Huey P. Newton facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Huey P. Newton
Newton c. 1968
Born	Huey Percy Newton (1942-02-17)February 17, 1942 Monroe, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	August 22, 1989(1989-08-22) (aged 47) Oakland, California, U.S.
Education	Merritt College San Francisco Law School University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, MA, PhD)
Occupation	Activist
Years active	1963–1969
Organization	Black Panther Party
Known for	Founding the Black Panther Party
Spouse(s)	Gwen Fontaine (m. 1974; div. 1983) Fredrika Newton (m. 1984)
Children	4

Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary and political activist. Newton was most notable for being a co-founder of the Black Panther Party where he operated the organization as the de-facto leader.

Early life and education
Founding of the Black Panther Party
"Free Huey!" campaign
Visit to China
Writing and scholarship
Death
See also

Early life and education

Newton's senior year yearbook photo, 1959

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 lay preacher. His parents named him after Huey Long, former governor of Louisiana. Monroe is located in Louisiana's Ouachita Parish, which has a history of violence against blacks since Reconstruction.

As a response to the violence, the Newton family migrated to Oakland, California, participating in the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South. The Newton family was close-knit, but quite poor. 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. Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black".

Newton graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959. He attended Merritt College, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1966. Plato's Republic was an influential work in Newton's early adult life.

Newton continued his education, studying at San Francisco Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he earned a bachelor's degree. He was a member of Phi Beta Sigma. He later continued his studies and, in 1980, he completed a PhD in social philosophy at Santa Cruz.

Founding of the Black Panther Party

As a student of the Merritt College in Oakland, Newton became involved in Bay Area politics. He joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity's Beta Tau chapter, and played a role in getting the first African-American history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. Newton learned about black history from Donald Warden (who later would change his name to Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour), the leader of the AAA. In college, Newton read the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, Émile Durkheim, and Che Guevara.

During his time at Merritt College, he met Bobby Seale, and the two co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) in October 1966. Seale became chairman and Newton became minister of defense. The Black Panther Party was an African-American left-wing organization advocating for the right of self-defense for black people in the United States. The Black Panther Party's beliefs were greatly influenced by Malcolm X. The party achieved national and international renown through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and the politics of the 1960s and 1970s.

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 tests, prison busing for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing cooperatives, their own ambulance service and the Oakland Community School, which provided high-level education to 150 children from impoverished urban neighborhoods. 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.

The party's political goals, including better housing, jobs, and education for African-Americans, were documented in their Ten-Point Program, a set of guidelines to the Black Panther Party's ideals and ways of operation. The group believed that violence – or the threat of it – might be needed to bring about social change. They sometimes made news with a show of force, as they did when they entered the California Legislature fully armed in order to protest a gun bill aimed at disarming them.

Newton would frequent pool halls, campuses, bars and other locations deep in the black community where people gathered in order to organize and recruit for the Panthers. While recruiting, Newton sought to educate those around him about the legality of self-defense. One of the reasons, he argued, why black people continued to be persecuted was their lack of knowledge of the social institutions that could be made to work in their favor. In Newton's autobiography, he writes, "Before I took Criminal Evidence in school, I had no idea what my rights were."

Newton also wrote in his autobiography, "I tried to transform many of the so-called criminal activities going on in the street into something political, although this had to be done gradually." He attempted to channel these "daily activities for survival" into significant community actions. Eventually, the illicit activities of a few members would be superimposed on the social program work performed by the Panthers, and this mischaracterization would lose them some support in black communities and white.

"Free Huey!" campaign

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.

The Black Panther Party immediately went to work organizing a coalition to rally behind Newton and champion his release. In December the Peace and Freedom Party, a majority white anti-war political organization, joined with the Black Panther Party in support of Newton. This alliance served the dual purpose of legitimizing Newton's cause while boosting the credibility of the party within the community of more radical activists.

Under the leadership of the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party, 5,000 protesters gathered in Oakland on Newton's birthday, February 17, 1968, in support of Newton. They garnered the attention of international news organizations, raising the profile of the party by astounding measures. The phrase "Free Huey!" was adopted as a rallying cry for the movement, and it was printed on buttons and T-shirts. Prominent Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver claimed the goal of the Free Huey! campaign was to elevate Newton as a symbol of everything the Black Panther Party stood for, creating something of a living martyr. The trial, which began on July 15, quickly ascended beyond the scope of Newton himself, evolving into a racially-charged political movement. Over the two year course of Newton's original trial and two appeals, the coalition continued to offer its support until the charges were overturned and Newton was released on August 5, 1970.

Visit to China

In 1970, after his release from prison, Newton received an invitation to visit the People's Republic of China. On learning of Nixon's plan to visit China in 1972, Newton decided to visit before him. Newton made the trip in late September 1971 with fellow Panthers, Elaine Brown and Robert Bay, and stayed for 10 days. At every Chinese airport he landed in, Newton was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the "Little Red Book" (officially titled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung) and displaying signs that said "we support the Black Panther Party, down with U.S. imperialism" or "we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown."

During the trip, the Chinese arranged for him to meet and have dinner with an ambassador from North Korea, an ambassador from Tanzania, and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam. Newton was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, but instead had two meetings with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao's wife Jiang Qing. Newton described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government".

Following Newton's Asian trip, the Black Panther Party began incorporating North Korea's Juche ideals into the party's ideology.

Writing and scholarship

Newton received a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1974.

Newton earned a PhD in the social philosophy program of History of Consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. His doctoral dissertation entitled War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America "analyzes certain features of the Party and incidents that are significant in its development". Sources for material used to support the dissertation include two federal civil rights lawsuits. One suit was against the FBI and other government officials, while the other was initially against the City of Chicago.

Later, Newton's widow, Fredrika Newton, would discuss her husband's often-ignored academic research during C-SPAN's American Perspectives program on February 18, 2006.

Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.

Death

In 1989, Newton was murdered in Oakland, California, by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family. In 1991, Robinson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of 32 years to life.

Newton's funeral was held at Allen Temple Baptist Church, where he attended following his conversion. Some 1,300 mourners were accommodated inside, and another 500 to 600 listened to the service from outside. Newton's achievements in civil rights and work on behalf of Black children and families with the Black Panther Party were celebrated. Newton's body was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland.

Thanks to the efforts of his wife Fredrika Newton, on February 17, 2021, in commemoration of the Black Panther Party the City of Oakland erected a bust of Huey Newton near the corner where he was murdered. That same year, a commemorative plaque "Dr. Huey P. Newton Way" was applied to this section of 9th Street.