Dr. Huey Newton

Huey Percy Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. In 1945, his family migrated to Oakland, California, as part of the second wave of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South to the Midwest and West. The Newton family was poor and often relocated throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, although he said he never went without food and shelter as a child. Growing up in Oakland, he stated that he was “made to feel ashamed of being black.”

Dr. Newton graduated from Oakland Technical High School, in 1959, without being able to read, although he later taught himself. The Republic by Plato was the first book he read. After Dr. Newton taught himself to read, he started questioning everything. He questioned what was happening to his family and the community around him. This was the start of his involvement in the civil rights movement. Newton went on to attend Merritt College, San Francisco Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he earned a bachelor's degree and, later, a PhD.

While at Merritt College in the mid-1960s, Dr. Newton met Bobby Seale. The two were involved with political groups at the school, such as the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity where they helped getting the first African American history course adopted, before they set out to create one of their own. Founded in 1966, they called their group the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Unlike many of the other social and political organizers of the time, they took a militant stance, advocating the ownership of guns by African Americans, and were often seen wielding weapons. A famous photograph shows Newton, the group's minister of defense, holding a gun in one hand and a spear in the other.

The group believed that violence, or the threat of violence, might be needed to bring about social change. They set forth their political goals in a document called the “Ten-Point Program”, which included better housing, jobs, and education for African Americans. It also called for an end to economic exploitation of black communities. Still the organization itself was not afraid to punctuate its message with a show of force. For example, to protest a gun bill in 1967, Dr. Newton and other members of the Panthers entered the California Legislature fully armed.

The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in black communities and establish social programs to help those in need. They also fought against police brutality in black neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse. Dr. Newton himself was arrested in 1967 for allegedly killing an Oakland police officer during a traffic stop. He was later convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. But public pressure, “Free Huey”, became a popular slogan and helped his cause. The case was eventually dismissed after two retrials ended with hung juries.

During its existence, members of the group clashed with police several times. The party's treasurer, Bobby Hutton, was even killed during of these conflicts in 1968. In the 1970s, the Black Panthers began to fall apart. Key members left, and Dr. Newton faced more criminal charges. To avoid prosecution, he fled to Cuba in 1971, but he returned three years later.

With the Panthers falling apart, Newton returned to school, earning a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1980. In his final years, however, it is believed that he suffered from a drug problem. The once popular revolutionary died on August 22, 1989, in Oakland, California, after being shot on the street by a member of another group in, what is believed to be, a drug dispute.

Below is the Black Panthers' Ten-Point Program:

The Ten-Point Program

1.      We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.

a.       We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2.      We Want Full Employment For Our People.

a.       We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3.      We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.

a.       We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4.      We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.

a.       We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5.      We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.

a.       We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6.      We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.

a.       We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7.      We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.

a.       We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.

8.      We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.

a.       We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9.      We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.

a.       We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the Black community.

10.  We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.

a.       When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.