BROWN'S LETTER FROM PRISON
{The following letter was written from prison by H. Rap Brown, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Conmittee. The black leader was jailed February 21 in New Orleans for allegedly violating a court order restricting him to the New York area. Brown was accused of making a trip to California where he met with his lawyer and spoke at several meetings.
[Brown had been free under $15,000 bond under frame~up charges of “inciting to riot" and transporting a rifle on a plane. His bail has now been raised to $100,000. Racist officials have added the charge that while under arrest Brown "threatened" an FBI agent. He is due to remain in a Louisiana prison until he eventually comes to trial, unless his supporters can raise the fantastic ransom demanded by the judge.
{One may disagree with some of the formulas used by H. Rap Brown. In our opinion, it is inaccurate, for instance, to call the Johnson administration, for all its reactionary nature, "fascist." Again, to use phrases that can be twisted by the racists into signifying an appeal for violence provides a handle for these vicious opponents of the black liberation movement to seek to justify their own constant resorting to violence. It would be better, in our view, to stress the elementary right of the victims of this violence to defend themselves with appropriate means.
[Nevertheless, the letter is an eloquent document of historical interest as a reflection of a widespread mood today among black militants in the U.S. and freedom fighters in other lands. And its fighting spirit and expression of determination to carry on the struggle no matter what the cost should serve to help inspire all those who have dedicated thenselves to building a better world.]
* * *
Parish Prison
New Orleans, La.
2/21/68
Being a man is the continuing battle of one's life and one loses a bit of manhood with every stale compromise to the authority of any power in which one does not believe.
No slave should die a natural death. There is a point where caution ends and cowardice begins.
For everyday I am imprisoned I
will refuse both food and water. My hun-
ger is for the liberation of my people.
My thirst is for the ending of oppres-—
sion.
I am a political prisoner, jailed
for my beliefs -- that Black People must
be free. The Government has taken a posi-
tion true to its fascist nature: Those
who we cannot convert, we must silence.
This government has become the eneny of
Mankind.
Death can no longer alter our path
to Freedom. For our people, Death has
been the only known exit from slavery and
oppression. We must open others.
Our will to live must no longer
supersede our will to fight, for our
fighting will determine if our race shall
live. To desire Freedom is not enough.
We must move from resistance to
aggression, from revolt to revolution.
For every Orangeburg there must
be 10 Detroits. For every Max Stanford
and Huey Newton, there must be 10 dead
racist cops. And for every Black Death
there must be a Dien Bien Phu.
Brothers and Sisters, and all op-
pressed people, you must prepare yourself
both mentally and physically, for the
major confrontation is yet to come. You
must fight. It is the people who in the
final analysis make and determine history,
not leaders or systems. The laws to gov-
ern you must be made by you.
May the deaths of '68 signal the
beginning of the end of this country. I do
what I must out of the love for my people.
My will is to fight; resistance is not
enough. Aggression is the order of the day.
NOTE TO AMERICA
America: if it takes my Death to
organize my people to revolt against you,
and to organize your jails to revolt
against you, and to organize your troops
to revolt against you, and to organize
your children, your God, your poor, your
country, and to organize Mankind to re-
joice in your destruction and ruin, then
here is my life! But my soul belongs to
MY PEOPLE.
Lasime Tushinde Mbilashaka. (We
shall conquer without a doubt.)
H. Rap Brown
THE