Abdul R. A. Hasan was born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1944 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965, served in Vietnam with the Big Red One, and was wounded in December 1965.

He worked for the U.S. Postal Service and became chairman of Black on Black Crime Inc., a Cleveland organization that advocated for families of victims of violence. In 1998 he was convicted in a federal wire case he maintains he did not commit, and served three years.

He continues to speak and write about wrongful incarceration through his organization, Human Beings for Humanity. He lives in Ohio.