Quintez Brown, 21, a self-proclaimed racial justice activist working for “the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism” was charged in shooting at Louisville, Kentucky, Mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg on Monday. According to reports, he met with a black nationalist group just last week and has a history of promoting violent radicals such as Kwame Ture and Assata Shakur on Instagram and Twitter.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Daily Wire reported that “Quintez Brown, 21, was charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment after Greenberg was shot at in his campaign headquarters Monday morning in Butchertown, LMPD spokeswoman Elizabeth Ruoff said late Monday,” according to the Courier Journal.
On Monday evening, Louisville police issued a press release stating that “at around 10:15 am” LMPD responded to “reports of active aggressor” in the neighborhood where Greenberg’s campaign headquarters were located, and police determined the shooter seemed to be targeting the candidate’s office.
“Multiple shots were fired within the location and from preliminary information it appears Mr. Greenberg was the intended target,” LMPD added. “Responding officers safely evacuated Greenberg, who was unharmed, but was grazed by one of the bullets causing damage to his clothing.”
Shortly after, police arrested Brown who pledged not guilty on Tuesday morning before a Louisville court.
The Left-wing activist was well-known in the Louisville community and also an MLK Scholar at University of Louisville and “is the founder of From Fields to Arena, a group committed to providing political education and violence prevention training to youths engaged in hip-hop and athletics.”
As flagged by The Daily Beast, last week Brown met with a representative from “Lion of Judah,” a black nationalist militia group and appeared to encourage his followers on Instagram to join the group which believes that black people are the “chosen people” of God, not the Jews. The group has ties with the anti-semitic Black Hebrew Israelites:
Brown’s more recent social media posts, particularly the accounts associated with his campaign for a seat in the Louisville Metro Council, show an increasing interest in Black nationalist and pan-Africanist leaders. He frequently posted photos and quotes of the Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael, George Jackson, and late Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah.
He even appeared to urge followers last week to join the Lion of Judah Armed Forces, a gun-toting group whose leadership has voiced ideas similar to those of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. The latter anti-Semitic ideology holds that Black Americans, not Jewish people, are the true descendants of the Biblical Hebrews. Adherents of the BHI movement were charged with murdering four Jewish people at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City in 2019.
A local spokesman for the Lion of Judah Armed Forces told The Daily Beast he first met with Brown last Thursday, though he said the accused never became a member of the group. He affirmed the organization’s Black Hebrew Israelite beliefs, but maintained they did not endorse the attack or have any foreknowledge of Brown’s plans.
“We are terribly heartbroken over what appears to have been a humongous lapse in judgment,” the spokesperson said. “The Lion of Judah Armed Forces in no way advocates anything of this nature.”
In December, Brown announced his candidacy to represent District 5 on the Louisville Metro Council with a quote from Kwame Ture.
“‘Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today, because the men who run this country are sick.’ – Kwame Ture,” Brown said via Twitter alongside a campaign video.
Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, popularized the phrase “Black Power” in 1966. Though at first Ture was a proponent of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,’s non-violence principle, Carmichael became increasingly radical throughout the civil rights era.
“Carmichael had always seen nonviolence as a tactic, rather than a guiding principle,” the King Institute noted. “In May 1966 Carmichael replaced John Lewis as chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a move that signaled a shift in the student movement from an emphasis on nonviolence and integration toward black militancy.”
The New York Times also reported that barely a month after his selection, “Mr. Carmichael, then just 25, raised the call for black power, thereby signaling a crossroads in the civil rights struggle. Increasingly uncomfortable with Dr. King’s resolute nonviolence, he sensed a shift among some younger blacks in the direction of black separatism. Many were listening sympathetically to the urgings of Malcolm X, who had been assassinated a year and a half earlier, that the struggle should be carried out by any means necessary.”
Brown’s Instagram page is also littered with multiple posts to Ture, including one from 1977 promoting Pan-Africanism, the socialist movement promoted by Ture arguing that all descendants from African based nations should unite around their racial history.
In 1969, Ture moved to Guinea and quickly left the Black Panther Party because it was working with radical white Americans. “He made public a letter announcing his resignation from the Black Panther Party because of what he called ‘its dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals,'” The New York Times noted.
Just last week, Brown also shared a quote from Assata Shakur, a black nationalist and convicted murderer found guilty of killing State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. With the help of others, she was able to escape jail and find refuge in Cuba. She is on the FBI’s most wanted list. Brown told his followers that the following from Shakur was a “a very important quote” for people to read:
“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
In February, Brown also tweeted, “Louisville’s ‘criminal justice system’ is the only infrastructure that is constantly funded and reinforced by the bipartisan white power structure. The intrinsic violence of the jails and the police upholds our racial and economic disparities and our leaders are COMPLICIT.”
Louisville’s “criminal justice system” is the only infrastructure that is constantly funded and reinforced by the bipartisan white power structure. The intrinsic violence of the jails and the police upholds our racial and economic disparities and our leaders are COMPLICIT. https://t.co/oaIwoOqtdf
— Quintez Brown – District 5 (@tez4liberation) February 6, 2022
Though any potential motive has not been declared by police, in January 2022 Greenberg, the mayoral candidate allegedly shot by Brown had recently pledged to crack down on rising violence in part by hiring more police officers.
“There is a huge shortage. Right now, we’re approximately 300 officers short of a full staff,” Greenberg said at the time. “And so we need to focus on recruiting and retaining officers, a diverse core of officers that reflects the community that we serve.”
Greenberg survived the shooting, though his clothing was hit by one of the bullets.
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