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.

He is currently serving a life sentence for murder following the 2000 shooting of two Fulton County Sheriff's deputies both African-American. He is perhaps most famous for his proclamation during that period that "violence is as American as cherry pie" as well as once stating that "If America don't come around we're gonna burn it down". Rap Brown was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s and during a short-lived (six months) alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party he served as their Minister of Justice.