Arun Kundnani receives Whiting Foundation grant for work documenting Jamal Al-Amin

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Philadelphia-based author Arun Kundnani has received a grant from the Whiting Foundation for his work documenting incarcerated activist Jamil Al-Amin.

Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, is described as a Black militant by the Associated Press and gained prominence for his work with the Black Panther Party, as well as a stint as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. His activism was highlighted by his fiery speeches, but also numerous arrests.

Kundnani is the first person to interview Al-Amin in federal prison since 2002 and said the Federal Bureau of Prisons had an “unofficial policy” preventing journalists and academics from speaking with him.

“I was able to challenge that,” Kundnani said. “Had some lawyers who argued that was a violation of my First Amendment rights as a writer and I’ve been able to interview him as a result of that.”

Kundnani’s works focus on race, radicalism, Islam and surveillance, and his project on Al-Amin bridges Al-Amin’s work in the ‘60s, his conversion to Islam while incarcerated in the 1970s and the extensive FBI surveillance he dealt with while being targeted by the COINTELPRO program, which used unlawful methods to disrupt social and political protest groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, from 1956 to 1971.

“He is an absolutely essential figure to the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, early 1970s,” Kundnani said. “In the 1990s, he was one of the most important leaders of Muslims in the United States, so he’s absolutely central to really crucial histories, but he has been dropped from our historical memory … That’s obviously something that I hope my book can help remedy because there’s so much that we need to learn about his life.”

In 2000, Al-Amin was arrested for killing a Georgia sheriff’s deputy and sentenced to life in prison. Advocates for his release have called into question the circumstances of his initial arrest, including Kundnani, who said conflicting evidence presented by authorities should be noted.

“There’s a shootout that happens in Atlanta, one officer is killed and one officer survives,” Kundnani said. “The officer who survives states that the shooter has gray eyes. Jamil Al-Amin doesn’t have gray eyes … We find out that there’s actually an arrest warrant for Jamil Al-Amin from before the incident in which the cop got killed which wrongly describes Jamil Al-Amin as having gray eyes.”

“I think once you understand that, the rest of the case against him starts to fall apart as well, and we certainly don’t get anywhere close to the threshold of reasonable doubt,” Kundnani said.

The 2024 Creative Nonfiction Grant will provide $40,000 toward costs associated with research on Kundnani’s book, “I Rise in Fire: H. Rap Brown, Jamil Al-Amin, and the Long Revolution,” that is planned to be published in 2026.