Bulletin 670
Subject: George Brown.
24 October 2015
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
An American community activist and public intellectual has left us. The death of George Brown, born in Elizabeth,
New Jersey on April 28, 1944
–a
black militant close to the Black Panther Party-- was announced in the pages of
Libération on October 14, 2015. He died in his sleep,
at the age of 71, in his Paris apartment on October 9. Brown wrote of his early
experiences and political education as an African American militant in the
book, Nous, Noirs Americains évadés
du ghetto (Seuil, combats, 1978). A
documentary film of his life, based on a series of interviews with the younger
African American, Rashid Abdul-Salaam, of another generation, was produced by
James Nicholson and Jan Swietlik in 2009. “Nobody Knows my Name” depicts the experiences of these two Black
Americans, from different social backgrounds.
1972, George Brown, a wrongfully imprisoned fugitive and Black
Panther sympathizer, together with 4 other accomplices, hijacked a flight from
USA to Algeria to join the Black Panthers living there in exile, along the
way collecting the highest ransom ever paid in an airline hijacking, 1 million
dollars.
Between 2006 and 2008, the year of the
most symbolic election in American history, Rashid Abdul-Salaam learned of
George's story and set off for Paris where George had been living for
the past 41 years.
This film is the product of conversations between these two men,
as they explore the human cost of the civil rights struggle, the evolution of
racism, and revisit a period in history where conflict seemed to be the only
way to reach equality.
George Brown is survived by his wife of 34 years, Annie Bingham
and their two nephews, Guillaume and Xavier.
See: “NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uijm8nHtdUs