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Huey P. Newton
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Huey P. Newton
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African American revolutionary and political activist who co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale.
Under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs (renamed survival programs in 1971) including food banks, medical clinics, sickle cell anemia testing, prison busing for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing cooperatives, and their own ambulance service. The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service, which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers. In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of police officer John Frey and injuries to himself and another police officer. In 1968, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for Frey's death and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the conviction was reversed and after two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the charges were dropped. Later in life, he was also accused of murdering Kathleen Smith and Betty Van Patter, although he was never convicted for either death.
Newton learned to read using Plato's Republic, which influenced his philosophy of activism. He went on to earn a PhD in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980. In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.
Newton was known for being an advocate of the right of self-defense and used his position as a leader in the Black Panther Party to welcome women as well.[citation needed]
Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1942 during World War II, the youngest child of Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist preacher. His parents named him after Huey Long, former governor of Louisiana. The surrounding Ouachita Parish has had a history of violence against Black people since the Reconstruction era.
To escape the violence of Louisiana, the Newton family migrated to Oakland, California, participating in the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South. The family was close-knit but quite poor, and they moved often within the San Francisco Bay Area during Newton's childhood. Despite this, Newton said he never went without food and shelter as a child. As a teenager, he was arrested several times, including for gun possession and vandalism at age 14. Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black".
In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote:
During those long years in 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 to 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 nearly killed my urge to inquire.
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Huey P. Newton
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African American revolutionary and political activist who co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale.
Under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs (renamed survival programs in 1971) including food banks, medical clinics, sickle cell anemia testing, prison busing for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing cooperatives, and their own ambulance service. The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service, which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers. In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of police officer John Frey and injuries to himself and another police officer. In 1968, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for Frey's death and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the conviction was reversed and after two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the charges were dropped. Later in life, he was also accused of murdering Kathleen Smith and Betty Van Patter, although he was never convicted for either death.
Newton learned to read using Plato's Republic, which influenced his philosophy of activism. He went on to earn a PhD in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980. In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.
Newton was known for being an advocate of the right of self-defense and used his position as a leader in the Black Panther Party to welcome women as well.[citation needed]
Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1942 during World War II, the youngest child of Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist preacher. His parents named him after Huey Long, former governor of Louisiana. The surrounding Ouachita Parish has had a history of violence against Black people since the Reconstruction era.
To escape the violence of Louisiana, the Newton family migrated to Oakland, California, participating in the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South. The family was close-knit but quite poor, and they moved often within the San Francisco Bay Area during Newton's childhood. Despite this, Newton said he never went without food and shelter as a child. As a teenager, he was arrested several times, including for gun possession and vandalism at age 14. Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black".
In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote:
During those long years in 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 to 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 nearly killed my urge to inquire.
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