,

38:19

his devil a Muslim. It

38:23

seems like some ways that a Mam Jamil would have thrown

38:25

away if he shot those sheriff's deputies,

38:27

his own little paradise that he

38:30

controlled. Why would he do

38:32

that? It just doesn't make sense.

38:35

I must be missing something. Either

38:38

a man Jamil's transformation from h rap

38:40

Brown wasn't as complete as some would have us

38:42

believe, or the West End

38:44

was never really that peaceful or

38:47

something had thrown him off kilter, or

38:50

was it just that he wasn't involved in the shooting as

38:52

he's been saying for decades now, there's

38:55

got to be more to it. Maybe

39:04

I just needed to talk to more people who lived

39:06

in the West End. So I

39:08

went to a guy named Balao Suni Ali. He

39:11

knew both a Maam Jimil and h Rap

39:13

Brown. In the sixties, Blow

39:15

was a member of the Black Panther Party in New York City

39:18

and that's where he first met Rap. He

39:20

was talking to talk that I

39:23

wanted to hear about, you know, us

39:26

controlling our neighborhood, you

39:28

know, community

39:31

self determination. I

39:33

mean that's what black power is. Black

39:36

people control the

39:39

economics in the politics

39:43

of an area where

39:45

we live. For Balal

39:47

and Rap, part of creating that community

39:50

meant securing it themselves. They

39:52

trained their comrades on how to handle guns

39:55

and they did target practice. It was empowering

39:57

to grow up as a class where he a person and

40:02

now you've taken the power within your

40:04

hands to defend yourself. So you

40:06

know that this level of persecution

40:09

is not going to continue. You know it's

40:12

not going to be my children are not going to

40:14

grow up like this. In the

40:16

eighties, Blao moved to the West End and

40:18

he joined the mass Jed. Blaugh

40:21

told me there were at least two things Rapp didn't

40:23

like and the man Jamil didn't like. Drugs

40:27

and cops. Both came

40:29

into black communities from the outside and tore them

40:31

apart. And many of the people

40:33

who moved into the West End to join the mass Jed

40:36

from black working class neighborhoods in Detroit,

40:38

New York and Philadelphia. They had

40:40

experienced that. On

40:43

the nine of March sixteenth, two thousand, Blao

40:45

was in the neighborhood at his house. He

40:48

heard the gunfire near the mass Jed and

40:50

when he learned two deputies were shot. The

40:52

way he sees it, the blame shouldn't

40:54

fall in the shooter or anyone in the community.

40:57

It should fall in the deputies sign

41:00

that they was coming in and they was wrong,

41:03

because most of the time they come in and they're

41:05

wrong. If they get stopped

41:07

for doing wrong, they

41:09

deserve what happened to them. The

41:12

idea that a man Jamil might shoot at police

41:15

it seemed in line with what blal knew of the man.

41:18

But in this case, he didn't think that a

41:20

man Jamil was the one who did it because

41:23

he said he didn't do it. I

41:25

knew that what they were saying he was capable

41:28

of, But when I heard him say he didn't

41:30

do that, I believed he didn't do

41:32

it, Just

41:34

like when he said anything else any other

41:36

time, I believe

41:39

he ain't never lied to me. So

41:42

the way Blal saw it, a man Jamil

41:45

was capable of shooting the deputies, but he

41:47

didn't do it. What a contradiction.

41:50

That left me with a lot more questions.

41:53

But I did realize the two biggest questions I

41:55

had been thinking about what actually happened

41:57

the night of the shootout and who was a

41:59

man Jimil? Really? Those questions

42:02

were totally entangled. As

42:04

peb allows other contention that AmAm

42:07

Jamil was wrongfully convicted. Lots

42:09

of people believe that thousands,

42:12

tens of thousands. Maybe

42:15

when I was younger, I did a big investigation

42:17

that helped free an innocent man from prison, and

42:19

the reporting mostly consisted of listening to the folks

42:22

who never stopped believing and tracking

42:24

down their leads. A Ma'am Jimial's

42:26

case would be much bigger with tentacles

42:28

reaching into shadowy parts of the federal government.

42:31

You can spend a lifetime tracking down those kinds

42:33

of leads. But

42:36

not long after I began working on this project,

42:38

I read a document that made the reporting seem a little

42:40

more realistic. It was

42:43

a letter that I don't think was ever meant to go public.

42:53

The letter came to me from my producer, Johnny

42:55

Kaufman, who first started looking into

42:57

a Mam Jamial's case. I'd

42:59

met Johnny through a friend of a friend, a

43:01

connection after a random dinner party.

43:04

He was looking for a reporter and host to work with

43:06

on a podcast he was imagining. The

43:09

four page letter was among the reams of court

43:11

documents connected to a Maam Jamial's case.

43:14

Its author Andrew Young, civil

43:17

rights leader and confidant to Martin Luther

43:19

King Junior. Young

43:21

was with King when King was assassinated. He

43:24

would become an ambassador to the United Nations

43:26

and the mayor of Atlanta. Young

43:29

sent his letter to the Fulton County District Attorney

43:31

in Atlanta, the office that prosecuted AmAm

43:34

Jamil. It stated May twenty

43:36

sixth, twenty twenty. That's almost

43:38

two decades after his conviction. On

43:41

his own letterhead, Young wrote, quote,

43:44

I believe that the only reason he was convicted

43:46

was because of the egregious misconduct of both

43:48

law enforcement and the individual prosecutor

43:50

who handled mister Allamine's trial. Young

43:53

was asserting without equivocation that a Maam

43:56

Jamil was innocent, that he was wrongfully

43:58

convicted. Mister

44:00

Alamine, Andrew Young wrote, has

44:03

outstanding character. You

44:06

have the power to now write an a storic wrong.

44:09

This should be done not only for the sake of mister

44:11

Alamine, but indeed for the sake of

44:13

our entire nation and all mankind who

44:15

yearn for justice. Strong

44:18

words right. I

44:20

felt weary when I first started working on this

44:23

project. The community of African

44:25

American Muslims in Atlanta is small. Some

44:28

folks from the West End the are family friends. Why

44:31

should they go poking around old pains that the

44:33

man has already locked up. Gratuitous

44:36

true crime stories are not really my thing, but

44:39

Young's letter gave me a reason to keep digging.

44:43

There were plenty more people to talk to, and

44:46

I was ready to start investigating the details

44:48

of the shootout to determine if a man Jimial

44:51

was responsible for what happened that night and

44:55

I remember that that face, that cold

44:57

faith. I couldn't forget that.

45:01

That's on the next episode of Radical.

45:32

Radical is a production of Camside Media, Tenderfoot

45:35

TV, and iHeart Podcasts. Radical

45:38

was reported and written by Johnny Kaufman and

45:40

me Mossy Secret. Johnny

45:42

Kaufman is our senior producer. Sheba

45:44

Joseph is our associate producer. Editing

45:47

by Eric Benson, Johnny Kaufman, Emily

45:50

Martinez and Matt Cher. Fact

45:53

checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kaylin Lynch

45:55

and Layla Dos. Original music

45:57

by Kyle Murdoch and by Ray Murray,

46:00

organized noise, sound design and mixing

46:02

by Kevin Seaman. Recording by

46:04

Ewan Leed trem Ewen and Sheiba Joseph.

46:07

Campside Media's operations team is

46:10

Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Elijah

46:12

Papes, Destiny Dingle, and Sabina

46:15

Mera. The executive

46:17

producers at Campside Media are Josh

46:19

Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis,

46:21

Adam Hoff and Matt Cher. For

46:24

Tenderfoot TV, executive producers

46:27

are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. The

46:30

executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are

46:32

Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with

46:34

additional support from Trevor Young,