Huey Newton

Source

• Born: 17 February 1942
• Birthplace: Monroe, Louisiana
• Died: 1989 (shot to death)
• Best Known As: Co-founder of the Black Panthers

Huey Newton and fellow activist Bobby Seale founded the radical Black Panther Party in 1966. Under their leadership the group became a political force both admired and feared for its aggressively militant stance. In 1967 Newton was arrested and charged with killing an Oakland police officer during a dispute, leading to a much-publicized "Free Huey" campaign organized by the Panthers. His 1968 conviction was overturned due to procedural errors. In 1973 Newton escaped other criminal charges by fleeing to Cuba; he returned in 1977 and in 1980 earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of California. Newton was killed in a 1989 dispute with a drug dealer.

Newton's autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, was published in 1973.

For more information on Huey Percy Newton, visit Britannica.com.

Huey P. Newton (1942-1989) founded the Afro-American Society and was a co-founder of the Black Panther Party, serving as its minister of defense during much of the 1960s. Later he turned to community service for the poor.

Huey P. Newton was born February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. The youngest of seven children, Huey was named for former Louisiana governor Huey Pierce Long. The Newton family moved to Oakland, California, in 1945 to take advantage of the job opportunities created by World War II wartime industries. In Oakland the family moved often, and in one house Huey was compelled to sleep in the kitchen. Even though the Newtons were poor and victims of discrimination and segregation, Huey contends that he never felt deprived as a child and that he never went hungry.

Huey attended the Oakland public schools where, he claimed, he was made to feel "uncomfortable and ashamed of being black." He responded by constantly and consistently defying authority, which resulted in frequent suspensions. At the age of 14, he was arrested for gun possession and vandalism. In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, Newton wrote, "during those long years in the Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process they nearly killed my urge to inquire."

According to Newton, he did not learn to read well until he had finished high school. "I actually learned to read - really read more than just 'dog' and 'cat,' which was about all I could do when I left high school - by listening to records of Vincent Price reading great poetry, and then looking up the poems to see how the words looked." In order to prove that high school counselors were wrong in saying he was not college material, Newton attended Merritt College intermittently, eventually earning an Associate of Arts degree. He also studied law at Oakland City College and at San Francisco Law School.

Newton claimed he studied law to become a better burglar. He was arrested several times for minor offenses while still a teenager and he supported himself in college by burglarizing homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills area and running the "short change" game. In 1964, at age 22, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to six months in the Alameda County jail. Newton spent most of this sentence in solitary confinement, including the "soul breaker" - extreme solitary confinement.

While at Oakland City College, Newton had become politically oriented and socially conscious. He joined the Afro-American Association and played a role in getting the first black history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. He read the works of Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and Che Guevara. A child of the ghetto and a victim of discrimination and the "system," Newton was very much aware of the plight of Oakland's African-American community. Realizing that there were few organizations to speak for or represent lower class African-Americans, Newton along with Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966, with Seale as chairman and Newton as minister of defense. Like a wary panther that would not attack unless attacked, so too was the organization regarded.

Cop-haters since childhood, Newton and Seale decided the police must be stopped from harassing Oakland's African-Americans; in other words, to "defend the community against the aggression of the power structure, including the military and the armed might of the police." Newton was familiar with the California penal code and the state's law regarding weapons and was thus able to convince a number of African-Americans of their right to bear arms. Members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense began patrolling the Oakland police. Guns were the essential ingredient on these patrols. Newton and other Black Panther members observed police procedure, ensured that African-American citizens were not abused, advised African-Americans of their rights, and posted bail for those arrested. In addition to patrolling the police, Newton and Seale were responsible for writing the Black Panther Party Platform and Program, which called for freedom, full employment, decent housing, education, and military exemption for African-Americans. But there was a darker side to the group, described in Former Panther Earl Anthony's book, Spitting in the Wind as a party created with the goal to organize America for armed revolution. Moreover, Washington, D.C., intelligence spent many years trying to bring down what they believed to be "the most violence-prone of all the extremist groups."

Huey Newton proved to be as violent as the party he helped to create when he was thrust into the national limelight in October 1967; accused of murdering Oakland police officer John Frey. In September 1968 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. In May 1970 the California Appellate Court reversed Newton's conviction and ordered a new trial. After two more trials the State of California dropped its case against Newton, citing technicalities including the judge's failure to relay proper instructions to the jury.

After his release from prison Newton overhauled the Black Panther Party, revised its program, and changed its rhetoric. While he had been imprisoned, party membership had decreased significantly in several cities, and the FBI had started a campaign to disrupt and eventually bring down the Black Panthers. Abandoning its Marxist-Leninist ideology, Newton now concentrated on community survival programs. The Black Panthers sponsored a free breakfast program for children, sickle-cell anemia tests, free food and shoes, and a school, the Samuel Napier Intercommunal Youth Institute. However, as before, the Black Panthers were not without controversy. Funding for several of their programs were raised as the result of the co-operation of drug dealers and prostitution rings.

Newton tried to shed his image as a firebreathing revolutionary, but he continued to have difficulty with the police. In 1974 several assault charges were filed against him, and he was also accused of murdering a 17-year-old prostitute, Kathleen Smith. Newton failed to make his court appearance. His bail was revoked, a bench warrant issued, and his name added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted list. Newton had jumped bail and escaped to Cuba, where he spent three years in exile. In Cuba he worked as a machinist and teacher. He returned home in 1977 to face murder charges because, he said, the climate in the United States had changed and he believed he could get a fair trial. He was acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith after two juries were deadlocked.

In addition to organizing the Black Panther Party and serving as its minister of defense, Newton unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. In 1971, between his second and third trials for the murder of John Frey, he visited China for ten days, where he met with Premier Chou En-lai and Chiang Ch'ing, the wife of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. While there he was offered political asylum. Newton studied for a Ph.D. in the history of social consciousness at the University of California in 1978. In 1985 the 43-year-old Newton was arrested for embezzling state and federal funds from the Black Panthers' community education and nutrition programs. In 1989 he was convicted of embezzling funds from a school run by the Black Panthers, supposedly to support his alcohol and drug addictions. By this time the Panthers had turned to less violent activism. On August 22, 1989, Newton was gunned down by a drug dealer, ironically in the same city streets of Oakland that saw the rise of the Black Panthers 23 years ago. Bill Turque in Newsweek described a sad but appropriate farewell: "A small florist's card, resting with bouquets of red gladiolus's and white dahlias on a chain-link fence near the shooting scene, summed it up: 'Huey: for the early years."'

Further Reading

Huey P. Newton's Revolutionary Suicide (1973) and To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (1972) provide information on Newton's political philosophies; Gene Marine, The Black Panthers (1969); Gilbert Moore, A Special Rage (1971); and Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1968) also provide information on the philosophies and tactics of the Black Panther Party and background information on the setting in which Newton operated; Spitting in the Wind, by Former Panther Earl Anthony takes an inside look into the Black Panther Party itself, describing the many facets of the organization's operations.

civil rights activist; writer

Personal Information

Born Huey Percy Newton, February 17, 1942, in Monroe (some sources say New Orleans), LA; died of gunshot wounds to the head, August 22, 1989, in Oakland, CA; son of Walter (a sharecropper and Baptist minister) and Armelia Newton; married Fredrika Slaughter; children: Ronnie, Jessica, and Kieron.
Education: Merritt College, associate's degree, 1965; attended University of San Francisco Law School; University of California at Santa Cruz, Ph.D., 1980.

Career

Cofounder (with Bobby Seale), minister of defense, and chief theoretician of the Black Panther Party, 1966-89; writer. Sentenced to two to 15 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter of an Oakland, CA, police officer, 1967; released on appeal, 1970; worked in a cement factory while in exile in Cuba, 1974-77; sentenced to nine months in prison for possession of a handgun, 1987; sentenced to six months in prison for misappropriation of public funds, 1989.

Life's Work

During the 1960s civil rights movement in the United States, no group united the desires of a minority community while alienating those outside of it more than the Black Panther Party. To those it served, the Black Panther Party was a grass roots organization that aided the indigent in the black community, sought to protect the young and old from what its members saw as a tyrannical and insensitive government, and "represented a significant stage in the development of the movement for black political involvement," U. S. Representative Ronald Dellums told Bill Turque in Newsweek. To many of its nonmembers, the Black Panther Party was perceived as a violent, revolutionary gang bent on achieving anarchy through destruction. Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, their fists raised in angry defiance, its members "were more than enough to unnerve an establishment still shaky from Vietnam war protests, civil rights marches, and inflamed ghettos," Dennis Hevesi wrote in the New York Times.

Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party and its chief theoretician, embodied the dual perceptions of the group. He was a man who overcame illiteracy and attended college, debated theories of revolution with social psychologist Erik Erikson at Yale University, gave a silent community a sociopolitical voice, and was nominated as a candidate for the U.S. Congress by the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. He was also a man stained by violence, a onetime fugitive and ex-convict who, in the last decade of his life, abused alcohol and drugs and finally died, as a Time reporter put it, "lying in a pool of blood on a sidewalk in a crack-infested Oakland {California} neighborhood with three bullets in his head."

Growing up poor in a large family in Oakland, Newton began exhibiting antisocial behavior early in life. Hevesi related that Newton "spent his childhood in a state of war with his teachers, being suspended from school about 30 times, breaking open parking meters, and being arrested at 14 years old for gun possession." His inattentiveness in school resulted in his being functionally illiterate even after graduation from high school. But his admiration for his older brother, who earned a master's degree in social work, coupled with his desire to prove his school counselors wrong in their assessment of his abilities, translated into a determination to learn to read and to eventually attend college.

Newton earned an associate's degree in social science from Merritt College in Oakland, and he also took courses at the University of San Francisco Law School. Higher education, however, did not quell his street-bred anger. While attending Merritt, Newton brandished a knife during a political argument at a party and consequently served a six-month prison term. But his quick anger and disregard for authority belied his growing racial and social awareness, his concern about the treatment of his community, and what he felt was the needless impoverishment of the ghetto. These concerns were shared by fellow Merritt student Bobby Seale. Together, following the doctrines of former Chinese ruler Mao Tse-tung, black scholar W. E. B. DuBois, and, especially, civil rights activist Malcolm X, Newton and Seale organized the Black Panther Party in October of 1966, with Seale as chairman and Newton as minister of defense. The name and symbol expressed the party's notion that, like the panther, they would not attack unless attacked.

The manifesto of the party, penned by Newton, demanded the racial equality sought by other civil rights groups of the period in such areas as education, employment, and housing. Unlike the others, though, the Black Panther Party also sought the exemption of black men from military service and an end to what it viewed as police brutality. But the Party's unwritten goal was far different from any of the other civil rights groups. Former Panther Earl Anthony, in his book Spitting in the Wind, quoted Newton as saying: "The ultimate goal of the Black Panther Party is to organize for armed revolution in America." While he could not justify violent actions, Stanley Crouch, writing for the New Republic, empathized with the Panthers' anger: "The actions of the FBI {Federal Bureau of Investigation} and the resolve of the federal government during the great years of the civil rights movement were so faint of heart that the alienation felt by the Black Panthers was not without reason. The contempt for the dignity and security of Negroes was unbelievably great."

Citing a California law that allowed firearms to be carried in public, Newton and Seale sought to secure the black community against oppression. "They patrolled the Oakland streets at night, looking for public abuse of blacks," Anthony explained. "And if they saw a policeman with a black suspect, Newton would get out of the car with a law book and armed with a sawed-off shotgun and explain the black suspect his legal rights." As a result, the relationship between the black community and the police festered. But it was not until 30 armed Black Panthers disrupted the California state assembly in Sacramento on May 2, 1967, protesting a proposed gun control law, that the police intensified their surveillance and harassment of members of the Black Panther Party.

On October 28, 1967, returning from a party at five o'clock in the morning, Newton and a fellow passenger were stopped for a traffic check by an Oakland police officer. Soon another officer arrived. What ensued is still debated, but what resulted is known: one officer was shot dead with his own gun, and Newton and the other officer were wounded. Newton was charged with first-degree murder, and his trial soon polarized the country, radicals against the establishment. The battle cry "Free Huey!" echoed across college campuses already fraught with protest. A poster of Newton--dressed in Panther uniform, sitting on a rattan chair, holding a spear in one hand and an M-1 rifle in the other--appeared everywhere. Party membership increased dramatically with new chapters forming across the nation. Thousands of demonstrators surrounded the courthouse when Newton's trial began. But after eight weeks, he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to two to 15 years in prison.

Two and a half years later, however, Newton's conviction was reversed on an appeal that cited, among other technical errors, the trial judge's failure to deliver complete instructions to the jury regarding Newton's defense. Newton returned to the leadership of the Black Panther Party only "to find that party membership in 45 cities had dropped below 1,000, depleted by arrests, killings, and defection," Hevesi noted. The Party was also split into rival groups that further destroyed its effectiveness. Time described the cause of this fractionalization: "One reason was that the FBI had begun a campaign of dirty tricks--counterfeit Panther documents, fake denunciations of various Panthers as police informants--in an effort to disrupt what the agency's Washington intelligence chief called 'the most violence prone of all the extremist groups.'"

The Party's members were further split between the beliefs of Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the Party's minister of information. Cleaver, in exile in Algeria at the time to avoid criminal charges, advocated continued resistance through violent revolutionary tactics. But Newton, shortly before his release from prison, offered a softer, more mainstream approach for the group: "The Black Panther Party will now try to grow above ground as a political and social issues organization," as quoted by Anthony. Those Panthers loyal to Newton helped him develop social programs in the black community, including a nationwide children's breakfast program, an accredited elementary school, a bus service for relatives visiting prison inmates, and free health clinics. In Civil Rights: A Current Guide to the People, Organizations, and Events, Joan Martin Burke pointed out Newton's desire to seek a "democratic socialist society, free of racism," and to have the Party "participate in every community institution. We believe in intercommunalism--the relatedness of all people. We want to be part of the whole."

But his means to achieve these ends were often illicit. As quoted by Anthony, Newton described how the Party would raise money to support their desired programs: "We will ask donations from black businesses in the {San Francisco} Bay Area to support our community programs.... But we will also ask every dealer of marijuana, pills, cocaine, and heroine, and every pimp and prostitute in the Oakland and Berkeley {California} areas to give us a percentage of their earnings or they can't operate here." And Newton's behavior, Crouch asserted, became detrimental to the liberation of the black community: "The decline in the movement begun by {civil rights activist} Rosa Parks and those marvelous young men who sat at a lunch counter in North Carolina was perhaps most perfectly illustrated by the spectacle of Huey Newton {during a visit to} China, sitting in the Great Hall of the People snorting cocaine and bursting into unintelligible rants."

"Newton's own gifts were poisoned by violence and a streak of singular brutality," Turque pointed out. Newton could be, as John F. Baker described him in Publishers Weekly in 1973, "the least stale and jaded political exponent you are likely to hear, because no matter how tired the ideas he is voicing, his enthusiasm and humor lend them new freshness." But within a year Newton was charged with "fatally shooting a 17-year-old prostitute because she didn't recognize him and with pistol-whipping a tailor who affectionately called him 'baby,'" Turque wrote. After these charges, Newton, who previously insisted that "he would never choose exile for himself, even if he were convicted again on a retrial," according to Burke, fled to Cuba for three years, returning in 1977 to face charges. The murder charges were dismissed after two trials ended with deadlocked juries, and the assault charge ended in acquittal after the tailor refused to testify against Newton.

Newton returned to academics, earning a doctorate degree in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. His dissertation was titled "War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America." But for all practical purposes, it was simply an outline of recent history. The Panther organization, having been broken up by the FBI, was by this time insubstantial. Newton had also begun his own dissolution. According to a Time reporter, Newton "acknowledged drinking two quarts of cognac a day and abusing cocaine, heroine, and Valium." His participation in a 1984 drug abuse program proved ineffectual, as did his attempts to stay clear of the law. He went back to prison for various offenses, including possession of a handgun and possession of narcotics paraphernalia. The most telling incident of his decline was a 1989 conviction for embezzling funds intended for a school run by the Panthers in the early 1980s. By the end of the decade, "years of drugs and alcohol, money worries and repeated jousts with the law had left the '60s firebrand running scared, a paranoid shadow of his prime," Turque observed.

Ironically, Newton was killed on the same streets where he began the Black Panther Party 23 years earlier, gunned down by a 25-year-old drug pusher trying to win favor and promotion in a drug-distribution gang called the Black Guerrilla Family. For many, however, Newton's end had come much earlier. Crouch emphasized that after his social achievements, "Newton went on to become a mere extortionist, perhaps a murderer, certainly an embezzler of funds for a community school. He whiled away his last years seeking one high or another. His death, like that of his namesake Huey Long, was the death of a demagogue, not the loss of a political visionary." And the community in which he was raised and which he sought to help offered this sad but appropriate farewell, as captured by Turque: "A small florist's card, resting with bouquets of red gladioluses and white dahlias on a chain-link fence near the shooting scene, summed it up: 'Huey: for the early years.'"

Works

Writings

• To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton, Random House, 1972.
• Revolutionary Suicide, Harcourt, 1973.
• In Search of Common Ground: Conversations with Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton, Norton, 1973.
• (With Ericka Huggins) Insights and Poems, City Lights, 1975.

Further Reading

Books

• Acton, Jay, Alan Le Mond, and Parker Hodges, Mug Shots: Who's Who in the New Earth, World Publishing, 1972.
• Anthony, Earl, Spitting in the Wind, Roundtable, 1990.
• Burke, Joan Martin, Civil Rights: A Current Guide to the People, Organizations, and Events, second edition, Bowker, 1974.

• New Republic, September 18, 1989.
• Newsweek, September 4, 1989.
• New York Times, March 14, 1987; August 23, 1989; August 27, 1989; August 28, 1989.
• Publishers Weekly, April 23, 1973.
• Time, November 13, 1978; September 4, 1989.

— Rob Nagel

Huey Percy Newton was a cofounder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a group formed in 1966 in Oakland to organize African Americans against police brutality and racism. Convicted or charged with several murders and assaults during his life, Newton was shot and killed in 1989 in the same poor Oakland neighborhood where he had begun mobilizing African Americans to arm themselves in self-defense more than twenty years earlier.

Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in New Orleans, the son of a sharecropper who was once nearly lynched for talking back to his white bosses. When Newton was one year old, his family moved to Oakland. By the time he was fourteen, Newton had been arrested for gun possession. He was illiterate when he graduated from high school, but he taught himself to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law. In 1966 while at Merritt he met Bobby Seale, with whom he formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in response to Malcolm X's call to African Americans to take up arms to defend themselves against the police. The armed and uniformed Panthers patrolled Oakland streets, interrupting arrests and other police activities when they believed that African Americans were being mistreated.

Newton was designated minister of defense and was a spokesperson for the party. The party drew national attention in May 1967, when six armed Panthers and about twenty supporters burst into the California Assembly at Sacramento to protest its plan to ban possession of loaded firearms within city limits. Though Newton did not participate in that event, the Oakland police increased their surveillance on him and his fellow Panthers.

On October 28, 1967, a scuffle during a routine traffic check escalated into a gun battle that left Newton with a bullet wound in his stomach, one police officer dead, and another wounded. Newton was convicted in 1968 of voluntary manslaughter, but the California Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in 1970 because of the omission of key jury instructions. Newton's second and third trials ended in hung juries, and the charges were dismissed in 1972.

Newton's political agenda for the Black Panthers had moved beyond issues of police brutality to a Marxist revolutionary call for change in U.S. society. Newton called for the release of all African Americans from jail and for the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of economic exploitation by white America.

When Newton was released from prison in 1972 following his successful appeal of the manslaughter charge, Black Panther Party membership in forty-five cities had fallen to fewer than one thousand people. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), had targeted the Panthers as a dangerous, politically subversive group. The FBI used informants and fake documents and letters to undermine the party. Panthers in many cities were subjected to local police harassment as well. In addition, Newton became embroiled in a dispute over the direction of the party with Eldridge Cleaver, the party's minister of information.

By the mid-1970s, the Black Panthers had abandoned their violent image and had begun community service programs, including free health clinics, a children's breakfast program, and drug abuse counseling. By the early 1980s, however, the Black Panthers had effectively disbanded.

Newton's role in the Black Panthers gradually diminished in the 1970s, as he had to contend with new criminal charges. In 1974 he was charged with murdering a seventeen-year-old girl and later with pistol-whipping a tailor. He fled to Cuba to avoid prosecution but returned in 1977. His two murder trials ended in hung juries, and the assault case was dropped when the tailor refused to testify.

Newton was found guilty in 1978 of being an ex-felon in possession of a handgun and was found guilty of a second count of the same charge in 1979. During this period he worked on the completion of his doctoral dissertation at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree in 1980 for his work, "War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America." After lengthy appeals Newton was sentenced in 1981. He was charged with additional weapons violations in 1985 but was acquitted by a jury in 1986. After being paroled on the earlier weapons charges, he was returned to prison twice for violation of parole following arrests for possession of narcotics paraphernalia and failure to submit to required drug testing.

Newton's downward spiral continued. In March 1989 he was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading no contest to a charge of cashing for his own use a $15,000 state aid check earmarked for the Oakland Community School, which the Black Panther party operated. The school had been closed in 1982 in the face of allegations that federal and state funds had been misused.

Newton was found shot dead on an Oakland street on August 22, 1989.

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Huey Percy Newton
Born	February 17, 1942(1942-02-17) Monroe, Louisiana, USA
Died	August 22, 1989 (aged 47) Oakland, California, USA
Education	UC Santa Cruz, Ph.D. (1980)
Occupation	Activist
Political party	Black Panther Party
Spouse(s)	Gwen Fontaine (1974–1983) Fredrika Newton (1984–1989)

Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989), was co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, an African-American organization established to promote Black Power, civil rights and self-defense.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Founding of the Black Panthers 1.3 Work in the Black Panthers 1.4 Accusation of murder 1.5 Later life 1.6 Death 2 In popular culture 3 Bibliography 4 Books, articles, and oral histories by or with Huey P. Newton 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Biography

Early life

Huey P. Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana to Armelia and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist minister; he was the youngest child in his family, and was named after Huey Long. Newton's family moved to California when he was three. Despite completing his secondary education at Oakland Technical High School, Newton did not know how to read. During his course of self-study, he struggled to read Plato's Republic, which he understood after persistently reading it through five times. It was this success, he told an interviewer, that was the spark that caused him to become a leader.^[1] Newton once claimed he studied law to become a better burglar. As a teenager, he was arrested several times for minor offences and supported himself in college by burglarizing homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills areas and committing other petty crime. By age 14, he had been arrested for gun possession and vandalism.^[2]

Founding of the Black Panthers

While at Merritt College, Newton had become actively involved in politics in the Bay Area. He joined the Afro-American Association, became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. Beta Tau chapter, and played a role in getting the first black history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. He read the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara. It was during his time at Merritt College^[3] that Newton, along with Bobby Seale, organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966. Seale assumed the role of Chairman, while Newton became Minister of Defense.^[4]

Work in the Black Panthers

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Newton and Seale decided early on that the police's abuse of power in Oakland against African-Americans had to be stopped. From his law studies at college, Newton was well-versed in the California penal code and state law regarding weapons, and so was able to persuade a number of African-Americans to exercise their legal right to openly bear arms (as concealed firearms were illegal). Members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense bore their rifles and shotguns and began patrolling areas where the Oakland police were allegedly committing racially-motivated crimes against the community's black citizens. The street patrols had broad support in the local African-American community. Newton and Seale were also responsible for writing the Black Panther Party Platform and Program, derived largely from Newton’s Maoist influences. Newton was instrumental in the creation of a breakfast program feeding hundreds of children of the local communities before they went to school each day.

Accusation of murder

Newton was accused of murdering Oakland police officer John Frey.

Frey had stopped Newton before dawn on October 28, 1967, and attempted to disarm and discourage the Panther patrols. After fellow officer Herbert Heanes arrived for backup, shots were fired, and all three were wounded. Heanes testified that the shooting began after Newton was under arrest, and a surprise witness testified that Newton shot Frey with Frey's own gun as they wrestled.^[5][6] No gun for Frey or Newton was found.^[6] Newton himself claimed that Frey shot him first, which made him subsequently pass out for the rest of the incident; Newton also claimed that it appeared (from the courtroom testimony of the surviving officer) that the two police officers either shot each other, or there was a third shooter (most likely the former).^[7] Frey was hit four times and died within the hour, while Heanes was left in a serious condition with three bullet wounds. With a bullet wound to the abdomen, Newton staggered into the city's Kaiser Hospital. He was admitted but was later shocked to find himself chained to his bed.^[8] Newton also recalls in his book vague images of being operated on in the hospital while police were interrogating him.

Charged with murdering Frey, Newton was convicted in September 1968 of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 2–15 years in prison. In May 1970, the California Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. After two subsequent mistrials, the State of California dropped the case.^[8]

While Huey was imprisoned, his party's membership declined significantly in several cities. The FBI, which deployed the counter-insurgency tactics of operation COINTELPRO, actively campaigned to eliminate the Black Panthers' 'community outreach' programs such as free breakfasts for children, sickle-cell disease tests, free food and free clothing. Funding for several of the programs was raised courtesy of the only independent commerce in the area: drug dealers and prostitution-ring leaders. Bobby Seale later wrote about his belief in Newton’s involvement and attempted takeover of the Oakland drug trade, further claiming that Newton attempted to 'shake down' pimps and drug dealers; as a result, a contract was taken out on Newton’s life. But this story was never proven. It is suggested that such mutual paranoia between the long-time friends and party co-founders, Seale and Newton, was created by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. The FBI sent what became known as the "brown" letters — fabricated letters (often bearing death threats) seemingly written by Panthers. The ensuing fear triggered sharp declines in membership, and the eventual failure of the Party.

Funding for the Black Panther Party survival programs, included free children's breakfasts, food and shoe give aways, free clinics, free sickle cell anemia testing, free lead poisoning testing, free senior citizen security and free pet control, always came from various sources. Primary sources were the poor people from the communities it served, independent vendors, and celebrities like Marlon Brando, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Jim Brown, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown.

The decline of the Panther membership only took place after the FBI succeeded in dividing the Panther leadership in 1971. Panther membership at its height in 1970 was 5,000 to 7,000. In 1974, several charges were filed against Newton, and he was also accused of murdering a 17-year-old prostitute, Kathleen Smith. Newton did not appear in court. His bail was revoked, a bench warrant was issued and Newton was added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 'most wanted' list. Newton had jumped bail and escaped to Cuba, where he spent 3 years in exile.

In January 1977, Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones visited Newton in Cuba.^[9] After Jones fled to Jonestown, Guyana, Newton spoke to Temple members in Jonestown via phone patch supporting Jones during one of the Temple's earliest "White Nights."^[10] Newton's cousin, Stanley Clayton, was one of the few residents of Jonestown to escape the 1978 tragedy, during which more than 900 Temple members were ordered by Jones to commit suicide.^[10] Newton returned home in 1977 to face murder charges because, he said, the climate in the United States had changed, and he believed he could get a fair trial. Because the evidence was largely circumstantial and not solid beyond hearsay, Newton was acquitted of Smith's murder after two trials were deadlocked.

Later life

Newton earned a bachelor's degree from University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974. He was enrolled as a graduate student in History of Consciousness at University of California, Santa Cruz in 1978, when he arranged to take a reading course from famed evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, while in prison. He and Trivers became close friends. Trivers and Newton published an influential analysis of the role of flight crew self-deception in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90.^[11] Later, Newton's widow, Frederika Newton, would discuss her husband's often-ignored academic leanings on C-SPAN's "American Perspectives" program on February 18, 2006, mentioning that Newton earned a Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz in 1980. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America."^[12]

In 1985, Newton was charged with embezzling state and federal funds from the Black Panthers' community education and nutrition programs. He was convicted in 1989. It was later rumored that Newton had embezzled the money to support an alcohol and drug addiction. He volunteered for alcohol/drug treatment at Alta Bates' treatment center in Berkeley and was successfully completing treatment when San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Herb Caen, made Newton's circumstances public. Under a barrage of news coverage, Newton left Alta Bates prematurely.

Death

On August 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot on the 1400 block of 9th street in West Oakland by a 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member, Tyrone Robinson.^[13] Robinson was convicted of the murder in August 1991 and sentenced to 32 years for the crime.^[14] Official accounts claimed that the killer was a known drug dealer in Oakland.^[3]

Robinson contended that Newton pulled a gun when the two met at a street corner in the neighborhood, Sergeant Mercado said, but investigators said they found no evidence Newton had been armed. The killing occurred in a neighborhood where Newton, as minister of defense for the Black Panthers, once tried to set up social programs to help destitute blacks.

Newton's last words, as he stood facing his killer, were, "You can kill my body, but you can't kill my soul. My soul will live forever!" He was then shot three times in the face by Robinson, who went by the street name "Double R". ^[15]

In popular culture

There are many references to Huey Newton in popular music, including in the songs "Changes" by Tupac Shakur,^[16] "Welcome To The Terrordome" by Public Enemy, "Queens Get The Money" by Nas, "Sunny Kim" by Andre Nickatina, "Same Thing" by Flobots, "Dreams" by The Game, "You Can't Murder Me" by Papoose, "Police State" by Dead Prez, "Propaganda" by Dead Prez "We Want Freedom" by Dead Prez. In the comic strip and cartoon show The Boondocks, the main character Huey Freeman, a ten year-old African-American revolutionary, is named after Newton; another reference comes when Freeman starts an independent newspaper, dubbing it the Free Huey World Report.^[17] In 1996, A Huey P. Newton Story was performed on stage by veteran actor Roger Guenveur Smith. The one-man play later was made into an award-winning 2001 film directed by Spike Lee.^[18]

Bibliography

• Brown, Elaine. A Taste of Power. (Anchor Books: 1993) ISBN 0-385-47107-6.
• Philip S. Foner (editor) The Black Panthers Speak - The Manifesto of the Party: The First Complete Documentary Record of the Panther's Program (Dial, 1970)
• "People of the state of California, plaintiff & respondent, vs. Huey P. Newton, defendant and appellant: Appellant's opening brief" (ERIC reports)
• Hilliard, David and Keith and Kent Zimmerman. Huey: Spirit of the Panther (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006)
• Jeffries, Judson L. Huey P. Newton, The Radical Theorist (University of Mississippi Press, 2002)
• Pearson, Hugh. Shadow of the Panther: Huey P. Newton and the Price of Black |Power in America (Addison Wesley, 1994)
• Seale, Bobby. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (Random House, 1970)
• Obituary in New York Times by Dennis Hevesi, (August 23, 1989). "Huey Newton Symbolized the Rising Black Anger of a Generation"

Books, articles, and oral histories by or with Huey P. Newton

• Huey Newton Speaks oral history by Huey P. Newton (Paredon Records, 1970)
• Huey!: Listen Whitey! protest songs/spoken word by Huey P. Newton; produced by American Documentary Films; released by Folkways Records (1972)
• To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton Toni Morrison (Editor) (Random House, 1972)
• Revolutionary Suicide with J. Herman Blake (Random House, 1973; republished in 1995 with introduction by Blake)
• Insights and Poems by Huey P. Newton, Ericka Huggins 1975)
• War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America by Huey P. Newton (Harlem River Press, 1996: the published version of Newton's PhD thesis)
• The Huey P. Newton Reader David Hilliard and Donald Weise (Editors) (Seven Stories Press, 2002)
• Essays from the Minister of Defense by Huey P Newton
• The Genius of Huey P. Newton by Huey P. Newton
• The original vision of the Black Panther Party by Huey P Newton
• Huey Newton talks to the movement about the Black Panther Party, cultural nationalism, SNCC, liberals and white revolutionaries by Huey P Newton
• Huey Spirit of the Panther by David Hillard with Keith and Kent Zimmerman (Thunder's Mouth Press)
• To Die for the People by Huey Newton (City Lights Publishers, 2009)

See also

• Black Panther Party
• Bobby Seale
• Cointelpro
• George Jackson
• Soledad Brothers
• Angela Davis
• Elaine Brown
• Political prisoner
• New Left
• White Panther Party

References

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (March 2008)

1. ^ Gates, Anita (February 13, 2002). "An American Panther, In His Own Words". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/13/arts/television-review-an-american-panther-in-his-own-words.html. Retrieved 2009-04-25. 
2. ^ Jones, Jackie (February 17, 2009). "Black History Month Faces and Places: Huey P. Newton". BlackAmericaWeb.com. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/life_style/home_family_life_style/6917. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Biography Resource Center (2001). "Huey P. Newton". Gale Group Inc.. http://www.africawithin.com/bios/huey_newton.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-25. 
4. ^ Seale, Bobby, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, p 62
5. ^ "Witness Says Newton Shot Policeman", New York Times, Aug 8, 1968
6. ^ ^{a b} "State Opens Case of Black Panther", New York Times, Aug 6, 1968
7. ^ The Huey P. Newton Reader by Huey P. Newton, chapters "crisis: October 28, 1967" and "trial"
8. ^ ^{a b} Hillard, David Huey: Spirit of the Panther Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006.
9. ^ Reiterman, Tim, Tom Reiterman, and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Reverend Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. ISBN 0-525-24136-1. p. 284.
10. ^ ^{a b} Reiterman, Tim, Tom Reiterman, and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Reverend Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. ISBN 0-525-24136-1. p. 369.
11. ^ Trivers, R.L. & Newton, H.P. Science Digest "The crash of flight 90: doomed by self-deception?" November 1982.
12. ^ Newton, Huey P. (June 1, 1980). War Against The Panthers: A Study Of Repression In America. University of California, Santa Cruz. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/War-Against-Panthers-Newton1jun80.htm. 
13. ^ "Suspect Admits Shooting Newton, Police Say". Associated Press in New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE6D8153EF934A1575BC0A96F948260. Retrieved 2008-05-12. "The police said late Friday that an admitted drug dealer had acknowledged killing Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party." 
14. ^ Los Angeles Times, 10-10-91, pA22; 12-5-91, pA19.
15. ^ Pearson, Hugh, (1994) The Shadow of the Panther, p. 315
16. ^ Lazerow, Jama; Yohuru R. Williams (2006). In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement. Duke University: Duke University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0822338904. http://books.google.com/books?id=mi2G28ZcmvsC. 
17. ^ Datcher, Michael (October 2003), "Free Huey: Aaron McGruder's Outer Child is Taking on America", Crisis: 41–43, http://www.proquest.com .
18. ^ "Awards for A Huey P. Newton Story". Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278490/awards. Retrieved 2008-06-24. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Huey Newton

• Video interview on African American History Channel
• Online audiorecordings and video of Huey Newton via UC Berkeley Black Panther site
• 1968 interview with Newton
• Newton Discography on Folkways
• A Huey P. Newton Story, Official Film Site
• A Huey P. Newton Story, directed by Spike Lee, as shown on PBS
• Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation
• Black Panther Tours
• Huey P. Newton's doctoral dissertation
• The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: Speech given by Huey Newton
• Newton's newest publication from City Lights, To Die for the People

v • d • e Black Panther Party Founding members Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale Influences Black Power, Robert F. Williams, Maoism, Communism Programs Free Breakfast for Children Panthers accused of murder Mumia Abu-Jamal, H. Rap Brown, Warren Kimbro, Lonnie McLucas, George W. Sams, Jr., Assata Shakur Panthers killed by police Mark Clark, Fred Hampton, Bobby Hutton Other notable members Ashanti Alston, Richard Aoki, Charles Barron, Elaine Brown, William Lee Brent, Stokely Carmichael, Bunchy Carter, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Angela Davis, Aaron Dixon, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Billy Garland, David Hilliard, George Jackson, Jamal Joseph, Chaka Khan, Pete O'Neal, Larry Pinkney, Geronimo Pratt, Malik Rahim, Nile Rodgers, Bobby Rush, Afeni Shakur, Robert Trivers, Betty Van Patter Other New Black Panther Party

Persondata
NAME	Newton, Huey P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	co-founder of the Black Panther Party
DATE OF BIRTH	February 17, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH	Monroe, Louisiana, United States
DATE OF DEATH	August 22, 1989
PLACE OF DEATH	Oakland

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