Black Panther Party Huey Newton Rare Cover Newspaper Vintage African American
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BLACK PANTHER PARTY HUEY NEWTON RARE COVER NEWSPAPER VINTAGE AFRICAN AMERICAN. North Valley Free Press: Vol.1 no. 3 (Feb. 2-21,1968) Chico, CA:NVFP,1968. Single issue of the radical newspaper, 8p., tabloid format, evenly toned, otherwise very good. Much coverage of local activism,studentcounterculture, and the Panthers. Cover photo of HueyNewton and lengthy article on Huey Newton.
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, most known for co-founding the Black Panther Party (BPP) with Bobby Seale. Together, Newton and Seale created the party's manifesto, the ten-point program. Under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs[1] (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 cooperates, 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.[2] Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers.[3] In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of a 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 Patter, although he was never convicted for either deaths. Despite graduating from high school not knowing how to read, he taught himself literacy by reading Plato's Republic and earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980.[4][5] 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 self-defense, Palestinian statehood, and for his support of communist-led governments around the world. Newton also used his position as a leader within the Black Panther Party to welcome women and LGBT people into the party, describing homosexuals as "the most oppressed people" in society.[6] Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Founding of the Black Panther Party 3 Fatal shooting of John Frey 4 "Free Huey!" Campaign 5 Visit to China 6 Allegations of violence 7 Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ 8 Writing and scholarship 8.1 Works 9 Death 10 In popular culture 11 See also 12 References 13 Further reading 14 External links Early life and education Huey 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 was located in Louisiana's Ouachita Parish, which had a history of violence against blacks since Reconstruction. According to a 2015 report by the Equal Justice Institute, from 1877 to 1950, a total of 37 black people were documented as lynched in that parish. Most murders had taken place around the turn of the 20th century.[7] This was the fifth-highest total of lynchings of any county in the South.[8] 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.[9] 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. As a teenager, he was arrested several times for criminal offenses, including gun possession and vandalism at age 14.[10] Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black."[9] 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. 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.[11] Newton attended Merritt College, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1966. After Newton taught himself to read, he started "questioning everything." In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, he states: "Most of all, I questioned what was happening in my own family and in the community around me."[12] 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.[13] Founding of the Black Panther Party Main article: Black Panther Party As a student of 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. Later Newton concluded that Warden offered solutions that didn't work. In his autobiography, Newton says of Warden, "The mass media, the oppressors, give him public exposure for only one reason: he will lead the people away from the truth of their situation."[14] 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. Based on a casual conversation, Seale became Chairman and Newton became Minister of Defense.[15] 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. Newton stated: "Therefore, the words on this page cannot convey the effect that Malcolm has had on the Black Panther Party, although, as far as I am concerned, the testament to his life work."[16] The party achieved national and international renown through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and the politics of the 1960s and 1970s.[17] 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.[18] Many BPP members were accustomed to violence as they were from families that had left the South, where lynchings against blacks had caused thousands of deaths. Newton adopted what he termed "revolutionary humanism."[19] Although he had previously attended Nation of Islam mosques, he wrote that "I have had enough of religion and could not bring myself to adopt another one. I needed a more concrete understanding of social conditions. References to God or Allah did not satisfy my stubborn thirst for answers."[20] Later, however, he stated that "As far as I am concerned, when all of the questions are not answered, when the extraordinary is not explained, when the unknown is not known, then there is room for God because the unexplained and the unknown is God."[21] Newton later decided to join a Christian church after the party disbanded during his marriage to Fredrika.[22][23] 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 Revolutionary Suicide, he writes, "Before I took Criminal Evidence in school, I had no idea what my rights were."[24][25] 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 both the white and black communities.[24][25] Newton and the Panthers started a number of social programs in Oakland, including founding the Oakland Community School, which provided high-level education to 150 children from impoverished urban neighborhoods. Other Panther programs included the Free Breakfast for Children Program and others that offered dances for teenagers and training in martial arts. According to Oakland County Supervisor John George: "Huey could take street-gang types and give them a social consciousness."[26] In 1982, Newton was accused of embezzling $600,000 of state aid to the Panther-founded Oakland Community School. In the wake of the embezzlement charges, Newton disbanded the Black Panther Party. The embezzlement charges were dropped six years later in March 1989, after Newton pleaded no contest to a single allegation of cashing a $15,000 state check for personal use. He was sentenced to six months in jail and 18 months probation.[27] Fatal shooting of John Frey Newton had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for repeatedly stabbing another man, Odell Lee, with a steak knife in mid-1964. He served six months in prison.[28][29] By October 27–28, 1967, he was out celebrating the release from his probationary period. Just before dawn on October 28, Newton and a friend were pulled over by Oakland Police Department officer John Frey. Realizing who Newton was, Frey called for backup. After fellow officer Herbert Heanes arrived, shots were fired, and all three were wounded.[30] Heanes testified that the shooting began after Newton was under arrest, and one witness testified that Newton shot Frey with Frey's own gun as they wrestled.[31][32] No gun on either Frey or Newton was found.[32] Newton stated that Frey shot him first, which made him lose consciousness during the incident.[33] Frey was shot four times and died within the hour, while Heanes was left in serious condition with three bullet wounds. Black Panther David Hilliard took Newton to Oakland's Kaiser Hospital, where he was admitted with a bullet wound to the abdomen. Newton was soon handcuffed to his bed and arrested for Frey's killing.[34] A doctor, Thomas Finch, and nurse, Corrine Leonard, attended to Newton when he arrived at the hospital, and Finch stated that Newton was "agitated" when asking for treatment and that Newton was given a tranquilizer to calm him.[35] Newton was convicted in September 1968 of voluntary manslaughter for the killing of Frey and was sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the California Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. After two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the district attorney said he would not pursue a fourth trial, and the Alameda County Superior Court dismissed the charges.[36] In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, Newton wrote that Heanes and Frey were opposite each other and shooting in each other's direction during the shootout. Hugh Pearson, in his book Shadow of the Panther, writes that Newton, while intoxicated, boasted about having willfully killed Frey.[37] Charles E. Jones, in the introduction to The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), states that this claim has not been corroborated by others.[38] "Free Huey!" Campaign Newton was arrested on the day of the shooting on October 28, 1967, and pled not guilty to the murder of officer John Frey. 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.[39] This alliance served the dual purpose of legitimizing Huey Newton’s cause while boosting the credibility of the party within the community of more radical activists.[40] 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.[41] 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,[42] and stayed for 10 days.[43] 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 US imperialism" or "we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown."[44] 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.[44] Newton was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing. Newton described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government."[45] Following Newton's Asian trip, the Black Panther Party began incorporating North Korea's Juche ideals into the party's ideology.[46][47] Allegations of violence On August 6, 1974, Kathleen Smith, a 17-year-old Oakland native working as a prostitute, was shot;[48] she died three months later. According to the prosecutor handling the case,[49] Newton shot Smith after a casual exchange on the street during which she referred to him as "Baby",[50] a childhood nickname he hated.[51] Newton is also alleged to have assaulted his tailor, Preston Callins, after Callins called him "Baby." Newton posted bond after being arrested for pistol-whipping Callins, a crime for which he was later acquitted.[52] Newton was subsequently arrested a second time for the murder of Smith, but was able to post an additional $80,000 bond, thus securing his release until trial.[53] Newton and his girlfriend (later his wife) Gwen Fontaine then fled to Havana, Cuba, where they lived until 1977,[54] which prevented further prosecution on the two charges. Elaine Brown took over as chairperson of the Black Panther Party in his absence.[55] Newton returned to the United States in 1977 to stand trial for the murder of Smith and the assault on Callins.[53] In October 1977, three Black Panthers attempted to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. Unbeknownst to the assailants, they attacked the wrong house and the occupant returned fire. During the shootout one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, was killed, and the other two assailants escaped.[56] One of the two surviving assassins, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy.[57] In November 1977, Malloy was found by park rangers paralyzed from the waist down from bullet wounds to the back in a shallow grave in the desert outside of Las Vegas. According to Malloy, he and Forbes were ordered by "higher-ups" to be killed to eliminate any eyewitness accounts of the attempted murder of Crystal Gray. Malloy recovered from the assault and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[57] Newton denied any involvement or knowledge, and said that the events "might have been the result of overzealous party members."[49] During Newton's trial for assaulting Preston Callins, Callins changed his testimony several times and eventually told the jury that he did not know who assaulted him.[53] Newton was acquitted of the assault in September 1978, but was convicted of illegal firearms possession.[58] After the assassination attempt on Crystal Gray, she declined to testify against Newton. After two trials and two deadlocked juries, the prosecution decided not to retry Newton for Smith's murder.[59] Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ In January 1977, Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ (commonly shortened to the Peoples Temple), visited Huey Newton in Havana, Cuba.[60] That same year after Jones fled to "Jonestown," a commune he established in Guyana for his followers, Newton spoke to Temple members in Jonestown via telephone expressing support for Jones during one of the Temple's earliest "White Nights."[61] Newton's cousin, Stanley Clayton, was one of the few residents of Jonestown to escape the area before the 1978 mass murder of over 900 Temple members by Jones and his fanatics through forced suicide.[61] Writing and scholarship Newton received a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1974. In 1978, while in prison, Newton met evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers after Newton applied to do a reading course with Trivers as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness. He and Trivers became close friends, and they published an analysis of the role of flight crew self-deception in the 1982 crash of Air Florida Flight 90.[62] Newton earned a Ph.D. in the Social philosophy program of History of Consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980.[63][64] 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",[65][63] among which are how the United States federal government responded to the BPP as well as to the assassinations of Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, and John Huggins. Sources for material used to support the dissertation include two federal civil rights lawsuits. One suit was against the FBI and other government officials,[66] while the other was initially against the City of Chicago.[67][68] Huey P. Newton's autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, first published in 1973 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. 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.[69] Works Huey Newton Speaks — oral history (Paredon Records, 1970) Newton, Huey P. (1972), To Die For The People : The Writings Of Huey P. Newton, ISBN 978-0394480855, Franz Schurmann (Introduction) (Random House, 1972) Newton, Huey P.; Herman Blake, J. (2009), Revolutionary Suicide, ISBN 978-0143105329, with J. Herman Blake (Random House, 1973; republished in 1995 with introduction by Blake) Newton, Huey P.; Huggins, Ericka (1975), Insights and Poems, ISBN 978-0872860797, with Ericka Huggins (1975) The Crash of Flight 90: Doomed by Self-Deception?, with Robert Trivers (Science Digest, 1982) Newton, Huey P. (1996), War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America, ISBN 978-0863162466 (Harlem River Press, 1996: the published version of Newton's PhD thesis) Newton, Huey P. (2002), The Huey P. Newton Reader, ISBN 978-1583224663, edited by David Hilliard and Donald Weise (Seven Stories Press, 2002) Essays from the Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party, 1968, Oakland (pamphlet) The Genius of Huey P. Newton, Awesome Records (June 1, 1993) The original vision of the Black Panther Party, Black Panther Party (1973) Huey Newton talks to the movement about the Black Panther Party, cultural nationalism, SNCC, liberals and white revolutionaries (The Movement, 1968) Newton, Huey (September 28, 2009), To Die for the People, ISBN 978-0872865297, edited by Toni Morrison, foreword by Elaine Brown (Random House, 1972; City Lights Publishers, 2009) Newton, Huey P. (2019), The New Huey P. Newton Reader, ISBN 9781609809003, edited by David Hilliard and Donald Weise, introduction by Elaine Brown (Seven Stories Press, 2019) Death On August 22, 1989, Newton was murdered at the corner of Tenth and Center Streets in the neighborhood of Lower Bottoms in West Oakland, California. Within days, Tyrone Robinson was arrested as a suspect; he was on parole and admitted the murder to police, claiming self-defense — though police found no evidence that Newton was carrying a gun.[70] In 1991, Robinson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of 32 years to life. Robinson stated that his motive was to advance in the Black Guerrilla Family, a Marxist–Leninist narcotics prison gang, in order to get a crack franchise.[70][71] Newton's funeral was held at Allen Temple Baptist Church, where he attended following his conversion.[22] 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.[72] In popular culture In the song "Changes" by Tupac Shakur, Newton is referenced in the lyrics "It's time to fight back, that's what Huey said. Two shots in the dark, now Huey's dead"— although the lyrics were mistaken about the number of times Newton was shot when he was murdered.[73] In the song "Propaganda" (2000) by Dead Prez, on their album Let's Get Free, Newton is referenced in the lyrics "31 years ago I would've been a Panther. They killed Huey cause they knew he had the answer. The views that you see in the news is propaganda." As well as in the Outro of the song, which samples an interview with Newton: [Outro: Huey P. Newton] Uh, we view each other with a great love and a great understanding. And that we try to expand this to the general black population, and also, people-- oppressed people all over the world. And, I think that we differ from some other groups simply because we understand the system better than most groups understand the system. And with this realization, we attempt to form a strong political base based in the community with the only strength that we have and that's the strength of a potentially destructive force if we don't get freedom.[74] The song "Up in Arms" (2015) by American songwriter Bhi Bhiman is based on Newton's life.[75] Agnès Varda's 1968 documentary on the Black Panthers features extensive interviews with Newton during his incarceration. The Boondocks comic strip by Aaron McGruder, and related TV cartoon, features a main character known as Huey Freeman, a 10-year-old African-American revolutionary, who was named after Newton; Freeman starts an independent newspaper, dubbing it the Free Huey World Report.[76] The song "Same Thing" (2007) by band Flobots mentions Huey P. Newton: "Somewhere between prayer and revolution, Between Jesus and Huey P. Newton, That's where you find Jonny 5 shoot shootin', Water guns at the audience while ya scootin'." Newton is mentioned in the song "Mortal Man" (2015) by Kendrick Lamar: "How many leaders you said you needed then left ‘em for dead? Is it Moses? Is it Huey Newton or Detroit Red?"[77] Newton is also mentioned by The Game in the song Dreams "The dream of Huey Newton, that's what I'm livin' through" The fourth track on St. Vincent's 2014 St. Vincent album is named after Newton Newton is mentioned in the Ramshackle Glory song "From Here Till Utopia" Newton is mentioned in Public Enemy's Welcome to the Terrordome, "The shooting of Huey Newton, From a hand of a nig who pulled the trig" The song "Free Huey" by the Boo Radleys, from their Kingsize album (1998) is about the activities of the Black Panther Party when Huey Newton was an activist. The title of the song "Huey Knew" by Ab-Soul is a nod to Huey Newton. Newton is mentioned in Buddy and A$AP Ferg's Black, "I feel like Trayvon with this black hoodie on, Huey P. Newton" Kendrick Lamar also mentioned Newton in the song HiiiPoWeR from his debut album Section.80, "Huey Newton going stupid you can't resist his/ HiiiPower".[78] At the 1:06:54 mark of the stand up comedy special “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert“, Richard Pryor requests the house lights be turned on, and points out and introduces Huey Newton in the crowd, and thanks him for his attendance. Newton is mentioned/discussed in the 1998 film Bulworth as to "why there's no more black leaders in America?" See also Biography portal flag United States portal The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Eldridge Cleaver COINTELPRO Angela Davis George Jackson New Left People v. Newton Soledad Brothers White Panther Party Young Lords RISE OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY It was against this backdrop that Huey P. Newton was organizing the Black Panther Party for self-defense, boldly calling for a complete end to all forms of oppression of blacks and offering revolution as an option. At the same time, the Black Panther Party took the position that black people in America and the Vietnamese people were waging a common struggle, as comrades-in-arms, against a common enemy: the U.S. government. What was most "dangerous" about this was that young blacks, the same urban youth throwing molotov cocktails on America, were listening. This message was amplified when a small group of Black Panther Party members, led by Bobby Seale, designated chairman of the Party, marched into the California legislature, in May 1967, fully armed. Defined as protest against a pending guncontrol bill (which became the Mulford Act) aimed at the Party with the position that blacks had a Constitutional right to bear arms, the Party's message that day became a clarion call to young blacks. When, therefore, in October of 1967, Huey Newton was shot, arrested and charged with the murder of a white Oakland cop, after a gun battle of sorts on the streets of West Oakland that resulted in the death of police officer John Frey, it was indeed the spark that lit a prairie fire. Young whites, angry and disillusioned with America over the Vietnam war, raised their voices with young, urban blacks, to cry in unison: "Free Huey!" It became a movement of itself, the very embodiment of all the social contradictions, between the haves and have nots, the included and excluded, the alienated and the privileged. The freeing of the black man charged with killing a white cop, the oppressed who resisted oppression, was tantamount to the freedom of everyone. One result was not only the flowering of the Party itself but a rapid proliferation of other, like minded organizations. Chicanos, or Mexican Americans, in Southern California formed the Brown Berets. Whites in Chicago and environs formed the White Patriot Party. Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Red Guard. Puerto Ricans in New York created the Young Lords. Eventually, a group of so called senior citizens organized the Gray Panthers to address the human and civil rights abuses of the elderly in society. The Party expanded from a small Oakland based organization to a national organization, as black youth in 48 states formed chapters of the Party. In addition, Black Panther coalition and support groups began to spring up internationally, in Japan, China, France, England, Germany, Sweden, in Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay and elsewhere, including, even, in Israel. At the street level, the Party began to develop a series of social programs to provide needed services to black and poor people, promoting thereby, at the same time, a model for an alternative, more humane social scheme. These programs, of which there came to be more than 35, were eventually referred to as Survival Programs, and were operated by Party members under the slogan "survival pending revolution." The first such program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which spread from being operated at one small Catholic church, in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, to every major city in America where there was a Party chapter. Thousands upon thousands of poor and hungry children were fed free breakfasts every day by the Party under this program. The magnitude and powerful impact of this program was such that the federal government was pressed and shamed into adopting a similar program for public schools across the country, while the FBI assailed the free breakfast program as nothing more than a propaganda tool used by the Party to carry out its "communist" agenda. More insidiously, the FBI denounced the Party itself as a group of communist outlaws bent on overthrowing the U.S. government. Armed with that definition and all the machinery of the federal government, J. Edgar Hoover directed the FBI to wage a campaign to eliminate the Black Panther Party altogether, commanding the assistance of local police departments to do so. Indeed, as Hoover stated in 1968 that the Party represented "the greatest threat to the internal security of the U.S.," he pledged that 1969 would be the last year of the Party's existence. Indeed, in January of 1969, two Party leaders of the Southern California Chapter, John Huggins and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, were murdered at UCLA by FBI paid assassins, with the cooperation of black nationalist Ron Karenga and his US Organization. By the end of that year, nearly every office and other facility of the Black Panther Party had been violently assaulted by police and/or the FBI, culminating, in December, in an FBI orchestrated five hour police assault on the office in Los Angeles and FBI directed Illinois state police assassination of Chicago Party leader Fred Hampton and member Mark Clark. In the interim, there had been the Oakland police murder of 17 year old Party member Bobby Hutton, in April of 1968; the August 1968 Los Angeles police murder of another 17 year old Panther, Tommy Lewis, along with Robert Lawrence and Steve Bartholomew; numerous arrests, from that of Party chairman Bobby Seale on conspiracy charges in connection with anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago to that of chief of staff David Hilliard on charges of assaulting police officers (in the April 1968 police gun battle in which Bobby Hutton was killed) to a conspiracy to kill the President (Nixon) charge arising from an anti-war speech, to the famous New Haven murder conspiracy case of Bobby Seale and veteran Panther Ericka Huggins. There had been every kind of assault imaginable on the Party's social programs and destruction of Party property. From police raiders who smashed breakfast programs eggs on the floors of churches they invaded to those who crushed Party free clinic supplies underfoot to those who caused the destruction of batches of the Party's newspapers. In addition, intimidation and other such tactics were being employed to undermine the Party's support, to break the spirit and commitment of Party supporters and family members. More sinisterly, perhaps, and subtlety were the activities carried out under the FBI's so called counter-intelligence program known as COINTELPRO, whereby the FBI directed its field offices and local police to destroy the Party through the use of informants, agents provocateur and covert activities involving mayhem and murder. Nevertheless, the Party survived and continued to build its Survival Programs, which came to include not only the free breakfast programs and free clinics, but also grocery giveaways, the manufacture and distribution of free shoes, school and education programs, senior transport and service programs, free bussing to prisons and prisoner support and legal aid programs, among others. THE FREE HUEY MOVEMENT AND THE GROWTH OF THE PARTY Hundreds of thousands of black as well as white youth had marched throughout the streets of Oakland and all over America in support of the Free Huey Movement as it had come to be called. While Huey was eventually convicted, it was not on the original charge of first degree murder but for simple manslaughter. Soon, however, even that conviction was set aside and a new trial was ordered. In July of 1970, then, Huey was indeed set free from jail. Thousands greeted him. The celebrations seemed meaningless in light of the July 7, 1970 murder of 17 year old Jonathan Jackson (George Jacksons brother) in the incident that gave rise to the famous arrest and trial of Angela Davis. The question of Huey's freedom was nearly forgotten when well known Party leader Eldridge Cleaver, living in exile in Algeria, challenged the Party's agenda of social programs and proposed a terrorist one. By the end of 1970, Cleaver was expelled from the Party in a nasty riff that culminated in the murder of Party loyalist Sam Napier in New York. Still, the Party continued to build its programs and move its agenda, as it began to consolidate its efforts in its home base of Oakland, California. Over the next few years, until 1973, the Party maintained and built its agenda, despite the brutal assassination at San Quentin prison in August of 1971 of Party field marshal and author George Jackson. Nevertheless, in 19723, the Party entered into electoral politics in Oakland by running Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown for public office, for mayor and city councilwoman respectively. Though that election was lost, per se, it allowed the Black Panther Party to solidify a broad base of support for its future efforts. In 1974, there was great upheaval in the internal affairs of the Party, so much so that by the time Huey Newton went into selfimposed exile, rather than stand trial for the murder of a young prostitute (for which he would be acquitted), most of the original leadership was gone. David Hilliard was expelled while in prison; Bobby Seale was expelled. Elaine Brown took over the chairmanship of the Party during those three years that Newton was in exile, in Cuba. THE LAST CHAPTER During that time, Brown ran for Oakland public office again, this time garnering more than 44% of the vote along with the support of every labor union in the area. At the next city election, the Party supported and virtually installed Lionel Wilson as mayor of Oakland, the first black to hold that post in the 100 year history of the city. In the meantime, it further solidified its base by fighting for and obtaining funds to build 300 new, replacement housing units for poor people displaced by a local freeway; by entering into a working partnership with certain developers to build up the dilapidated downtown city center in order to provide 10,000 new jobs for Oakland's poor and unemployed. At the same time, a permanent primary school was instituted, which was highly lauded by the California legislature, among others. On Huey's return from exile, then, in 1977, the Black Panther Party was alive and well in Oakland, California, maintaining a strong constituency base in the black and working communities, and prepared to move forward to carry out its primary goal to make Oakland a base for revolution in America. Soon after Newton's return to Oakland, in July of 1977, however, a combination of the continued, albeit more subtle and sophisticated, activities of the FBI (despite J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972) and internal stress and conflict came to erode the Black Panther Party. By the end of the decade, it had come to a slow and unheralded demise. 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 Newton's 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 Winds 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.'" Huey Percy Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana. His parents moved to Oakland, California during Newton’s childhood. He graduated from high school without having acquired literacy, but he later taught himself to read. He attended a variety of schools including Merritt College before eventually earning a Bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. During his tenure at Merritt College, Newton joined the Afro-American Association and helped get the first African American History course adopted into the college’s curriculum. Soon after, in October 1966, he and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP). They decided that Seale would be the Chairman and Newton would be the Minister of Defense. Many of the Party’s principles were inspired by Malcolm X and his views. The Party believed that in the Black struggle for justice, violence (or the potential of violence) may be necessary. The Black Panther Party, under the leadership of Newton, gained international support. This was most demonstrated when Newton was invited to visit China in 1970. He was welcomed enthusiastically by large crowds holding up copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung as well as signs supporting the BPP and criticizing U.S. imperialism. After returning to the United States, Newton was tried for a variety of violent offenses such as assault and multiple murders. These charges resulted in him fleeing to Havana, Cuba to escape prosecution for three years. Upon his return, he stood trials for one more assault and murder and was acquitted of both charges. Compounding these challenges was the split that developed between Newton and Eldridge Cleaver in early 1971 over the primary function of the Party. Newton wanted the party to focus on serving African American communities while Cleaver thought the focus should be on building relationships with international revolutionary movements. This rift resulted in violence between the factions and the deaths of several BPP members. In 1989, Newton was fatally shot in West Oakland by a member of the Black Guerilla Family and drug dealer named Tyrone Robinson. Relations between the Black Panther Party and the Black Guerilla Family had been strained for nearly twenty years prior to this incident. The murder occurred after Newton left a drug den in a neighborhood where Newton had once organized social programs. Newton’s last words were, “You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!” Robinson then shot Newton twice in the face. Newton is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland. Robinson was convicted of murder in 1991 and was sentenced to 32 years to life in prison. Huey P. Newton was an African American activist best known for founding the militant Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale in 1966. Who Was Huey P. Newton? In 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the left-wing Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, California. The organization was central to the Black Power movement, making headlines with its controversial rhetoric and militaristic style. Newton faced a number of criminal charges over the years and at one point fled to Cuba before returning to the U.S. and earning his doctorate. Struggling with drug and alcohol addiction in his later years, he was killed in 1989 in Oakland. Background and Early Life Huey Percy Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. Newton helped establish the African American political organization the Black Panther Party, and became a leading figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s. The youngest of seven siblings, he and his family moved to Oakland, California when Newton was a toddler. Though later stating he was close to his family, the youngster had a difficult time early in life, which was reflected in highly erratic behavior at school and on the streets. Despite having multiple suspensions and run-ins with the law as a teen, Newton began to take his education seriously, finding inspiration when his older brother Melvin earned a masters in social work. Although Newton graduated high school in 1959, he was considered barely literate. He nonetheless became his own teacher, learning to read by himself. Creation of Black Panthers In the mid-1960s, Newton decided to pursue his education at Merritt College, during which time he received a months-long prison term for a knife assault, and later attended the University of San Francisco School of Law . It was at Merritt where he met Seale. The two were briefly involved with political groups at the school 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 more militant stance to the plight of Black communities in America. 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 set forth its political goals in a document entitled the Ten-Point Program, which called for better housing, jobs and education for African Americans. It also called for an end to economic exploitation of Black communities, along with military exemption. The organization itself was not afraid to punctuate its message with dramatic appearances. For example, to protest a gun bill in 1967, members of the Panthers entered the California Legislature armed. (Newton actually wasn't present at the demonstration.) The action was a shocking one that made news across the country, and Newton emerged as a leading figure in the Black militant movement. Arrest and Conviction The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in Black communities and took a stance against police brutality in urban neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse. Panther members ultimately clashed with police several times. The party's treasurer, Bobby Hutton, was killed while still a teenager during one of these conflicts in 1968. READ NEXT PERSONALITIES Barron Trump (2006-) ACTIVISTS Bobby Seale (1936-) ACTIVISTS Ruby Bridges (1954-) Newton himself was arrested the previous year 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 of the day — helped Newton's cause. He was freed in 1970 after an appeals process deemed that incorrect deliberation procedures had been implemented during the trial. In the 1970s, Newton aimed to take the Panthers in a new direction that emphasized democratic socialism, community interconnectedness and services for the poor, including items like free lunch programs and urban clinics. But the Panthers began to fall apart due to factionalism, with later allegations surfacing that the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was clandestinely involved in the organization's unraveling. Key members left while Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the party's minister of information, split ways. By mid-decade, Newton faced more criminal charges when he was accused of murdering a 17-year-old sex worker and assaulting a tailor. To avoid prosecution, he fled to Cuba in 1974, but returned to the U.S. three years later. The murder case was eventually dismissed after two trials ended with deadlocked juries, while the tailor refused to testify in court in relation to assault charges. Later Years and Death Even with his legal troubles, Newton returned to school, earning a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1980. In his final years, however, he suffered from major drug/alcohol problems and faced more prison time for weapons possession, financial misappropriations and parole violations. The once popular revolutionary died on August 22, 1989, in Oakland, California, after being shot on the street. Newton had published a memoir/manifesto Revolutionary Suicide in 1973, with Hugh Pearson later writing the 1994 biography The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Newton's story was later depicted in the 1996 one-man play Huey P. Newton, starring Roger Guenveur Smith. A 2002 filmed presentation of the project was created by Spike Lee, and documentarian Stanley Nelson looked at the history of the Panthers in the 2015 film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Born in Monroe, Louisiana on February 17, 1942, Huey P. Newton was named after the populist governor Huey Long. His parents moved to Oakland, California during World War II seeking economic opportunities. Newton attended Merritt College, where he met Bobby Seale. At Merritt, Newton fought to diversify the curriculum and hire more black instructors. He also was exposed to a rising tide of Black Nationalism and briefly joined the Afro-American Association. Within this group and on his own, he studied a broad range of thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, E. Franklin Frazier, and James Baldwin. Newton eventually developed a Marxist/Leninist perspective, where he viewed the black community as an internal colony controlled by external forces such as white businessmen, the police, and city hall. He believed the black working class needed to seize the control of the institutions that most affected their community and formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with Bobby Seale in October 1966 to pursue that goal. Newton became the Minister of Defense and main leader of the Party. Writing in the Ten-Point Program, the founding document of the Party, Newton demanded that blacks need the “power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.” That power would allow blacks to gain “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.” Taking advantage of a California law that allowed people to carry non-concealed weapons, the Panthers instituted armed patrols that monitored police activity in the black community. These patrols led to increasingly tense relations with the police, and in October 1967 Newton was arrested following a Panther-police shootout that resulted in the death of an Oakland police officer. Considered a political prisoner by many on the left, the Panthers orchestrated a Free Huey campaign led by the Party’s Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver. Charles R. Geary, a well-known attorney, headed Newton’s legal defense, and in July 1968 Newton was convicted of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. That conviction was overturned on appeal, and in 1970 Newton was freed from prison. Newton’s leadership of the Black Panther Party in the early 1970s helped contribute to its demise. He led a number of purges of Party members, most famously in 1971 when he expelled Eldridge Cleaver in what was called the Newton-Cleaver split. In 1974, Newton was accused of assaulting a prostitute who later died. Instead of standing trial, he fled to Cuba. He returned to the U.S. in 1976, stood trial, but was acquitted. In 1978, he enrolled in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he earned his doctorate in 1980. His dissertation, “War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America,” was later published as a book. Huey Newton was murdered in Oakland, California on August 22, 1989; he was 47 years old. He was survived by his wife Fredricka. Newton’s autobiography entitled Revolutionary Suicide was first published in 1973 and republished in 1995. Huey P. Newton, a co-founder of the Black Panther Party and a leader of a generation of blacks in the 1960's, was shot to death early today in the neighborhood where he began his organizing. His body was found lying in a pool of blood on a street in an Oakland neighborhood where residents say they fear they are losing the fight against drug dealing and poverty. Dr. Newton, who earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980, was shot several times, at least once in the head, said Officer Terry Foley of the Oakland Police Department. The shooting was reported to the police at 5:29 A.M. The 47-year-old Dr. Newton was taken to Highland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour later. At a news conference this afternoon, Lieut. Mike Sims said there were no suspects and no apparent motive. Dr. Newton, who founded the Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale, became one of the most charismatic symbols of black anger in the late 1960's. After his conviction in 1967 in the death of an Oakland police officer, radicals and many college students took up the rallying cry ''Free Huey.'' At the same time, Dr. Newton and the Black Panthers were accused of being controlled by the Communist Party and were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [ Obituary, page B7. ] In recent years Dr. Newton continued to face numerous legal charges, served time in jail and fought to rehabilitate himself from alcohol and drug abuse. Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. Police investigators said today that there was no evidence that his killing was related to drugs. Where His Work Began Residents of the neighborhood where Dr. Newton was killed said he began his work with the Black Panthers in the same area, working with churches to serve free breakfasts to youngsters. One man, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said: ''He knew everybody down here. This area is part of his roots. This area is where he came up.'' Editors’ Picks How the First Black Female Jockey Rode Into Oblivion Her High School Said She Ranked Third in Her Class. So She Went to Court. How the Religious Right Made Same-Sex Marriage a Gay Rights Crusade Continue reading the main story Fred DePalm, who was awakened by the shooting this morning, said: ''To us, Huey Newton was a hero. The Black Panthers were a thing to identify with along with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.'' Mr. DePalm's sister, Audrey, said she recognized news photographs of Dr. Newton as a man she had seen recently in the neighborhood, which is two blocks from the west Oakland subway station and is marked by abandoned buildings and rundown homes with broken windows. Charles Garry, who was Dr. Newton's lawyer for many years and who defended him in the case of the slain Oakland officer, hailed Dr. Newton as the founder of ''the renaissance of the black liberation movement.'' Mr. Garry said he never saw a violent side to Newton. A Change in Personality ''I saw a very sweet side, a humane side, a dignified side, a man who was theoretically in favor of a better world.'' But Mr. Garry said that Dr. Newton became paranoid and that his personality changed years ago when he became a target of the F.B.I., whose agents tried to infiltrate and disrupt the Black Panthers. ''They destroyed him over 10 years ago,'' Mr. Garry said. ''To me, Huey died 10 years ago.'' But law-enforcement officers said they saw a much more lawless side. Dr. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of the Oakland officer and served two years in prison before the case was overturned on appeal. The second and third trials in the case ended in hung juries. In 1987, he served nine months in San Quentin Prison on a handgun possession charge dating from the late 1970's. And in March he pleaded no contest to misappropriating $15,000 in public funds earmarked for a community school the party ran in the early 1980's. After being granted parole on the weapons conviction, he returned to prison twice on parole violatons. The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Black Power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California.[7][8][9] The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in numerous major cities, and international chapters in Britain and Algeria.[10][11] Upon its inception the Black Panther Party's core practice was its open carry armed citizens' patrols ("copwatching") to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in the city. In 1969, a variety of community social programs became a core activity.[12] The Party instituted the Free Breakfast for Children Programs to address food injustice, and community health clinics for education and treatment of diseases including sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and later HIV/AIDS.[13][14][15] It advocated for class struggle, with the party representing the proletarian vanguard.[16] Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton declared: Malcolm, implacable to the ultimate degree, held out to the Black masses ... liberation from the chains of the oppressor and the treacherous embrace of the endorsed [Black] spokesmen. Only with the gun were the black masses denied this victory. But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun, they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality.[17] Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and Eldridge Cleaver (Minister of Information) led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther Bobby Hutton (Treasurer) was killed. FBI infiltrators caused the party to suffer many internal conflicts, resulting in the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter.[citation needed] In 1967, the Mulford Act was passed by the California legislature and signed by governor Ronald Reagan. The bill was crafted in response to members of the Black Panther Party who were copwatching. The bill repealed a law that allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms. In 1969, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."[18][19][20] He developed and supervised an extensive counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics, designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate and assassinate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain organizational resources and manpower. The program was responsible for the assassination of Fred Hampton,[21][22] and is accused of assassinating other Black Panther members, including Mark Clark.[23][24][25][26] Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth, as killings and arrests of Panthers increased its support among African Americans and the broad political left, who both valued the Panthers as a powerful force opposed to de facto segregation and the military draft. The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.[27] There were active chapters in many prisons, at a time when an increasing number of young African-American men were being incarcerated. Black Panther Party membership reached a peak in 1970, with offices in 68 cities and thousands of members, but it began to decline over the following decade. After its leaders and members were vilified by the mainstream press, public support for the party waned, and the group became more isolated.[28] In-fighting among Party leadership, fomented largely by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, led to expulsions and defections that decimated the membership.[29] Popular support for the Party declined further after reports of the group's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion of Oakland merchants.[30] By 1972 most Panther activity centered on the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Though under constant police surveillance, the Chicago chapter also remained active and maintained their community programs until 1974.[27] The Seattle chapter persisted longer than most, with a breakfast program and medical clinics that continued even after the chapter disbanded in 1977.[27] The Party continued to dwindle throughout the 1970s, and by 1980 had just 27 members.[31] The Party's history is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism".[32] Other commentators have described the Party as more criminal than political, characterized by "defiant posturing over substance".[33] Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Founding the Black Panther Party 1.3 Late 1966 to early 1967 1.3.1 Chronology 1.3.2 Oakland patrols of police 1.3.3 Rallies in Richmond, California 1.3.4 Protest at the Statehouse 1.3.5 Ten-point program 1.4 Late 1967 to early 1968 1.4.1 Chronology 1.4.2 United Front Against Fascism 1.4.3 COINTELPRO 1.4.4 Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey 1.4.5 Free Huey! campaign 1.4.6 Founding of the L.A. Chapter 1.4.7 Killing of Bobby Hutton 1.5 Late 1968 1.5.1 Chronology 1.5.2 Survival programs 1.5.3 Political activities 1.6 1969 1.6.1 Chronology 1.6.2 Shoot-out with the US Organization 1.6.3 Black Panther Party Liberation Schools 1.6.4 Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark 1.6.5 Torture-murder of Alex Rackley 1.6.6 International ties 1.7 1970 1.7.1 Chronology 1.8 1971 1.8.1 Chronology 1.8.2 Split 1.8.3 Delegation to China 1.9 1972–74 1.9.1 Chronology 1.9.2 Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland 1.9.3 Newton indicted for violent crimes 1.10 1974–77 1.10.1 The Panthers under Elaine Brown 1.10.2 Death of Betty van Patter 1.11 1977–82 1.11.1 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party 1.11.2 Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton 2 Women and womanism 2.1 Gender dynamics 2.2 Women's role 2.3 Elaine Brown 2.4 Gwen Robinson 3 Gay Liberation Movement 4 Aftermath and legacy 4.1 Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers 4.2 New Black Panther Party 5 References 5.1 Bibliography 6 Further reading 7 External links History Origins Original six members of the Black Panther Party (1966) Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. Newton (Defense Minister), Sherwin Forte, Bobby Seale (Chairman) Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton (Treasurer). File:Black Panther 65-27 HD 2Mbps.webm Newsreel in which Kathleen Cleaver spoke at Hutton Memorial Park in Alameda County, California. The footage also shows a student protest demonstration at Alameda County Courthouse, Oakland, California. Black Panther Party leaders Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale spoke on a 10-point program they wanted from the administration which was to include full employment, decent housing and education, an end to police brutality, and blacks to be exempt from the military. Black Panther Party members are shown as they marched in uniform. Students at the rally marched, sang, clapped hands, and carried protest signs. Police in riot gear controlled marchers. During World War II, tens of thousands of blacks left the Southern states during the Second Great Migration, moving to Oakland and other cities in the Bay Area to find work in the war industries such as Kaiser Shipyards. The sweeping migration transformed the Bay Area as well as cities throughout the West and North, altering the once white-dominated demographics.[34] A new generation of young blacks growing up in these cities faced new forms of poverty and racism unfamiliar to their parents, and they sought to develop new forms of politics to address them.[35] Black Panther Party membership "consisted of recent migrants whose families traveled north and west to escape the southern racial regime, only to be confronted with new forms of segregation and repression".[36] In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled the Jim Crow system of racial caste subordination in the South with tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, and demanding full citizenship rights for black people.[37] However, not much changed in the cities of the North and West. As the wartime and post-war jobs which drew much of the black migration "fled to the suburbs along with white residents", the black population was concentrated in poor "urban ghettos" with high unemployment and substandard housing and was mostly excluded from political representation, top universities, and the middle class.[38] Northern and Western police departments were almost all white.[39] In 1966, only 16 of Oakland's 661 police officers were African American (less than 2.5%).[40] Civil rights tactics proved incapable of redressing these conditions, and the organizations that had "led much of the nonviolent civil disobedience", such as SNCC and CORE, went into decline.[37] By 1966 a "Black Power ferment" emerged, consisting largely of young urban blacks, posing a question the Civil Rights Movement could not answer: "How would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights, but actual economic and political power?"[39] Young black people in Oakland and other cities developed study groups and political organizations, and from this ferment the Black Panther Party emerged.[41] Founding the Black Panther Party In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense). In formulating a new politics, they drew on their work with a variety of Black Power organizations.[42] Newton and Seale first met in 1962 when they were both students at Merritt College.[43] They joined Donald Warden's Afro-American Association, where they read widely, debated, and organized in an emergent black nationalist tradition inspired by Malcolm X and others.[44] Eventually dissatisfied with Warden's accommodationism, they developed a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective working with more active and militant groups like the Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement.[45][46] Their paid jobs running youth service programs at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center allowed them to develop a revolutionary nationalist approach to community service, later a key element in the Black Panther Party's "community survival programs."[47] Dissatisfied with the failure of these organizations to directly challenge police brutality and appeal to the "brothers on the block", Huey and Bobby took matters into their own hands. After the police killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man in San Francisco, Newton observed the violent insurrection that followed. He had an epiphany that would distinguish the Black Panther Party from the multitude of Black Power organizations. Newton saw the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a social force and believed that if he could stand up to the police, he could organize that force into political power. Inspired by Robert F. Williams' armed resistance to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Williams' book Negroes with Guns,[48] Newton studied gun laws in California extensively. Like the Community Alert Patrol in Los Angeles after the Watts Rebellion, he decided to organize patrols to follow the police around to monitor for incidents of brutality. But with a crucial difference: his patrols would carry loaded guns.[49] Huey and Bobby raised enough money to buy two shotguns by buying bulk quantities of the recently publicized Little Red Book and reselling them to leftists and liberals on the Berkeley campus at three times the price. According to Bobby Seale, they would "sell the books, make the money, buy the guns, and go on the streets with the guns. We'll protect a mother, protect a brother, and protect the community from the racist cops."[50] On October 29, 1966, Stokely Carmichael – a leader of SNCC – championed the call for "Black Power" and came to Berkeley to keynote a Black Power conference. At the time, he was promoting the armed organizing efforts of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama and their use of the Black Panther symbol. Newton and Seale decided to adopt the Black Panther logo and form their own organization called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.[51] Newton and Seale decided on a uniform of blue shirts, black pants, black leather jackets, black berets.[52] Sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton was their first recruit.[53] Late 1966 to early 1967 Chronology Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton standing in the street, armed with a Colt .45 and a shotgun. October 15, 1966: The BPP is founded. A few months later, they begin their first police-watching patrols.[9] January 1967: The BPP opens its first official headquarters in an Oakland storefront, and publishes the first issue of The Black Panther: Black Community News Service. February 1967: BPP members serve as security escorts for Betty Shabazz. April 1967: Denzil Dowell protest in Richmond. May 2, 1967: Thirty people representing the BPP go to California state capitol with guns, attracting the Party's first national media attention. Oakland patrols of police The initial tactic of the party utilized contemporary open-carry gun laws to protect Party members when policing the police. This act was done to record incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods.[54] When confronted by a police officer, Party members cited laws proving they had done nothing wrong and threatened to take to court any officer that violated their constitutional rights.[55] Between the end of 1966 to the start of 1967, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense's armed police patrols in Oakland black communities attracted a small handful of members.[56] Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker for a conference held in his honor.[57] The Black Panther Party's focus on militancy was often construed as open hostility,[58][59] feeding a reputation of violence even though early efforts by the Panthers focused primarily on promoting social issues and the exercise of their legal right to carry arms. The Panthers employed a California law that permitted carrying a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and pointed at no one.[52] Generally this was done while monitoring and observing police behavior in their neighborhoods, with the Panthers arguing that this emphasis on active militancy and openly carrying their weapons was necessary to protect individuals from police violence. For example, chants like "The Revolution has come, it's time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!",[60] helped create the Panthers' reputation as a violent organization. Rallies in Richmond, California The black community of Richmond, California, wanted protection against police brutality.[61] With only three main streets for entering and exiting the neighborhood, it was easy for police to control, contain, and suppress the population.[62] On April 1, 1967, a black unarmed twenty-two-year-old construction worker named Denzil Dowell was shot dead by police in North Richmond.[63] Dowell's family contacted the Black Panther Party for assistance after county officials refused to investigate the case.[64] The Party held rallies in North Richmond that educated the community on armed self-defense and the Denzil Dowell incident.[65] Police seldom interfered at these rallies because every Panther was armed and no laws were broken.[66] The Party's ideals resonated with several community members, who then brought their own guns to the next rallies.[67] Protest at the Statehouse Awareness of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense grew rapidly after their May 2, 1967 protest at the California State Assembly. On May 2, 1967, the California State Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure was scheduled to convene to discuss what was known as the "Mulford Act", which would make the public carrying of loaded firearms illegal. Newton, with Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, put together a plan to send a group of 26 armed Panthers led by Seale from Oakland to Sacramento to protest the bill. The group entered the assembly carrying their weapons, an incident which was widely publicized, and which prompted police to arrest Seale and five others. The group pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting a legislative session.[68] Black Panther convention, Lincoln Memorial, June 19, 1970. In May 1967, the Panthers invaded the State Assembly Chamber in Sacramento, guns in hand, in what appears to have been a publicity stunt. Still, they scared a lot of important people that day. At the time, the Panthers had almost no following. Now, (a year later) however, their leaders speak on invitation almost anywhere radicals gather, and many whites wear "Honkeys for Huey" buttons, supporting the fight to free Newton, who has been in jail since last Oct. 28 (1967) on the charge that he killed a policeman ...[69] Ten-point program Main article: Ten-Point Program The Black Panther Party first publicized its original "What We Want Now!" Ten-Point program on May 15, 1967, following the Sacramento action, in the second issue of The Black Panther newspaper.[57] We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. We want full employment for our people. We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. 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 present-day society. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. 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. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. Late 1967 to early 1968 Chronology July 1967: United Front Against Fascism conference held in Oakland. August 1967: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiates its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize . . . black nationalist hate groups". October 28, 1967: Huey Newton allegedly kills police officer John Frey. There are fewer than one hundred Party members. Early Spring 1968: Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice published. April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King assassinated. Riots break out nationwide. April 6, 1968: A team of Panthers led by Eldridge Cleaver ambushes Oakland police officers. Panther Bobby Hutton killed. United Front Against Fascism In July 1969 the BPP organized the United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland, which was attended by around 5,000 people representing a number of groups.[70][71] COINTELPRO COINTELPRO document outlining the FBI's plans to 'neutralize' Jean Seberg for her support for the Black Panther Party, by attempting to publicly "cause her embarrassment" and "tarnish her image". In August 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize ... black nationalist hate groups" and other dissident groups. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country".[72] By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.[73] The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken their leadership, as well as to discredit them to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam, as well as leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad. As assistant FBI Director William Sullivan later testified in front of the Church Committee, the Bureau "did not differentiate" between Soviet spies and suspected Communists in black nationalist movements when deploying surveillance and neutralization tactics.[74] COINTELPRO attempted to create rivalries between black nationalist factions and to exploit existing ones. One such attempt was to "intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang. The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers' gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter whose intent was to provoke "preemptive" violence against Panther leadership. In Southern California, the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and a black nationalist group called the US Organization, allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism.[75] COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting their social/community programs, most prominently Free Breakfast for Children. The success of Free Breakfast served to "shed light on the government's failure to address child poverty and hunger—pointing to the limits of the nation's War on Poverty".[76] As the Party taught and provided for children more effectively than the government, the FBI denounced their efforts as a means of indoctrination. "Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers".[76][77] Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey On October 28, 1967,[78] Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P. Newton during a traffic stop in which Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also suffered gunshot wounds. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial, but the conviction was later overturned. In his book Shadow of the Panther, writer Hugh Pearson alleges that Newton was intoxicated in the hours before the incident, and claimed to have willfully killed John Frey.[79] Free Huey! campaign At the time, Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the Party's "Free Huey!" campaign. The police killing gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left.[80] Newton was released after three years, when his conviction was reversed on appeal.[81] As Newton awaited trial, the "Free Huey" campaign developed alliances with numerous students and anti-war activists, "advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protestors to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese".[82] The "Free Huey" campaign attracted black power organizations, New Left groups, and other activist groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, Bob Avakian of the Community for New Politics, and the Red Guard.[83] For example, the Black Panther Party collaborated with the Peace and Freedom Party, which sought to promote a strong antiwar and antiracist politics in opposition to the establishment democratic party.[84] The Black Panther Party provided needed legitimacy to the Peace and Freedom Party's racial politics and in return received invaluable support for the "Free Huey" campaign.[85] Founding of the L.A. Chapter In 1968 the southern California chapter was founded by Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter in Los Angeles. Carter was the leader of the Slauson Street gang, and many of the LA chapter's early recruits were Slausons.[86] Killing of Bobby Hutton Bobby Hutton was born April 21, 1950, in Jefferson County Arkansas. At the age of three, he and his family moved to Oakland, California after being harassed by racist vigilante groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan. In December 1966, he became the first treasurer and recruit of the Black Panther Party at the age of just 16 years old. He became the first member of the party to be killed by police. On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with riots raging across cities in the United States, the 17-year-old Hutton was traveling with Eldridge Cleaver and other BPP members in a car. The group confronted Oakland Police officers, then fled to an apartment building where they engaged in a 90-minute gun battle with the police. The standoff ended with Cleaver wounded and Hutton voluntarily surrendering. According to Cleaver, although Hutton had stripped down to his underwear and had his hands raised in the air to prove that he was unarmed, Oakland Police shot Hutton more than 12 times, killing him. Two police officers were also shot. Although at the time the BPP claimed that the police had ambushed them, several party members later admitted that Cleaver had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, provoking the shoot-out.[87][88][89][90][91] Seven other Panthers, including Chief of Staff David Hilliard, were also arrested. Hutton's death became a rallying issue for Panther supporters.[92][93] Late 1968 Chronology April to mid-June 1968: Cleaver in jail. Mid-July 1968: Huey Newton's murder trial commences. Panthers hold daily "Free Huey" rallies outside the courthouse. August 5, 1968: Three Panthers killed in a gun battle with police at a Los Angeles gas station.[94] Early September 1968: Newton convicted of manslaughter. Late September 1968: Days before he is due to return to prison to serve out a rape conviction, Cleaver flees to Cuba and later Algeria. October 5, 1968: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Los Angeles.[94] November 1968: The BPP finds numerous supporters, establishing relationships with the Peace and Freedom Party and SNCC. Money contributions flow in, and BPP leadership begins embezzlement.[95] November 6, 1968: Lauren Watson, head of the Denver chapter, is arrested by Denver Police for fleeing a police officer and resisting arrest. His trial will be filmed and televised in 1970 as "Trial: The City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. Watson." November 20, 1968: William Lee Brent and two accomplices in a van marked "Black Panther Black Community News Service" allegedly rob a gas station in San Francisco's Bayview district of $80, resulting in a shootout with police.[96] In 1968, the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus directly on political action. Members were encouraged to carry guns and to defend themselves against violence. An influx of college students joined the group, which had consisted chiefly of "brothers off the block". This created some tension in the group. Some members were more interested in supporting the Panthers' social programs, while others wanted to maintain their "street mentality".[97] By 1968, the Party had expanded into many U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toledo, and Washington, D.C. Peak membership was near 5,000 by 1969, and their newspaper, under the editorial leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, had a circulation of 250,000.[98] The group created a Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace", as well as exemption from conscription for black men, among other demands.[99] With the Ten-Point program, "What We Want, What We Believe", the Black Panther Party expressed its economic and political grievances.[100] Curtis Austin states that by late 1968, Black Panther ideology had evolved from black nationalism to become more a "revolutionary internationalist movement": [The Party] dropped its wholesale attacks against whites and began to emphasize more of a class analysis of society. Its emphasis on Marxist–Leninist doctrine and its repeated espousal of Maoist statements signaled the group's transition from a revolutionary nationalist to a revolutionary internationalist movement. Every Party member had to study Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book" to advance his or her knowledge of peoples' struggle and the revolutionary process.[101] Panther slogans and iconography spread. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two American medalists, gave the black power salute during the American national anthem. The International Olympic Committee banned them from all future Olympic Games. Film star Jane Fonda publicly supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers during the early 1970s. She actually ended up informally adopting the daughter of two Black Panther members, Mary Luana Williams. Fonda and other Hollywood celebrities became involved in the Panthers' leftist programs. The Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists, including writer Jean Genet, former Ramparts magazine editor David Horowitz (who later became a major critic of what he describes as Panther criminality)[citation needed] and left-wing lawyer Charles R. Garry, who acted as counsel in the Panthers' many legal battles. The BPP adopted a "Serve the People" program, which at first involved a free breakfast program for children. By the end of 1968, the BPP had established 38 chapters and branches, claiming more than five thousand members. Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver left the country days before Cleaver was to turn himself in to serve the remainder of a thirteen-year sentence for a 1958 rape conviction. They settled in Algeria.[102] By the end of the year, party membership peaked at around 2,000.[103] Party members engaged in criminal activities such as extortion, stealing, violent discipline of BPP members, and robberies. The BPP leadership took one-third of the proceeds from robberies committed by BPP members.[104] Survival programs "no kid should be running around hungry in school" Bobby Seale[105] The Black Panther Party's free breakfast program is "the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for." FBI director J. Edgar Hoover[105] Inspired by Mao Zedong's advice to revolutionaries in The Little Red Book, Newton called on the Panthers to "serve the people" and to make "survival programs" a priority within its branches. The most famous of their programs was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, initially run out of an Oakland church. The Free Breakfast For Children program was especially significant because it served as a space for educating youth about the current condition of the Black community, and the actions that the Party was taking to address that condition. "While the children ate their meal[s], members [of the Party] taught them liberation lessons consisting of Party messages and Black history."[76] Through this program, the Party was able to influence young minds, and strengthen their ties to communities as well as gain widespread support for their ideologies. The breakfast program became so popular that the Panthers Party claimed to have fed twenty thousand children in the 1968–69 school year.[106] Other survival programs[107] were free services such as clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease.[108] The free medical clinics were very significant because they modeled an idea of how the world might work with free medical care, eventually being established in 13 places across the country. These clinics were involved in community-based health care that had roots connected to the Civil Rights Movement, which made it possible to establish the Medical Committee for Human Rights.[109] Political activities In 1968, BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver ran for Presidential office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.[110] They were a big influence on the White Panther Party, tied to the Detroit/Ann Arbor band MC5 and their manager John Sinclair (author of the book Guitar Army), which also promulgated a ten-point program. 1969 Chronology Early 1969: In late 1968 and January 1969, the BPP began to purge members due to fears about law enforcement infiltration and various petty disagreements. January 14, 1969: The Los Angeles chapter was involved in a shootout with members of the black nationalist US Organization, and two Panthers are killed. January 1969: The Oakland BPP begins the first free breakfast program for children. March 1969: There is a second purge of BPP members. April 1969: Members of the New York chapter, known as the Panther 21 are indicted and jailed for a bombing conspiracy. All would eventually be acquitted. May 1969: Two more southern California Panthers are killed in violent disputes with US Organization members.[94] May 1969: Members of the New Haven chapter torture and murder Alex Rackley, who they suspected of being an informant. July 17, 1969: Two policemen are shot and a Panther is killed in a gun battle in Chicago.[94] Late July 1969: The BPP ideology undergoes a shift, with a turn toward self-discipline and anti-racism. August 1969: Bobby Seale is indicted and imprisoned in relation to the Rackley murder. October 18, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police outside a Los Angeles restaurant.[94] Mid-to-late 1969: COINTELPRO activity increases. November 13, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Chicago.[94] December 4, 1969: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed by law enforcement in Chicago.[27] Late 1969: David Hilliard, current BPP head, advocates violent revolution. Panther membership is down significantly from the late 1968 peak. Shoot-out with the US Organization Violent conflict between the Panther chapter in LA and the US Organization, a black nationalist group, resulted in shootings and beatings and led to the murders of at least four Black Panther Party members. On January 17, 1969, Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, in a gun battle with members of the US Organization. Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries. Two more Panthers died. Black Panther Party Liberation Schools Paramount to their beliefs regarding the need for individual agency to catalyze community change, the Black Panther Party (BPP) strongly supported the education of the masses. As part of their Ten-Point Program which set forth the ideals and goals of the party, they demanded an equitable education for all black people. Number 5 of the "What We Want Now!" section of the program reads: "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 present-day society." To ensure that this occurred, the Black Panther Party took the education of their youth into their own hands by first establishing after-school programs and then opening up Liberation Schools in a variety of locations throughout the country which focused their curriculum on Black history, writing skills, and political science.[111] Intercommunal Youth Institute The first Liberation School was opened by the Richmond Black Panthers in July 1969 with brunch served and snacks provided to students. Another school was opened in Mt. Vernon New York on July 17 of the subsequent year.[111] These schools were informal in nature and more closely resembled after-school or summer programs.[112] While these campuses were the first to open, the first full-time and longest-running Liberation school was opened in January 1971 in Oakland in response to the inequitable conditions in the Oakland Unified School District which was ranked one of the lowest-scoring districts in California.[113] Named the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), this school, under the directorship of Brenda Bay, and later, Ericka Huggins, enrolled twenty-eight students in its first year, with the majority being the children of Black Panther parents. This number grew to fifty by the 1973–1974 school year. To provide full support for Black Panther parents whose time was spent organizing, some of the students and faculty members lived together year around. The school itself was dissimilar to traditional schools in a variety of ways including the fact that students were separated by academic performance rather than age and students were often provided one on one support as the faculty to student ratio was 1:10.[113] The Panther's goal in opening Liberation Schools, and specifically the Intercommunal Youth Institute, was to provide students with an education that wasn't being provided in the "white" schools,[114] as the public schools in the district employed a eurocentric assimilationist curriculum with little to no attention to black history and culture. While students were provided with traditional courses such as English, Math, and Science, they were also exposed to activities focused on class structure and the prevalence of institutional racism.[115] The overall goal of the school was to instill a sense of revolutionary consciousness in the students.[112] With a strong belief in experiential learning, students had the opportunity to participate in community service projects as well as practice their writing skills by drafting letters to political prisoners associated with the Black Panther Party.[115] Huggins is noted as saying, "I think that the school's principles came from the socialist principles we tried to live in the Black Panther Party. One of them being critical thinking—that children should learn not what to think but how to think ... the school was an expression of the collective wisdom of the people who envisioned it. And it was ... a living thing [that] changed every year.[112] Joan Kelley oversaw funding for the Intercommunal Youth Institute which was provided through a combination of Black Panther fundraising and community support.[113] Oakland Community School In 1974, due to increased interest in enrolling in the school, school officials decided to move to a larger facility and subsequently changed the school's name to Oakland Community School. During this year, the school graduated its first class.[114] Although the student population continued to grow ranging between 50 and 150 between 1974–1977, the original core values of individualized instruction remained.[113] In September 1977, the school received a special award from Governor Edmund Brown Jr. and the California Legislature for "having set the standard for the highest level of elementary education in the state.[114] The school eventually closed in 1982 due to governmental pressure on party leadership which caused insufficient membership and funds to continue running the school.[113] Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark In Chicago, on December 4, 1969, two Panthers were killed when the Chicago Police raided the home of Panther leader Fred Hampton. The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton was shot and killed, as was Panther guard Mark Clark. A federal investigation reported that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, and police fired at least 80 shots.[116] The only shot fired by the Panthers was from Mark Clark, who appeared to fire a single round determined to be the result of a reflexive death convulsion after he was immediately struck in the chest by shots from the police at the start of the raid. Hampton was sleeping next to his pregnant fiancée and was subsequently shot twice in the head at point-blank range while unconscious. Coroner reports show that Hampton was drugged with a powerful barbiturate that night, and would have been unable to have been awoken by the sounds of the police raid.[117] His body was then dragged into the hallway. He was 21 years old and unarmed at the time of his death. Seven other Panthers sleeping at the house at the time of the raid were then beaten and seriously wounded, then arrested under charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers involved in the raid. These charges would later be dropped. Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan announced to the media later that the Panthers were first to shoot in the interaction and that they showed a "refusal to cease firing... when urged to do so several times." New York Times reporting would later demonstrate that this was not in fact the case and found a great deal of fake evidence being used by Chicago Police to assert their claims.[118] Former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen asserts that the Bureau was guilty of a "plot to murder" the Panthers.[119] Hampton had been slipped the barbiturates which had left him unconscious by William O'Neal, who had been working as an FBI informant. Hanrahan, his assistant and eight Chicago police officers were indicted by a federal grand jury over the raid, but the charges were later dismissed.[98][120] In 1979 civil action, Hampton's family won $1.85 million from the city of Chicago in a wrongful death settlement.[121] Torture-murder of Alex Rackley In May 1969, three members of the New Haven chapter tortured and murdered Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old member of the New York chapter, because they suspected him of being a police informant. Three party officers—Warren Kimbro, George Sams, Jr., and Lonnie McLucas—later admitted taking part. Sams, who gave the order to shoot Rackley at the murder scene, turned state's evidence and testified that he had received orders personally from Bobby Seale to carry out the execution. Party supporters responded that Sams was himself the informant and an agent provocateur employed by the FBI.[122] The case resulted in the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1970. Kimbro and Sams were convicted of the murder, but the trials of Seale and Ericka Huggins ended with a hung jury, and the prosecution chose not to seek another trial. International ties Activists from many countries around the globe supported the Panthers and their cause. In Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Finland, for example, left-wing activists organized a tour for Bobby Seale and Masai Hewitt in 1969. At each destination along the tour, the Panthers talked about their goals and the "Free Huey!" campaign. Seale and Hewitt made a stop in Germany as well, gaining support for the "Free Huey!" campaign.[123] 1970 Chronology January 1970: Leonard Bernstein holds a fundraiser for the BPP, which was notoriously mocked by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Spring 1970: The Oakland BPP engages in another ambush of police officers with guns and fragmentation bombs. Two officers are wounded.[124] May 1970: Huey Newton's conviction is overturned, but he remains incarcerated. July 1970: Newton tells The New York Times that "we've never advocated violence". August 1970: Newton is released from prison. In 1970, a group of Panthers traveled through Asia and they were welcomed as guests of the governments of North Vietnam, North Korea, and China. The group's first stop was in North Korea, where the Panthers met with local officials to discuss ways in which they could help each other fight against American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver traveled to Pyongyang twice in 1969 and 1970, and following these trips he made an effort to publicize the writings and works of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in the United States.[125] After leaving North Korea, the group traveled to North Vietnam with the same agenda in mind: finding ways to put an end to American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver was invited to speak to Black GIs by the North Vietnamese government. He encouraged them to join the Black Liberation Struggle by arguing that the United States government was only using them for its own purposes. Instead of risking their lives on the battlefield for a country that continued to oppress them, Cleaver believed that the black GIs should risk their lives in support of their own liberation. After leaving Vietnam, Cleaver met with the Chinese ambassador to Algeria to express their mutual animosity towards the American government.[126] When Algeria held its first Pan-African Cultural Festival, they invited many important figures from the United States. Among the important figures invited to the festival were Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. The cultural festival allowed Black Panthers to network with representatives of various international anti-imperialist movements. This was a significant time, which led to the formation of the International Section of the Party.[127] It is at this festival that Cleaver met with the ambassador of North Korea, who later invited him to an International Conference of Revolutionary Journalists in Pyongyang. Eldridge also met with Yasser Arafat, and gave a speech supporting the Palestinians and their goal of achieving liberation.[128] 1971 Chronology January 1971: Newton expels Geronimo Pratt who, since 1970, had been in jail facing a pending murder charge. Newton also expels two of the New York 21 and his own secretary, Connie Matthews, who flee the country. February 1971: a fall-out between Newton and Cleaver ensues after they argue during a live broadcast link-up. Newton expels Cleaver and the entire international section from the party. Spring 1971: the Newton and Cleaver factions engage in retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[129] May 1971: Bobby Seale is acquitted of ordering the Rackley murder, and returns to Oakland. Mid-to-late 1971: nationally, hundreds of Party members quit the BPP.[130] Late-September 1971: Newton visits and stays in China for 10 days.[131] Newton focuses the BPP on the Party's Oakland school and various other social service programs. In early 1971, the BPP founded the "Intercommunal Youth Institute" in January 1971,[132] with the intent of demonstrating how black youth ought to be educated. Ericka Huggins was the director of the school and Regina Davis was an administrator.[133] The school was unique in that it did not have grade levels but instead had different skill levels so an 11-year-old could be in second-level English and fifth-level science.[133] Elaine Brown taught reading and writing to a group of 10- to 11-year-olds deemed "uneducable" by the system.[134] The school children were given free busing; breakfast, lunch, and dinner; books and school supplies; children were taken to have medical checkups; many children were given free clothes.[135] Split Significant disagreements among the Party's leaders over how to confront ideological differences led to a split within the party. Certain members felt that the Black Panthers should participate in local government and social services, while others encouraged constant conflict with the police. For some of the Party's supporters, the separations among political action, criminal activity, social services, access to power, and grass-roots identity became confusing and contradictory as the Panthers' political momentum was bogged down in the criminal justice system. These (and other) disagreements led to a split. Some Panther leaders, such as Huey P. Newton and David Hilliard, favored a focus on community service coupled with self-defense; others, such as Eldridge Cleaver, embraced a more confrontational strategy. Eldridge Cleaver deepened the schism in the party when he publicly criticized the Party for adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda and called for Hilliard's removal. Cleaver was expelled from the Central Committee but went on to lead a splinter group, the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party.[136] The split turned violent, as the Newton and Cleaver factions carried out retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[129] Delegation to China In late September 1971, Huey P. Newton led a delegation to China and stayed for 10 days.[131] At every airport in China, Huey was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the Little Red Book and displaying signs that said "we support the Black Panther Party, down with US 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 a DPRK ambassador, a Tanzanian ambassador, and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.[137] Huey was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing. Huey described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government".[138] 1972–74 Chronology Early 1972: Newton shuts down chapters around the country, and calls the key members to Oakland. Mid-1972: BPP members or supporters win a number of minor offices in the Oakland city elections. 1973: The BPP focuses nearly all of its resources on winning political power in the Oakland city government. Seale runs for mayor; Elaine Brown runs for city council. Both lose, and many Party members resign after the losses. Early 1974: Newton embarks on a major purge, expelling Bobby and John Seale, David and June Hilliard, Robert Bay, and numerous other top party leaders. Dozens of other Panthers loyal to Seale resigned or deserted. August 1974: Newton murders Kathleen Smith, a teenage prostitute. He flees to Cuba. Elaine Brown takes over the leadership in his absence. December 1974: Accountant Betty van Patter is murdered, after threatening to disclose irregularities in the Party's finances. Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland In 1972, the party began closing down dozens of chapters and branches all over the country and bringing members and operations to Oakland. The political arm of the southern California chapter was shut down and its members moved to Oakland, although the underground military arm remained for a time.[139] The underground remnants of the LA chapter, which had emerged from the Slausons street gang, eventually re-emerged as the Crips, a street gang who at first advocated social reform before devolving into racketeering.[140] The party developed a five-year plan to take over the city of Oakland politically. Bobby Seale ran for mayor, Elaine Brown ran for city council, and other Panthers ran for minor offices. Neither Seale nor Brown were elected. A few Panthers won seats on local government commissions. Minister of Education Ray "Masai" Hewitt created the Buddha Samurai, the party's underground security cadre in Oakland. Newton expelled Hewitt from the party later in 1972, but the security cadre remained in operation under the leadership of Flores Forbes. One of the cadre's main functions was to extort and rob drug dealers and after-hours clubs.[139] Newton indicted for violent crimes In 1974, Huey Newton and eight other Panthers were arrested and charged with assault on police officers. Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid prosecution for the murder of Kathleen Smith, an eighteen-year-old prostitute. Newton was also indicted for pistol-whipping his tailor, Preston Callins. Although Newton confided to friends that Kathleen Smith was his "first nonpolitical murder", he was ultimately acquitted, after one witness's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had been smoking marijuana on the night of the murder, and another prostitute witness recanted her testimony.[141][142] Newton was also acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges.[143][clarification needed] 1974–77 The Panthers under Elaine Brown In 1974, as Huey Newton prepared to go into exile in Cuba, he appointed Elaine Brown as the first Chairwoman of the Party. Under Brown's leadership, the Party became involved in organizing for more radical electoral campaigns, including Brown's 1975 unsuccessful run for Oakland City Council.[144] The Party supported Lionel Wilson in his successful election as the first black mayor of Oakland, in exchange for Wilson's assistance in having criminal charges dropped against Party member Flores Forbes, leader of the Buddha Samurai cadre.[139] In addition to changing the Party's direction towards more involvement in the electoral arena, Brown also increased the influence of women Panthers by placing them in more visible roles within the previously male-dominated organization. Death of Betty van Patter Panther leader Elaine Brown hired Betty Van Patter in 1974 as a bookkeeper. Van Patter had previously served as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine, and was introduced to the Panther leadership by David Horowitz, who had been the editor of Ramparts and a major fundraiser and board member for the Panther school.[145] Later that year, after a dispute with Brown over financial irregularities,[146] Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Some weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach. There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with van Patter's murder, but the Black Panther Party leadership was "almost universally believed to be responsible".[147][148] Huey Newton later allegedly confessed to a friend that he had ordered Van Patter's murder, and that Van Patter had been tortured and raped before being killed.[142][149] 1977–82 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party In 1977, Newton returned from exile in Cuba, and received complaints from male members about the excessive power of women in the organization, who now outnumbered men. According to Elaine Brown, Newton authorized the physical punishment of school administrator Regina Davis for scolding a male coworker. Davis was hospitalized with a broken jaw.[150] Brown said "The beating of Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words 'Panther' and 'comrade' had taken a gender on gender connotation, denoting an inferiority in the female half of us."[151][152][153] Brown resigned from the party and fled to LA.[154] Although many scholars and activists date the Party's downfall to the period before Brown's leadership, a shrinking cadre of Panthers struggled through the 1970s. By 1980, Panther membership had dwindled to 27, and the Panther-sponsored school closed in 1982 amid a scandal over Newton embezzling funds for his drug addiction.[144][155] Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton In October 1977 Flores Forbes, the party's assistant chief of staff, led a botched attempt to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial, who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. After attacking the wrong house by mistake, the occupant returned fire and killed one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, while the other two assailants escaped.[156] One of them, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy. Fearing that Malloy would discover the truth behind the botched assassination attempt, Newton allegedly ordered a "house cleaning", and Malloy was shot and buried alive in the desert. Although permanently paralyzed from the waist down, Malloy escaped and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[157] Newton denied any involvement or knowledge and said the events "might have been the result of overzealous party members".[158] Newton was ultimately acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith, after Crystal Gray's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had smoked marijuana on the night of the murder, and he was acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges. Women and womanism From its beginnings, the Black Panther Party championed black masculinity and traditional gender roles.[159]:6 A notice in the first issue of The Black Panther newspaper proclaimed the all-male organization as "the cream of Black Manhood ... there for the protection and defense of our Black community".[160] Scholars consider the Party's stance of armed resistance highly masculine, with guns and violence proving manhood.[161]:2 In 1968, several articles urged female Panthers to "stand behind black men" and be supportive.[159]:6 The first woman to join the party was Joan Tarika Lewis, in 1967.[162] Nevertheless, women were present in the party from the early days and expanded their roles throughout its life.[163] Women often joined to fight against unequal gender norms.[164] By 1969, the Party newspaper officially instructed male Panthers to treat female Party members as equals,[159]:2[159]:6 a drastic change from the idea of the female Panther as subordinate. The same year, Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois chapter conducted a meeting condemning sexism.[159]:2 After 1969, the Party considered sexism counter-revolutionary.[159]:6 The Black Panthers adopted a womanist ideology responding to the unique experiences of African-American women,[165] emphasizing racism as more oppressive than sexism.[166] Womanism was a mix of black nationalism and the vindication of women,[165]:20 putting race and community struggle before the gender issue.[165]:8 Womanism posited that traditional feminism failed to include race and class struggle in its denunciation of male sexism[165]:26 and was therefore part of white hegemony.[165]:21 In opposition to some feminist viewpoints, womanism promoted a vision of gender roles: that men are not above women, but hold a different position in the home and community,[165]:42 so men and women must work together for the preservation of African-American culture and community.[165]:27 Henceforth, the Party newspaper portrayed women as intelligent political revolutionaries, exemplified by members such as Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Erika Huggins.[159]:10 The Black Panther Party newspaper often showed women as active participants in the armed self-defense movement, picturing them with children and guns as protectors of home, family and community.[159]:2 Police killed or incarcerated many male leaders, but female Panthers were less targeted for much of the 1960s and 1970s. By 1968, women made up two-thirds of the party, while many male members were out of duty. In the absence of much of the original male leadership, women moved into all parts of the organization.[163][167] Roles included leadership positions, implementing community programs, and uplifting the black community. Women in the group called attention to sexism within the Party, and worked to make changes from within.[168] From 1968 to the end of its publication in 1982, the head editors of the Black Panther Party newspaper were all women.[159]:5 In 1970, approximately 40% to 70% of Party members were women,[159]:8 and several chapters, like the Des Moines, Iowa, and New Haven, Connecticut, were headed by women.[161]:7 During the 1970s, recognizing the limited access poor women had to abortion, the Party officially supported women's reproductive rights, including abortion.[159]:11 That same year, the Party condemned and opposed prostitution.[159]:12 Many women Panthers began to demand childcare to be able to fully participate in the organization. The Party responded by establishing on-site child development centers in multiple US chapters. "Childcare became largely a group activity", with children raised collectively, in accord with the Panther's commitment to collectivism and the African-American extended-family tradition. Childcare allowed women Panthers to embrace motherhood while fully participating in Party activism.[169] The Party experienced significant problems in several chapters with sexism and gender oppression, particularly in the Oakland chapter where cases of sexual harassment and gender conflict were common.[170]:5 When Oakland Panthers arrived to bolster the New York City Panther chapter after 21 New York leaders were incarcerated, they displayed such chauvinistic attitudes towards New York Panther women that they had to be fended off at gunpoint.[171] Some Party leaders thought the fight for gender equality was a threat to men and a distraction from the struggle for racial equality.[159]:5 In response, the Chicago and New York chapters, among others, established equal gender rights as a priority and tried to eradicate sexist attitudes.[161]:13 By the time the Black Panther Party disbanded, official policy was to reprimand men who violated the rules of gender equality.[161]:13 Gender dynamics In the beginning, recruiting women was a low priority for Newton and Seale.[172] Seale stated in an interview that Newton targeted "brothers who had been pimping, brothers who had been peddling dope, brothers who ain't gonna take no shit, brothers who had been fighting the pigs". Also, they didn't realize that women could help the fight until one came into an interest meeting asking about "female leadership".[173] Regina Jennings recalls that many male leaders had an "unchecked" sexism problem and her task was to "lift the bedroom out of their minds." She remembers overhearing members: "Some concluded that the FBI sent me, but the captain assured them with salty good humor that, 'She's too stupid to be from the FBI.' He thought my cover and my comments too honest, too loud, and too ridiculous to be serious." She recalls her days in Oakland, California as a teenager looking for something to do to add purpose to her life and her community. She grew up around police brutality, so it was nothing new. Her goal in joining was "smashing racism" because she viewed herself as Black before she was a woman. In her community, that identity is what she felt held her back the most.[173] Women's role The Black Panther Party was involved in many community projects as part of their organization. These projects included community outreach, like the breakfast program, education, and health programs.[163] In many cases women were the ones primarily involved with administering these types of programs. From the beginning of the Black Panther Party education was a fundamental goal of the organization. This was highlighted in the Ten Point Platform, the newspaper that was distributed by the party, and the public commentary shared by the Panthers.[163] The newspaper was one of the primary and original consciousness-raising and educational measures taken by the party.[163] Despite the fact that men were out distributing the newspaper, women like Elaine Brown and Kathleen Cleaver were behind the scenes working on those papers.[174] Elaine Brown Elaine Brown rose to power within the BPP as Minister of Information after Eldridge Cleaver fled abroad. In 1974, she became chair for the Oakland chapter. She was appointed by Huey Newton, the previous chair, while Newton and other leaders dealt with legal issues.[163][175] From the beginning of her tenure as chair, she faced opposition and feared a coup. She appointed many female officials, and faced backlash for her policies for equality within the organization. When Huey Newton returned from exile and approved of the beating of a female Panther school teacher, Brown left the organization.[175] Gwen Robinson In an interview with Judson Jeffries, Gwen Robinson reflects on her time in the Black Panther Party Detroit Division.[176] She explains that she joined in October 1969 with despite doubts from her mother, who had participated in a march with Martin Luther King Jr. in the early part of the decade. She chose the Black Panther Party (BBP) because "[She] felt a closeness and a bond with them" more than other organizations like the "SNCC, NAACP, the Urban League, the Nation of Islam, Shrines of Madonna, Eastside Voice of Independent Detroit (ESVID), the Republic of New Africa, and the Revolutionary Action Movement."[176] In 12th grade, she decided to work full-time with the Party, dropping out of chaotic Denby High School in Detroit. "There were some students who would use the N-word freely" and "a P.E. instructor accused [her] of stealing her keys." She was "shoved" into the pool when she refused to swim for fear of wetting her hair, while a White teacher who taught Afro-American history would kick people out "if you challenged his position on certain Black leaders."[176] In the BBP, she "was living as part of a collective" where all work was shared, and she enjoyed working all day selling newspapers. She climbed the ranks and became the branch's Communications Secretary in January 1971, after her predecessor left due to "some issues related to sexism". In this branch, unlike the average BBP divisions, the "brothers" never turned violent or physical: "That kind of thing didn't take place in Detroit." She left the organization in 1973, keeping a link through her husband, their circulation manager. Summing up the legacy of the Detroit branch, she says, "It's crucial that people realize that the strength of the organization was rooted in discipline, deep commitment, and a genuine love for the people."[177] Gay Liberation Movement Huey Newton expressed his support for the Women's Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement in a 1970 letter published in the newspaper The Black Panther titled "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements".[178] Written one year after the Stonewall Riots, Newton acknowledged women and homosexuals as oppressed groups and urged the Blank Panthers to "unite with them in a revolutionary fashion".[179] The Black Panther Party and the Gay Liberation Movement shared common ground in their fight against police brutality.[180] Aftermath and legacy New York City Councilman Charles Barron is one of the numerous former Panthers to have held elected office in the US There is considerable debate about the impact of the Black Panther Party on the wider society or even their local environments. Author Jama Lazerow writes: As inheritors of the discipline, pride, and calm self-assurance preached by Malcolm X, the Panthers became national heroes in black communities by infusing abstract nationalism with street toughness—by joining the rhythms of black working-class youth culture to the interracial élan and effervescence of Bay Area New Left politics ... In 1966, the Panthers defined Oakland's ghetto as a territory, the police as interlopers, and the Panther mission as the defense of community. The Panthers' famous "policing the police" drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the police brutality that had come to characterize life in black urban communities.[181] Professor Judson Jeffries of Purdue University calls the Panthers "the most effective black revolutionary organization in the 20th century".[182] The Los Angeles Times, in a 2013 review of Black Against Empire, an "authoritative" history of the BPP published by University of California Press, called the organization a "serious political and cultural force" and "a movement of intelligent, explosive dreamers".[183] The Black Panther Party is featured in exhibits[184] and curriculum[185][186] of the National Civil Rights Museum. Numerous former Panthers have held elected office in the United States, some into the 21st century; these include Charles Barron (New York City Council), Nelson Malloy (Winston-Salem City Council), and Bobby Rush (US House of Representatives). Most of them praise the BPP's contribution to black liberation and American democracy. In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring "Fred Hampton Day" in honor of the slain leader.[121] In Winston-Salem in 2012, a large contingent of local officials and community leaders came together to install a historic marker of the local BPP headquarters; State Representative Earline Parmone declared "[The Black Panther Party] dared to stand up and say, 'We're fed up and we're not taking it anymore'. ... Because they had courage, today I stand as ... the first African American ever to represent Forsyth County in the state Senate".[187] In October 2006, the Black Panther Party held a 40-year reunion in Oakland.[188] Black Panther 40th Reunion, 2006. In January 2007, a joint California state and Federal task force charged eight men with the August 29, 1971, murder of California police officer Sgt. John Young.[189] The defendants have been identified as former members of the Black Liberation Army, with two linked to the Black Panthers.[190] In 1975, a similar case was dismissed when a judge ruled that police gathered evidence using torture.[191] On June 29, 2009, Herman Bell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sgt. Young. In July 2009, charges were dropped against four of the accused: Ray Boudreaux, Henry W. Jones, Richard Brown and Harold Taylor. Also that month Jalil Muntaquim pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter, becoming the second person convicted in this case.[192] Since the 1990s, former Panther chief of staff David Hilliard has offered tours in Oakland of sites historically significant to the Black Panther Party.[193] Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers Various groups and movements have picked names inspired by the Black Panthers: Assata's Daughters, an all-black activist group in Chicago, was founded in 2015 by Page May; the group is named after Black Panther Assata Shakur and has objectives similar to the Black Panther's 10-Point Program.[194] Gray Panthers often used to refer to advocates for the rights of seniors (Gray Panthers in the United States, The Grays – Gray Panthers in Germany). Polynesian Panthers, an advocacy group for Māori and Pacific Islander people in New Zealand. Black Panthers, a protest movement that advocates social justice and fights for the rights of Mizrahi Jews in Israel. White Panthers, used to refer to both the White Panther Party, a far-left, anti-racist, white American political party of the 1970s, as well as the White Panthers UK, an unaffiliated group started by Mick Farren. The Pink Panthers, used to refer to two LGBT rights organizations. Dalit Panthers, an Indian social reform movement, which fights against Caste Oppression in Indian Society. The British Black Panther movement, which flourished in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was not affiliated with the American organization although it fought for many of the same rights.[195][196] The French Black Dragons, a black antifascist group closely linked to the punk rock and rockabilly scene. The Young Lords Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named after the Black Panther Party's founder. Memphis Black Autonomy Federation In April 1977 Panthers were key supporters of the 504 Sit-Ins, the longest of which was the 25-day occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building by over 120 people with disabilities. Panthers provided daily home-cooked meals in support of the protest's eventual success, which eventually led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) thirteen years later.[197] New Black Panther Party Main article: New Black Panther Party In 1989, a "New Black Panther Party" was formed in Dallas, Texas. Ten years later, the NBPP became home to many former Nation of Islam members when its chairmanship was taken by Khalid Abdul Muhammad. The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center list the New Black Panthers as a black separatist hate group.[198] The Huey Newton Foundation, former chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale, and members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this New Black Panther Party is illegitimate and they have strongly objected to it, stating that there "is no new Black Panther Party".[199]
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, most known for co-founding the Black Panther Party (BPP) with Bobby Seale. Together, Newton and Seale created the party's manifesto, the ten-point program. Under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs[1] (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 cooperates, 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.[2] Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers.[3] In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of a 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 Patter, although he was never convicted for either deaths. Despite graduating from high school not knowing how to read, he taught himself literacy by reading Plato's Republic and earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980.[4][5] 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 self-defense, Palestinian statehood, and for his support of communist-led governments around the world. Newton also used his position as a leader within the Black Panther Party to welcome women and LGBT people into the party, describing homosexuals as "the most oppressed people" in society.[6] Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Founding of the Black Panther Party 3 Fatal shooting of John Frey 4 "Free Huey!" Campaign 5 Visit to China 6 Allegations of violence 7 Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ 8 Writing and scholarship 8.1 Works 9 Death 10 In popular culture 11 See also 12 References 13 Further reading 14 External links Early life and education Huey 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 was located in Louisiana's Ouachita Parish, which had a history of violence against blacks since Reconstruction. According to a 2015 report by the Equal Justice Institute, from 1877 to 1950, a total of 37 black people were documented as lynched in that parish. Most murders had taken place around the turn of the 20th century.[7] This was the fifth-highest total of lynchings of any county in the South.[8] 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.[9] 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. As a teenager, he was arrested several times for criminal offenses, including gun possession and vandalism at age 14.[10] Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black."[9] 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. 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.[11] Newton attended Merritt College, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1966. After Newton taught himself to read, he started "questioning everything." In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, he states: "Most of all, I questioned what was happening in my own family and in the community around me."[12] 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.[13] Founding of the Black Panther Party Main article: Black Panther Party As a student of 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. Later Newton concluded that Warden offered solutions that didn't work. In his autobiography, Newton says of Warden, "The mass media, the oppressors, give him public exposure for only one reason: he will lead the people away from the truth of their situation."[14] 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. Based on a casual conversation, Seale became Chairman and Newton became Minister of Defense.[15] 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. Newton stated: "Therefore, the words on this page cannot convey the effect that Malcolm has had on the Black Panther Party, although, as far as I am concerned, the testament to his life work."[16] The party achieved national and international renown through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and the politics of the 1960s and 1970s.[17] 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.[18] Many BPP members were accustomed to violence as they were from families that had left the South, where lynchings against blacks had caused thousands of deaths. Newton adopted what he termed "revolutionary humanism."[19] Although he had previously attended Nation of Islam mosques, he wrote that "I have had enough of religion and could not bring myself to adopt another one. I needed a more concrete understanding of social conditions. References to God or Allah did not satisfy my stubborn thirst for answers."[20] Later, however, he stated that "As far as I am concerned, when all of the questions are not answered, when the extraordinary is not explained, when the unknown is not known, then there is room for God because the unexplained and the unknown is God."[21] Newton later decided to join a Christian church after the party disbanded during his marriage to Fredrika.[22][23] 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 Revolutionary Suicide, he writes, "Before I took Criminal Evidence in school, I had no idea what my rights were."[24][25] 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 both the white and black communities.[24][25] Newton and the Panthers started a number of social programs in Oakland, including founding the Oakland Community School, which provided high-level education to 150 children from impoverished urban neighborhoods. Other Panther programs included the Free Breakfast for Children Program and others that offered dances for teenagers and training in martial arts. According to Oakland County Supervisor John George: "Huey could take street-gang types and give them a social consciousness."[26] In 1982, Newton was accused of embezzling $600,000 of state aid to the Panther-founded Oakland Community School. In the wake of the embezzlement charges, Newton disbanded the Black Panther Party. The embezzlement charges were dropped six years later in March 1989, after Newton pleaded no contest to a single allegation of cashing a $15,000 state check for personal use. He was sentenced to six months in jail and 18 months probation.[27] Fatal shooting of John Frey Newton had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for repeatedly stabbing another man, Odell Lee, with a steak knife in mid-1964. He served six months in prison.[28][29] By October 27–28, 1967, he was out celebrating the release from his probationary period. Just before dawn on October 28, Newton and a friend were pulled over by Oakland Police Department officer John Frey. Realizing who Newton was, Frey called for backup. After fellow officer Herbert Heanes arrived, shots were fired, and all three were wounded.[30] Heanes testified that the shooting began after Newton was under arrest, and one witness testified that Newton shot Frey with Frey's own gun as they wrestled.[31][32] No gun on either Frey or Newton was found.[32] Newton stated that Frey shot him first, which made him lose consciousness during the incident.[33] Frey was shot four times and died within the hour, while Heanes was left in serious condition with three bullet wounds. Black Panther David Hilliard took Newton to Oakland's Kaiser Hospital, where he was admitted with a bullet wound to the abdomen. Newton was soon handcuffed to his bed and arrested for Frey's killing.[34] A doctor, Thomas Finch, and nurse, Corrine Leonard, attended to Newton when he arrived at the hospital, and Finch stated that Newton was "agitated" when asking for treatment and that Newton was given a tranquilizer to calm him.[35] Newton was convicted in September 1968 of voluntary manslaughter for the killing of Frey and was sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the California Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. After two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the district attorney said he would not pursue a fourth trial, and the Alameda County Superior Court dismissed the charges.[36] In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, Newton wrote that Heanes and Frey were opposite each other and shooting in each other's direction during the shootout. Hugh Pearson, in his book Shadow of the Panther, writes that Newton, while intoxicated, boasted about having willfully killed Frey.[37] Charles E. Jones, in the introduction to The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), states that this claim has not been corroborated by others.[38] "Free Huey!" Campaign Newton was arrested on the day of the shooting on October 28, 1967, and pled not guilty to the murder of officer John Frey. 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.[39] This alliance served the dual purpose of legitimizing Huey Newton’s cause while boosting the credibility of the party within the community of more radical activists.[40] 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.[41] 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,[42] and stayed for 10 days.[43] 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 US imperialism" or "we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown."[44] 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.[44] Newton was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing. Newton described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government."[45] Following Newton's Asian trip, the Black Panther Party began incorporating North Korea's Juche ideals into the party's ideology.[46][47] Allegations of violence On August 6, 1974, Kathleen Smith, a 17-year-old Oakland native working as a prostitute, was shot;[48] she died three months later. According to the prosecutor handling the case,[49] Newton shot Smith after a casual exchange on the street during which she referred to him as "Baby",[50] a childhood nickname he hated.[51] Newton is also alleged to have assaulted his tailor, Preston Callins, after Callins called him "Baby." Newton posted bond after being arrested for pistol-whipping Callins, a crime for which he was later acquitted.[52] Newton was subsequently arrested a second time for the murder of Smith, but was able to post an additional $80,000 bond, thus securing his release until trial.[53] Newton and his girlfriend (later his wife) Gwen Fontaine then fled to Havana, Cuba, where they lived until 1977,[54] which prevented further prosecution on the two charges. Elaine Brown took over as chairperson of the Black Panther Party in his absence.[55] Newton returned to the United States in 1977 to stand trial for the murder of Smith and the assault on Callins.[53] In October 1977, three Black Panthers attempted to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. Unbeknownst to the assailants, they attacked the wrong house and the occupant returned fire. During the shootout one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, was killed, and the other two assailants escaped.[56] One of the two surviving assassins, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy.[57] In November 1977, Malloy was found by park rangers paralyzed from the waist down from bullet wounds to the back in a shallow grave in the desert outside of Las Vegas. According to Malloy, he and Forbes were ordered by "higher-ups" to be killed to eliminate any eyewitness accounts of the attempted murder of Crystal Gray. Malloy recovered from the assault and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[57] Newton denied any involvement or knowledge, and said that the events "might have been the result of overzealous party members."[49] During Newton's trial for assaulting Preston Callins, Callins changed his testimony several times and eventually told the jury that he did not know who assaulted him.[53] Newton was acquitted of the assault in September 1978, but was convicted of illegal firearms possession.[58] After the assassination attempt on Crystal Gray, she declined to testify against Newton. After two trials and two deadlocked juries, the prosecution decided not to retry Newton for Smith's murder.[59] Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ In January 1977, Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ (commonly shortened to the Peoples Temple), visited Huey Newton in Havana, Cuba.[60] That same year after Jones fled to "Jonestown," a commune he established in Guyana for his followers, Newton spoke to Temple members in Jonestown via telephone expressing support for Jones during one of the Temple's earliest "White Nights."[61] Newton's cousin, Stanley Clayton, was one of the few residents of Jonestown to escape the area before the 1978 mass murder of over 900 Temple members by Jones and his fanatics through forced suicide.[61] Writing and scholarship Newton received a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1974. In 1978, while in prison, Newton met evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers after Newton applied to do a reading course with Trivers as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness. He and Trivers became close friends, and they published an analysis of the role of flight crew self-deception in the 1982 crash of Air Florida Flight 90.[62] Newton earned a Ph.D. in the Social philosophy program of History of Consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980.[63][64] 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",[65][63] among which are how the United States federal government responded to the BPP as well as to the assassinations of Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, and John Huggins. Sources for material used to support the dissertation include two federal civil rights lawsuits. One suit was against the FBI and other government officials,[66] while the other was initially against the City of Chicago.[67][68] Huey P. Newton's autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, first published in 1973 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. 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.[69] Works Huey Newton Speaks — oral history (Paredon Records, 1970) Newton, Huey P. (1972), To Die For The People : The Writings Of Huey P. Newton, ISBN 978-0394480855, Franz Schurmann (Introduction) (Random House, 1972) Newton, Huey P.; Herman Blake, J. (2009), Revolutionary Suicide, ISBN 978-0143105329, with J. Herman Blake (Random House, 1973; republished in 1995 with introduction by Blake) Newton, Huey P.; Huggins, Ericka (1975), Insights and Poems, ISBN 978-0872860797, with Ericka Huggins (1975) The Crash of Flight 90: Doomed by Self-Deception?, with Robert Trivers (Science Digest, 1982) Newton, Huey P. (1996), War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America, ISBN 978-0863162466 (Harlem River Press, 1996: the published version of Newton's PhD thesis) Newton, Huey P. (2002), The Huey P. Newton Reader, ISBN 978-1583224663, edited by David Hilliard and Donald Weise (Seven Stories Press, 2002) Essays from the Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party, 1968, Oakland (pamphlet) The Genius of Huey P. Newton, Awesome Records (June 1, 1993) The original vision of the Black Panther Party, Black Panther Party (1973) Huey Newton talks to the movement about the Black Panther Party, cultural nationalism, SNCC, liberals and white revolutionaries (The Movement, 1968) Newton, Huey (September 28, 2009), To Die for the People, ISBN 978-0872865297, edited by Toni Morrison, foreword by Elaine Brown (Random House, 1972; City Lights Publishers, 2009) Newton, Huey P. (2019), The New Huey P. Newton Reader, ISBN 9781609809003, edited by David Hilliard and Donald Weise, introduction by Elaine Brown (Seven Stories Press, 2019) Death On August 22, 1989, Newton was murdered at the corner of Tenth and Center Streets in the neighborhood of Lower Bottoms in West Oakland, California. Within days, Tyrone Robinson was arrested as a suspect; he was on parole and admitted the murder to police, claiming self-defense — though police found no evidence that Newton was carrying a gun.[70] In 1991, Robinson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of 32 years to life. Robinson stated that his motive was to advance in the Black Guerrilla Family, a Marxist–Leninist narcotics prison gang, in order to get a crack franchise.[70][71] Newton's funeral was held at Allen Temple Baptist Church, where he attended following his conversion.[22] 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.[72] In popular culture In the song "Changes" by Tupac Shakur, Newton is referenced in the lyrics "It's time to fight back, that's what Huey said. Two shots in the dark, now Huey's dead"— although the lyrics were mistaken about the number of times Newton was shot when he was murdered.[73] In the song "Propaganda" (2000) by Dead Prez, on their album Let's Get Free, Newton is referenced in the lyrics "31 years ago I would've been a Panther. They killed Huey cause they knew he had the answer. The views that you see in the news is propaganda." As well as in the Outro of the song, which samples an interview with Newton: [Outro: Huey P. Newton] Uh, we view each other with a great love and a great understanding. And that we try to expand this to the general black population, and also, people-- oppressed people all over the world. And, I think that we differ from some other groups simply because we understand the system better than most groups understand the system. And with this realization, we attempt to form a strong political base based in the community with the only strength that we have and that's the strength of a potentially destructive force if we don't get freedom.[74] The song "Up in Arms" (2015) by American songwriter Bhi Bhiman is based on Newton's life.[75] Agnès Varda's 1968 documentary on the Black Panthers features extensive interviews with Newton during his incarceration. The Boondocks comic strip by Aaron McGruder, and related TV cartoon, features a main character known as Huey Freeman, a 10-year-old African-American revolutionary, who was named after Newton; Freeman starts an independent newspaper, dubbing it the Free Huey World Report.[76] The song "Same Thing" (2007) by band Flobots mentions Huey P. Newton: "Somewhere between prayer and revolution, Between Jesus and Huey P. Newton, That's where you find Jonny 5 shoot shootin', Water guns at the audience while ya scootin'." Newton is mentioned in the song "Mortal Man" (2015) by Kendrick Lamar: "How many leaders you said you needed then left ‘em for dead? Is it Moses? Is it Huey Newton or Detroit Red?"[77] Newton is also mentioned by The Game in the song Dreams "The dream of Huey Newton, that's what I'm livin' through" The fourth track on St. Vincent's 2014 St. Vincent album is named after Newton Newton is mentioned in the Ramshackle Glory song "From Here Till Utopia" Newton is mentioned in Public Enemy's Welcome to the Terrordome, "The shooting of Huey Newton, From a hand of a nig who pulled the trig" The song "Free Huey" by the Boo Radleys, from their Kingsize album (1998) is about the activities of the Black Panther Party when Huey Newton was an activist. The title of the song "Huey Knew" by Ab-Soul is a nod to Huey Newton. Newton is mentioned in Buddy and A$AP Ferg's Black, "I feel like Trayvon with this black hoodie on, Huey P. Newton" Kendrick Lamar also mentioned Newton in the song HiiiPoWeR from his debut album Section.80, "Huey Newton going stupid you can't resist his/ HiiiPower".[78] At the 1:06:54 mark of the stand up comedy special “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert“, Richard Pryor requests the house lights be turned on, and points out and introduces Huey Newton in the crowd, and thanks him for his attendance. Newton is mentioned/discussed in the 1998 film Bulworth as to "why there's no more black leaders in America?" See also Biography portal flag United States portal The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Eldridge Cleaver COINTELPRO Angela Davis George Jackson New Left People v. Newton Soledad Brothers White Panther Party Young Lords RISE OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY It was against this backdrop that Huey P. Newton was organizing the Black Panther Party for self-defense, boldly calling for a complete end to all forms of oppression of blacks and offering revolution as an option. At the same time, the Black Panther Party took the position that black people in America and the Vietnamese people were waging a common struggle, as comrades-in-arms, against a common enemy: the U.S. government. What was most "dangerous" about this was that young blacks, the same urban youth throwing molotov cocktails on America, were listening. This message was amplified when a small group of Black Panther Party members, led by Bobby Seale, designated chairman of the Party, marched into the California legislature, in May 1967, fully armed. Defined as protest against a pending guncontrol bill (which became the Mulford Act) aimed at the Party with the position that blacks had a Constitutional right to bear arms, the Party's message that day became a clarion call to young blacks. When, therefore, in October of 1967, Huey Newton was shot, arrested and charged with the murder of a white Oakland cop, after a gun battle of sorts on the streets of West Oakland that resulted in the death of police officer John Frey, it was indeed the spark that lit a prairie fire. Young whites, angry and disillusioned with America over the Vietnam war, raised their voices with young, urban blacks, to cry in unison: "Free Huey!" It became a movement of itself, the very embodiment of all the social contradictions, between the haves and have nots, the included and excluded, the alienated and the privileged. The freeing of the black man charged with killing a white cop, the oppressed who resisted oppression, was tantamount to the freedom of everyone. One result was not only the flowering of the Party itself but a rapid proliferation of other, like minded organizations. Chicanos, or Mexican Americans, in Southern California formed the Brown Berets. Whites in Chicago and environs formed the White Patriot Party. Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Red Guard. Puerto Ricans in New York created the Young Lords. Eventually, a group of so called senior citizens organized the Gray Panthers to address the human and civil rights abuses of the elderly in society. The Party expanded from a small Oakland based organization to a national organization, as black youth in 48 states formed chapters of the Party. In addition, Black Panther coalition and support groups began to spring up internationally, in Japan, China, France, England, Germany, Sweden, in Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay and elsewhere, including, even, in Israel. At the street level, the Party began to develop a series of social programs to provide needed services to black and poor people, promoting thereby, at the same time, a model for an alternative, more humane social scheme. These programs, of which there came to be more than 35, were eventually referred to as Survival Programs, and were operated by Party members under the slogan "survival pending revolution." The first such program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which spread from being operated at one small Catholic church, in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, to every major city in America where there was a Party chapter. Thousands upon thousands of poor and hungry children were fed free breakfasts every day by the Party under this program. The magnitude and powerful impact of this program was such that the federal government was pressed and shamed into adopting a similar program for public schools across the country, while the FBI assailed the free breakfast program as nothing more than a propaganda tool used by the Party to carry out its "communist" agenda. More insidiously, the FBI denounced the Party itself as a group of communist outlaws bent on overthrowing the U.S. government. Armed with that definition and all the machinery of the federal government, J. Edgar Hoover directed the FBI to wage a campaign to eliminate the Black Panther Party altogether, commanding the assistance of local police departments to do so. Indeed, as Hoover stated in 1968 that the Party represented "the greatest threat to the internal security of the U.S.," he pledged that 1969 would be the last year of the Party's existence. Indeed, in January of 1969, two Party leaders of the Southern California Chapter, John Huggins and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, were murdered at UCLA by FBI paid assassins, with the cooperation of black nationalist Ron Karenga and his US Organization. By the end of that year, nearly every office and other facility of the Black Panther Party had been violently assaulted by police and/or the FBI, culminating, in December, in an FBI orchestrated five hour police assault on the office in Los Angeles and FBI directed Illinois state police assassination of Chicago Party leader Fred Hampton and member Mark Clark. In the interim, there had been the Oakland police murder of 17 year old Party member Bobby Hutton, in April of 1968; the August 1968 Los Angeles police murder of another 17 year old Panther, Tommy Lewis, along with Robert Lawrence and Steve Bartholomew; numerous arrests, from that of Party chairman Bobby Seale on conspiracy charges in connection with anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago to that of chief of staff David Hilliard on charges of assaulting police officers (in the April 1968 police gun battle in which Bobby Hutton was killed) to a conspiracy to kill the President (Nixon) charge arising from an anti-war speech, to the famous New Haven murder conspiracy case of Bobby Seale and veteran Panther Ericka Huggins. There had been every kind of assault imaginable on the Party's social programs and destruction of Party property. From police raiders who smashed breakfast programs eggs on the floors of churches they invaded to those who crushed Party free clinic supplies underfoot to those who caused the destruction of batches of the Party's newspapers. In addition, intimidation and other such tactics were being employed to undermine the Party's support, to break the spirit and commitment of Party supporters and family members. More sinisterly, perhaps, and subtlety were the activities carried out under the FBI's so called counter-intelligence program known as COINTELPRO, whereby the FBI directed its field offices and local police to destroy the Party through the use of informants, agents provocateur and covert activities involving mayhem and murder. Nevertheless, the Party survived and continued to build its Survival Programs, which came to include not only the free breakfast programs and free clinics, but also grocery giveaways, the manufacture and distribution of free shoes, school and education programs, senior transport and service programs, free bussing to prisons and prisoner support and legal aid programs, among others. THE FREE HUEY MOVEMENT AND THE GROWTH OF THE PARTY Hundreds of thousands of black as well as white youth had marched throughout the streets of Oakland and all over America in support of the Free Huey Movement as it had come to be called. While Huey was eventually convicted, it was not on the original charge of first degree murder but for simple manslaughter. Soon, however, even that conviction was set aside and a new trial was ordered. In July of 1970, then, Huey was indeed set free from jail. Thousands greeted him. The celebrations seemed meaningless in light of the July 7, 1970 murder of 17 year old Jonathan Jackson (George Jacksons brother) in the incident that gave rise to the famous arrest and trial of Angela Davis. The question of Huey's freedom was nearly forgotten when well known Party leader Eldridge Cleaver, living in exile in Algeria, challenged the Party's agenda of social programs and proposed a terrorist one. By the end of 1970, Cleaver was expelled from the Party in a nasty riff that culminated in the murder of Party loyalist Sam Napier in New York. Still, the Party continued to build its programs and move its agenda, as it began to consolidate its efforts in its home base of Oakland, California. Over the next few years, until 1973, the Party maintained and built its agenda, despite the brutal assassination at San Quentin prison in August of 1971 of Party field marshal and author George Jackson. Nevertheless, in 19723, the Party entered into electoral politics in Oakland by running Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown for public office, for mayor and city councilwoman respectively. Though that election was lost, per se, it allowed the Black Panther Party to solidify a broad base of support for its future efforts. In 1974, there was great upheaval in the internal affairs of the Party, so much so that by the time Huey Newton went into selfimposed exile, rather than stand trial for the murder of a young prostitute (for which he would be acquitted), most of the original leadership was gone. David Hilliard was expelled while in prison; Bobby Seale was expelled. Elaine Brown took over the chairmanship of the Party during those three years that Newton was in exile, in Cuba. THE LAST CHAPTER During that time, Brown ran for Oakland public office again, this time garnering more than 44% of the vote along with the support of every labor union in the area. At the next city election, the Party supported and virtually installed Lionel Wilson as mayor of Oakland, the first black to hold that post in the 100 year history of the city. In the meantime, it further solidified its base by fighting for and obtaining funds to build 300 new, replacement housing units for poor people displaced by a local freeway; by entering into a working partnership with certain developers to build up the dilapidated downtown city center in order to provide 10,000 new jobs for Oakland's poor and unemployed. At the same time, a permanent primary school was instituted, which was highly lauded by the California legislature, among others. On Huey's return from exile, then, in 1977, the Black Panther Party was alive and well in Oakland, California, maintaining a strong constituency base in the black and working communities, and prepared to move forward to carry out its primary goal to make Oakland a base for revolution in America. Soon after Newton's return to Oakland, in July of 1977, however, a combination of the continued, albeit more subtle and sophisticated, activities of the FBI (despite J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972) and internal stress and conflict came to erode the Black Panther Party. By the end of the decade, it had come to a slow and unheralded demise. 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 Newton's 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 Winds 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.'" Huey Percy Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana. His parents moved to Oakland, California during Newton’s childhood. He graduated from high school without having acquired literacy, but he later taught himself to read. He attended a variety of schools including Merritt College before eventually earning a Bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. During his tenure at Merritt College, Newton joined the Afro-American Association and helped get the first African American History course adopted into the college’s curriculum. Soon after, in October 1966, he and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP). They decided that Seale would be the Chairman and Newton would be the Minister of Defense. Many of the Party’s principles were inspired by Malcolm X and his views. The Party believed that in the Black struggle for justice, violence (or the potential of violence) may be necessary. The Black Panther Party, under the leadership of Newton, gained international support. This was most demonstrated when Newton was invited to visit China in 1970. He was welcomed enthusiastically by large crowds holding up copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung as well as signs supporting the BPP and criticizing U.S. imperialism. After returning to the United States, Newton was tried for a variety of violent offenses such as assault and multiple murders. These charges resulted in him fleeing to Havana, Cuba to escape prosecution for three years. Upon his return, he stood trials for one more assault and murder and was acquitted of both charges. Compounding these challenges was the split that developed between Newton and Eldridge Cleaver in early 1971 over the primary function of the Party. Newton wanted the party to focus on serving African American communities while Cleaver thought the focus should be on building relationships with international revolutionary movements. This rift resulted in violence between the factions and the deaths of several BPP members. In 1989, Newton was fatally shot in West Oakland by a member of the Black Guerilla Family and drug dealer named Tyrone Robinson. Relations between the Black Panther Party and the Black Guerilla Family had been strained for nearly twenty years prior to this incident. The murder occurred after Newton left a drug den in a neighborhood where Newton had once organized social programs. Newton’s last words were, “You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!” Robinson then shot Newton twice in the face. Newton is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland. Robinson was convicted of murder in 1991 and was sentenced to 32 years to life in prison. Huey P. Newton was an African American activist best known for founding the militant Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale in 1966. Who Was Huey P. Newton? In 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the left-wing Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, California. The organization was central to the Black Power movement, making headlines with its controversial rhetoric and militaristic style. Newton faced a number of criminal charges over the years and at one point fled to Cuba before returning to the U.S. and earning his doctorate. Struggling with drug and alcohol addiction in his later years, he was killed in 1989 in Oakland. Background and Early Life Huey Percy Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. Newton helped establish the African American political organization the Black Panther Party, and became a leading figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s. The youngest of seven siblings, he and his family moved to Oakland, California when Newton was a toddler. Though later stating he was close to his family, the youngster had a difficult time early in life, which was reflected in highly erratic behavior at school and on the streets. Despite having multiple suspensions and run-ins with the law as a teen, Newton began to take his education seriously, finding inspiration when his older brother Melvin earned a masters in social work. Although Newton graduated high school in 1959, he was considered barely literate. He nonetheless became his own teacher, learning to read by himself. Creation of Black Panthers In the mid-1960s, Newton decided to pursue his education at Merritt College, during which time he received a months-long prison term for a knife assault, and later attended the University of San Francisco School of Law . It was at Merritt where he met Seale. The two were briefly involved with political groups at the school 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 more militant stance to the plight of Black communities in America. 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 set forth its political goals in a document entitled the Ten-Point Program, which called for better housing, jobs and education for African Americans. It also called for an end to economic exploitation of Black communities, along with military exemption. The organization itself was not afraid to punctuate its message with dramatic appearances. For example, to protest a gun bill in 1967, members of the Panthers entered the California Legislature armed. (Newton actually wasn't present at the demonstration.) The action was a shocking one that made news across the country, and Newton emerged as a leading figure in the Black militant movement. Arrest and Conviction The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in Black communities and took a stance against police brutality in urban neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse. Panther members ultimately clashed with police several times. The party's treasurer, Bobby Hutton, was killed while still a teenager during one of these conflicts in 1968. READ NEXT PERSONALITIES Barron Trump (2006-) ACTIVISTS Bobby Seale (1936-) ACTIVISTS Ruby Bridges (1954-) Newton himself was arrested the previous year 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 of the day — helped Newton's cause. He was freed in 1970 after an appeals process deemed that incorrect deliberation procedures had been implemented during the trial. In the 1970s, Newton aimed to take the Panthers in a new direction that emphasized democratic socialism, community interconnectedness and services for the poor, including items like free lunch programs and urban clinics. But the Panthers began to fall apart due to factionalism, with later allegations surfacing that the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was clandestinely involved in the organization's unraveling. Key members left while Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the party's minister of information, split ways. By mid-decade, Newton faced more criminal charges when he was accused of murdering a 17-year-old sex worker and assaulting a tailor. To avoid prosecution, he fled to Cuba in 1974, but returned to the U.S. three years later. The murder case was eventually dismissed after two trials ended with deadlocked juries, while the tailor refused to testify in court in relation to assault charges. Later Years and Death Even with his legal troubles, Newton returned to school, earning a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1980. In his final years, however, he suffered from major drug/alcohol problems and faced more prison time for weapons possession, financial misappropriations and parole violations. The once popular revolutionary died on August 22, 1989, in Oakland, California, after being shot on the street. Newton had published a memoir/manifesto Revolutionary Suicide in 1973, with Hugh Pearson later writing the 1994 biography The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Newton's story was later depicted in the 1996 one-man play Huey P. Newton, starring Roger Guenveur Smith. A 2002 filmed presentation of the project was created by Spike Lee, and documentarian Stanley Nelson looked at the history of the Panthers in the 2015 film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Born in Monroe, Louisiana on February 17, 1942, Huey P. Newton was named after the populist governor Huey Long. His parents moved to Oakland, California during World War II seeking economic opportunities. Newton attended Merritt College, where he met Bobby Seale. At Merritt, Newton fought to diversify the curriculum and hire more black instructors. He also was exposed to a rising tide of Black Nationalism and briefly joined the Afro-American Association. Within this group and on his own, he studied a broad range of thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, E. Franklin Frazier, and James Baldwin. Newton eventually developed a Marxist/Leninist perspective, where he viewed the black community as an internal colony controlled by external forces such as white businessmen, the police, and city hall. He believed the black working class needed to seize the control of the institutions that most affected their community and formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with Bobby Seale in October 1966 to pursue that goal. Newton became the Minister of Defense and main leader of the Party. Writing in the Ten-Point Program, the founding document of the Party, Newton demanded that blacks need the “power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.” That power would allow blacks to gain “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.” Taking advantage of a California law that allowed people to carry non-concealed weapons, the Panthers instituted armed patrols that monitored police activity in the black community. These patrols led to increasingly tense relations with the police, and in October 1967 Newton was arrested following a Panther-police shootout that resulted in the death of an Oakland police officer. Considered a political prisoner by many on the left, the Panthers orchestrated a Free Huey campaign led by the Party’s Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver. Charles R. Geary, a well-known attorney, headed Newton’s legal defense, and in July 1968 Newton was convicted of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. That conviction was overturned on appeal, and in 1970 Newton was freed from prison. Newton’s leadership of the Black Panther Party in the early 1970s helped contribute to its demise. He led a number of purges of Party members, most famously in 1971 when he expelled Eldridge Cleaver in what was called the Newton-Cleaver split. In 1974, Newton was accused of assaulting a prostitute who later died. Instead of standing trial, he fled to Cuba. He returned to the U.S. in 1976, stood trial, but was acquitted. In 1978, he enrolled in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he earned his doctorate in 1980. His dissertation, “War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America,” was later published as a book. Huey Newton was murdered in Oakland, California on August 22, 1989; he was 47 years old. He was survived by his wife Fredricka. Newton’s autobiography entitled Revolutionary Suicide was first published in 1973 and republished in 1995. Huey P. Newton, a co-founder of the Black Panther Party and a leader of a generation of blacks in the 1960's, was shot to death early today in the neighborhood where he began his organizing. His body was found lying in a pool of blood on a street in an Oakland neighborhood where residents say they fear they are losing the fight against drug dealing and poverty. Dr. Newton, who earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980, was shot several times, at least once in the head, said Officer Terry Foley of the Oakland Police Department. The shooting was reported to the police at 5:29 A.M. The 47-year-old Dr. Newton was taken to Highland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour later. At a news conference this afternoon, Lieut. Mike Sims said there were no suspects and no apparent motive. Dr. Newton, who founded the Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale, became one of the most charismatic symbols of black anger in the late 1960's. After his conviction in 1967 in the death of an Oakland police officer, radicals and many college students took up the rallying cry ''Free Huey.'' At the same time, Dr. Newton and the Black Panthers were accused of being controlled by the Communist Party and were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [ Obituary, page B7. ] In recent years Dr. Newton continued to face numerous legal charges, served time in jail and fought to rehabilitate himself from alcohol and drug abuse. Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. Police investigators said today that there was no evidence that his killing was related to drugs. Where His Work Began Residents of the neighborhood where Dr. Newton was killed said he began his work with the Black Panthers in the same area, working with churches to serve free breakfasts to youngsters. One man, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said: ''He knew everybody down here. This area is part of his roots. This area is where he came up.'' Editors’ Picks How the First Black Female Jockey Rode Into Oblivion Her High School Said She Ranked Third in Her Class. So She Went to Court. How the Religious Right Made Same-Sex Marriage a Gay Rights Crusade Continue reading the main story Fred DePalm, who was awakened by the shooting this morning, said: ''To us, Huey Newton was a hero. The Black Panthers were a thing to identify with along with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.'' Mr. DePalm's sister, Audrey, said she recognized news photographs of Dr. Newton as a man she had seen recently in the neighborhood, which is two blocks from the west Oakland subway station and is marked by abandoned buildings and rundown homes with broken windows. Charles Garry, who was Dr. Newton's lawyer for many years and who defended him in the case of the slain Oakland officer, hailed Dr. Newton as the founder of ''the renaissance of the black liberation movement.'' Mr. Garry said he never saw a violent side to Newton. A Change in Personality ''I saw a very sweet side, a humane side, a dignified side, a man who was theoretically in favor of a better world.'' But Mr. Garry said that Dr. Newton became paranoid and that his personality changed years ago when he became a target of the F.B.I., whose agents tried to infiltrate and disrupt the Black Panthers. ''They destroyed him over 10 years ago,'' Mr. Garry said. ''To me, Huey died 10 years ago.'' But law-enforcement officers said they saw a much more lawless side. Dr. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of the Oakland officer and served two years in prison before the case was overturned on appeal. The second and third trials in the case ended in hung juries. In 1987, he served nine months in San Quentin Prison on a handgun possession charge dating from the late 1970's. And in March he pleaded no contest to misappropriating $15,000 in public funds earmarked for a community school the party ran in the early 1980's. After being granted parole on the weapons conviction, he returned to prison twice on parole violatons. The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Black Power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California.[7][8][9] The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in numerous major cities, and international chapters in Britain and Algeria.[10][11] Upon its inception the Black Panther Party's core practice was its open carry armed citizens' patrols ("copwatching") to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in the city. In 1969, a variety of community social programs became a core activity.[12] The Party instituted the Free Breakfast for Children Programs to address food injustice, and community health clinics for education and treatment of diseases including sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and later HIV/AIDS.[13][14][15] It advocated for class struggle, with the party representing the proletarian vanguard.[16] Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton declared: Malcolm, implacable to the ultimate degree, held out to the Black masses ... liberation from the chains of the oppressor and the treacherous embrace of the endorsed [Black] spokesmen. Only with the gun were the black masses denied this victory. But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun, they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality.[17] Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and Eldridge Cleaver (Minister of Information) led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther Bobby Hutton (Treasurer) was killed. FBI infiltrators caused the party to suffer many internal conflicts, resulting in the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter.[citation needed] In 1967, the Mulford Act was passed by the California legislature and signed by governor Ronald Reagan. The bill was crafted in response to members of the Black Panther Party who were copwatching. The bill repealed a law that allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms. In 1969, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."[18][19][20] He developed and supervised an extensive counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics, designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate and assassinate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain organizational resources and manpower. The program was responsible for the assassination of Fred Hampton,[21][22] and is accused of assassinating other Black Panther members, including Mark Clark.[23][24][25][26] Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth, as killings and arrests of Panthers increased its support among African Americans and the broad political left, who both valued the Panthers as a powerful force opposed to de facto segregation and the military draft. The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.[27] There were active chapters in many prisons, at a time when an increasing number of young African-American men were being incarcerated. Black Panther Party membership reached a peak in 1970, with offices in 68 cities and thousands of members, but it began to decline over the following decade. After its leaders and members were vilified by the mainstream press, public support for the party waned, and the group became more isolated.[28] In-fighting among Party leadership, fomented largely by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, led to expulsions and defections that decimated the membership.[29] Popular support for the Party declined further after reports of the group's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion of Oakland merchants.[30] By 1972 most Panther activity centered on the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Though under constant police surveillance, the Chicago chapter also remained active and maintained their community programs until 1974.[27] The Seattle chapter persisted longer than most, with a breakfast program and medical clinics that continued even after the chapter disbanded in 1977.[27] The Party continued to dwindle throughout the 1970s, and by 1980 had just 27 members.[31] The Party's history is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism".[32] Other commentators have described the Party as more criminal than political, characterized by "defiant posturing over substance".[33] Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Founding the Black Panther Party 1.3 Late 1966 to early 1967 1.3.1 Chronology 1.3.2 Oakland patrols of police 1.3.3 Rallies in Richmond, California 1.3.4 Protest at the Statehouse 1.3.5 Ten-point program 1.4 Late 1967 to early 1968 1.4.1 Chronology 1.4.2 United Front Against Fascism 1.4.3 COINTELPRO 1.4.4 Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey 1.4.5 Free Huey! campaign 1.4.6 Founding of the L.A. Chapter 1.4.7 Killing of Bobby Hutton 1.5 Late 1968 1.5.1 Chronology 1.5.2 Survival programs 1.5.3 Political activities 1.6 1969 1.6.1 Chronology 1.6.2 Shoot-out with the US Organization 1.6.3 Black Panther Party Liberation Schools 1.6.4 Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark 1.6.5 Torture-murder of Alex Rackley 1.6.6 International ties 1.7 1970 1.7.1 Chronology 1.8 1971 1.8.1 Chronology 1.8.2 Split 1.8.3 Delegation to China 1.9 1972–74 1.9.1 Chronology 1.9.2 Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland 1.9.3 Newton indicted for violent crimes 1.10 1974–77 1.10.1 The Panthers under Elaine Brown 1.10.2 Death of Betty van Patter 1.11 1977–82 1.11.1 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party 1.11.2 Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton 2 Women and womanism 2.1 Gender dynamics 2.2 Women's role 2.3 Elaine Brown 2.4 Gwen Robinson 3 Gay Liberation Movement 4 Aftermath and legacy 4.1 Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers 4.2 New Black Panther Party 5 References 5.1 Bibliography 6 Further reading 7 External links History Origins Original six members of the Black Panther Party (1966) Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. Newton (Defense Minister), Sherwin Forte, Bobby Seale (Chairman) Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton (Treasurer). File:Black Panther 65-27 HD 2Mbps.webm Newsreel in which Kathleen Cleaver spoke at Hutton Memorial Park in Alameda County, California. The footage also shows a student protest demonstration at Alameda County Courthouse, Oakland, California. Black Panther Party leaders Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale spoke on a 10-point program they wanted from the administration which was to include full employment, decent housing and education, an end to police brutality, and blacks to be exempt from the military. Black Panther Party members are shown as they marched in uniform. Students at the rally marched, sang, clapped hands, and carried protest signs. Police in riot gear controlled marchers. During World War II, tens of thousands of blacks left the Southern states during the Second Great Migration, moving to Oakland and other cities in the Bay Area to find work in the war industries such as Kaiser Shipyards. The sweeping migration transformed the Bay Area as well as cities throughout the West and North, altering the once white-dominated demographics.[34] A new generation of young blacks growing up in these cities faced new forms of poverty and racism unfamiliar to their parents, and they sought to develop new forms of politics to address them.[35] Black Panther Party membership "consisted of recent migrants whose families traveled north and west to escape the southern racial regime, only to be confronted with new forms of segregation and repression".[36] In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled the Jim Crow system of racial caste subordination in the South with tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, and demanding full citizenship rights for black people.[37] However, not much changed in the cities of the North and West. As the wartime and post-war jobs which drew much of the black migration "fled to the suburbs along with white residents", the black population was concentrated in poor "urban ghettos" with high unemployment and substandard housing and was mostly excluded from political representation, top universities, and the middle class.[38] Northern and Western police departments were almost all white.[39] In 1966, only 16 of Oakland's 661 police officers were African American (less than 2.5%).[40] Civil rights tactics proved incapable of redressing these conditions, and the organizations that had "led much of the nonviolent civil disobedience", such as SNCC and CORE, went into decline.[37] By 1966 a "Black Power ferment" emerged, consisting largely of young urban blacks, posing a question the Civil Rights Movement could not answer: "How would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights, but actual economic and political power?"[39] Young black people in Oakland and other cities developed study groups and political organizations, and from this ferment the Black Panther Party emerged.[41] Founding the Black Panther Party In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense). In formulating a new politics, they drew on their work with a variety of Black Power organizations.[42] Newton and Seale first met in 1962 when they were both students at Merritt College.[43] They joined Donald Warden's Afro-American Association, where they read widely, debated, and organized in an emergent black nationalist tradition inspired by Malcolm X and others.[44] Eventually dissatisfied with Warden's accommodationism, they developed a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective working with more active and militant groups like the Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement.[45][46] Their paid jobs running youth service programs at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center allowed them to develop a revolutionary nationalist approach to community service, later a key element in the Black Panther Party's "community survival programs."[47] Dissatisfied with the failure of these organizations to directly challenge police brutality and appeal to the "brothers on the block", Huey and Bobby took matters into their own hands. After the police killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man in San Francisco, Newton observed the violent insurrection that followed. He had an epiphany that would distinguish the Black Panther Party from the multitude of Black Power organizations. Newton saw the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a social force and believed that if he could stand up to the police, he could organize that force into political power. Inspired by Robert F. Williams' armed resistance to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Williams' book Negroes with Guns,[48] Newton studied gun laws in California extensively. Like the Community Alert Patrol in Los Angeles after the Watts Rebellion, he decided to organize patrols to follow the police around to monitor for incidents of brutality. But with a crucial difference: his patrols would carry loaded guns.[49] Huey and Bobby raised enough money to buy two shotguns by buying bulk quantities of the recently publicized Little Red Book and reselling them to leftists and liberals on the Berkeley campus at three times the price. According to Bobby Seale, they would "sell the books, make the money, buy the guns, and go on the streets with the guns. We'll protect a mother, protect a brother, and protect the community from the racist cops."[50] On October 29, 1966, Stokely Carmichael – a leader of SNCC – championed the call for "Black Power" and came to Berkeley to keynote a Black Power conference. At the time, he was promoting the armed organizing efforts of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama and their use of the Black Panther symbol. Newton and Seale decided to adopt the Black Panther logo and form their own organization called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.[51] Newton and Seale decided on a uniform of blue shirts, black pants, black leather jackets, black berets.[52] Sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton was their first recruit.[53] Late 1966 to early 1967 Chronology Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton standing in the street, armed with a Colt .45 and a shotgun. October 15, 1966: The BPP is founded. A few months later, they begin their first police-watching patrols.[9] January 1967: The BPP opens its first official headquarters in an Oakland storefront, and publishes the first issue of The Black Panther: Black Community News Service. February 1967: BPP members serve as security escorts for Betty Shabazz. April 1967: Denzil Dowell protest in Richmond. May 2, 1967: Thirty people representing the BPP go to California state capitol with guns, attracting the Party's first national media attention. Oakland patrols of police The initial tactic of the party utilized contemporary open-carry gun laws to protect Party members when policing the police. This act was done to record incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods.[54] When confronted by a police officer, Party members cited laws proving they had done nothing wrong and threatened to take to court any officer that violated their constitutional rights.[55] Between the end of 1966 to the start of 1967, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense's armed police patrols in Oakland black communities attracted a small handful of members.[56] Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker for a conference held in his honor.[57] The Black Panther Party's focus on militancy was often construed as open hostility,[58][59] feeding a reputation of violence even though early efforts by the Panthers focused primarily on promoting social issues and the exercise of their legal right to carry arms. The Panthers employed a California law that permitted carrying a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and pointed at no one.[52] Generally this was done while monitoring and observing police behavior in their neighborhoods, with the Panthers arguing that this emphasis on active militancy and openly carrying their weapons was necessary to protect individuals from police violence. For example, chants like "The Revolution has come, it's time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!",[60] helped create the Panthers' reputation as a violent organization. Rallies in Richmond, California The black community of Richmond, California, wanted protection against police brutality.[61] With only three main streets for entering and exiting the neighborhood, it was easy for police to control, contain, and suppress the population.[62] On April 1, 1967, a black unarmed twenty-two-year-old construction worker named Denzil Dowell was shot dead by police in North Richmond.[63] Dowell's family contacted the Black Panther Party for assistance after county officials refused to investigate the case.[64] The Party held rallies in North Richmond that educated the community on armed self-defense and the Denzil Dowell incident.[65] Police seldom interfered at these rallies because every Panther was armed and no laws were broken.[66] The Party's ideals resonated with several community members, who then brought their own guns to the next rallies.[67] Protest at the Statehouse Awareness of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense grew rapidly after their May 2, 1967 protest at the California State Assembly. On May 2, 1967, the California State Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure was scheduled to convene to discuss what was known as the "Mulford Act", which would make the public carrying of loaded firearms illegal. Newton, with Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, put together a plan to send a group of 26 armed Panthers led by Seale from Oakland to Sacramento to protest the bill. The group entered the assembly carrying their weapons, an incident which was widely publicized, and which prompted police to arrest Seale and five others. The group pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting a legislative session.[68] Black Panther convention, Lincoln Memorial, June 19, 1970. In May 1967, the Panthers invaded the State Assembly Chamber in Sacramento, guns in hand, in what appears to have been a publicity stunt. Still, they scared a lot of important people that day. At the time, the Panthers had almost no following. Now, (a year later) however, their leaders speak on invitation almost anywhere radicals gather, and many whites wear "Honkeys for Huey" buttons, supporting the fight to free Newton, who has been in jail since last Oct. 28 (1967) on the charge that he killed a policeman ...[69] Ten-point program Main article: Ten-Point Program The Black Panther Party first publicized its original "What We Want Now!" Ten-Point program on May 15, 1967, following the Sacramento action, in the second issue of The Black Panther newspaper.[57] We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. We want full employment for our people. We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. 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 present-day society. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. 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. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. Late 1967 to early 1968 Chronology July 1967: United Front Against Fascism conference held in Oakland. August 1967: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiates its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize . . . black nationalist hate groups". October 28, 1967: Huey Newton allegedly kills police officer John Frey. There are fewer than one hundred Party members. Early Spring 1968: Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice published. April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King assassinated. Riots break out nationwide. April 6, 1968: A team of Panthers led by Eldridge Cleaver ambushes Oakland police officers. Panther Bobby Hutton killed. United Front Against Fascism In July 1969 the BPP organized the United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland, which was attended by around 5,000 people representing a number of groups.[70][71] COINTELPRO COINTELPRO document outlining the FBI's plans to 'neutralize' Jean Seberg for her support for the Black Panther Party, by attempting to publicly "cause her embarrassment" and "tarnish her image". In August 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize ... black nationalist hate groups" and other dissident groups. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country".[72] By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.[73] The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken their leadership, as well as to discredit them to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam, as well as leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad. As assistant FBI Director William Sullivan later testified in front of the Church Committee, the Bureau "did not differentiate" between Soviet spies and suspected Communists in black nationalist movements when deploying surveillance and neutralization tactics.[74] COINTELPRO attempted to create rivalries between black nationalist factions and to exploit existing ones. One such attempt was to "intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang. The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers' gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter whose intent was to provoke "preemptive" violence against Panther leadership. In Southern California, the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and a black nationalist group called the US Organization, allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism.[75] COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting their social/community programs, most prominently Free Breakfast for Children. The success of Free Breakfast served to "shed light on the government's failure to address child poverty and hunger—pointing to the limits of the nation's War on Poverty".[76] As the Party taught and provided for children more effectively than the government, the FBI denounced their efforts as a means of indoctrination. "Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers".[76][77] Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey On October 28, 1967,[78] Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P. Newton during a traffic stop in which Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also suffered gunshot wounds. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial, but the conviction was later overturned. In his book Shadow of the Panther, writer Hugh Pearson alleges that Newton was intoxicated in the hours before the incident, and claimed to have willfully killed John Frey.[79] Free Huey! campaign At the time, Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the Party's "Free Huey!" campaign. The police killing gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left.[80] Newton was released after three years, when his conviction was reversed on appeal.[81] As Newton awaited trial, the "Free Huey" campaign developed alliances with numerous students and anti-war activists, "advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protestors to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese".[82] The "Free Huey" campaign attracted black power organizations, New Left groups, and other activist groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, Bob Avakian of the Community for New Politics, and the Red Guard.[83] For example, the Black Panther Party collaborated with the Peace and Freedom Party, which sought to promote a strong antiwar and antiracist politics in opposition to the establishment democratic party.[84] The Black Panther Party provided needed legitimacy to the Peace and Freedom Party's racial politics and in return received invaluable support for the "Free Huey" campaign.[85] Founding of the L.A. Chapter In 1968 the southern California chapter was founded by Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter in Los Angeles. Carter was the leader of the Slauson Street gang, and many of the LA chapter's early recruits were Slausons.[86] Killing of Bobby Hutton Bobby Hutton was born April 21, 1950, in Jefferson County Arkansas. At the age of three, he and his family moved to Oakland, California after being harassed by racist vigilante groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan. In December 1966, he became the first treasurer and recruit of the Black Panther Party at the age of just 16 years old. He became the first member of the party to be killed by police. On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with riots raging across cities in the United States, the 17-year-old Hutton was traveling with Eldridge Cleaver and other BPP members in a car. The group confronted Oakland Police officers, then fled to an apartment building where they engaged in a 90-minute gun battle with the police. The standoff ended with Cleaver wounded and Hutton voluntarily surrendering. According to Cleaver, although Hutton had stripped down to his underwear and had his hands raised in the air to prove that he was unarmed, Oakland Police shot Hutton more than 12 times, killing him. Two police officers were also shot. Although at the time the BPP claimed that the police had ambushed them, several party members later admitted that Cleaver had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, provoking the shoot-out.[87][88][89][90][91] Seven other Panthers, including Chief of Staff David Hilliard, were also arrested. Hutton's death became a rallying issue for Panther supporters.[92][93] Late 1968 Chronology April to mid-June 1968: Cleaver in jail. Mid-July 1968: Huey Newton's murder trial commences. Panthers hold daily "Free Huey" rallies outside the courthouse. August 5, 1968: Three Panthers killed in a gun battle with police at a Los Angeles gas station.[94] Early September 1968: Newton convicted of manslaughter. Late September 1968: Days before he is due to return to prison to serve out a rape conviction, Cleaver flees to Cuba and later Algeria. October 5, 1968: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Los Angeles.[94] November 1968: The BPP finds numerous supporters, establishing relationships with the Peace and Freedom Party and SNCC. Money contributions flow in, and BPP leadership begins embezzlement.[95] November 6, 1968: Lauren Watson, head of the Denver chapter, is arrested by Denver Police for fleeing a police officer and resisting arrest. His trial will be filmed and televised in 1970 as "Trial: The City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. Watson." November 20, 1968: William Lee Brent and two accomplices in a van marked "Black Panther Black Community News Service" allegedly rob a gas station in San Francisco's Bayview district of $80, resulting in a shootout with police.[96] In 1968, the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus directly on political action. Members were encouraged to carry guns and to defend themselves against violence. An influx of college students joined the group, which had consisted chiefly of "brothers off the block". This created some tension in the group. Some members were more interested in supporting the Panthers' social programs, while others wanted to maintain their "street mentality".[97] By 1968, the Party had expanded into many U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toledo, and Washington, D.C. Peak membership was near 5,000 by 1969, and their newspaper, under the editorial leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, had a circulation of 250,000.[98] The group created a Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace", as well as exemption from conscription for black men, among other demands.[99] With the Ten-Point program, "What We Want, What We Believe", the Black Panther Party expressed its economic and political grievances.[100] Curtis Austin states that by late 1968, Black Panther ideology had evolved from black nationalism to become more a "revolutionary internationalist movement": [The Party] dropped its wholesale attacks against whites and began to emphasize more of a class analysis of society. Its emphasis on Marxist–Leninist doctrine and its repeated espousal of Maoist statements signaled the group's transition from a revolutionary nationalist to a revolutionary internationalist movement. Every Party member had to study Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book" to advance his or her knowledge of peoples' struggle and the revolutionary process.[101] Panther slogans and iconography spread. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two American medalists, gave the black power salute during the American national anthem. The International Olympic Committee banned them from all future Olympic Games. Film star Jane Fonda publicly supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers during the early 1970s. She actually ended up informally adopting the daughter of two Black Panther members, Mary Luana Williams. Fonda and other Hollywood celebrities became involved in the Panthers' leftist programs. The Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists, including writer Jean Genet, former Ramparts magazine editor David Horowitz (who later became a major critic of what he describes as Panther criminality)[citation needed] and left-wing lawyer Charles R. Garry, who acted as counsel in the Panthers' many legal battles. The BPP adopted a "Serve the People" program, which at first involved a free breakfast program for children. By the end of 1968, the BPP had established 38 chapters and branches, claiming more than five thousand members. Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver left the country days before Cleaver was to turn himself in to serve the remainder of a thirteen-year sentence for a 1958 rape conviction. They settled in Algeria.[102] By the end of the year, party membership peaked at around 2,000.[103] Party members engaged in criminal activities such as extortion, stealing, violent discipline of BPP members, and robberies. The BPP leadership took one-third of the proceeds from robberies committed by BPP members.[104] Survival programs "no kid should be running around hungry in school" Bobby Seale[105] The Black Panther Party's free breakfast program is "the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for." FBI director J. Edgar Hoover[105] Inspired by Mao Zedong's advice to revolutionaries in The Little Red Book, Newton called on the Panthers to "serve the people" and to make "survival programs" a priority within its branches. The most famous of their programs was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, initially run out of an Oakland church. The Free Breakfast For Children program was especially significant because it served as a space for educating youth about the current condition of the Black community, and the actions that the Party was taking to address that condition. "While the children ate their meal[s], members [of the Party] taught them liberation lessons consisting of Party messages and Black history."[76] Through this program, the Party was able to influence young minds, and strengthen their ties to communities as well as gain widespread support for their ideologies. The breakfast program became so popular that the Panthers Party claimed to have fed twenty thousand children in the 1968–69 school year.[106] Other survival programs[107] were free services such as clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease.[108] The free medical clinics were very significant because they modeled an idea of how the world might work with free medical care, eventually being established in 13 places across the country. These clinics were involved in community-based health care that had roots connected to the Civil Rights Movement, which made it possible to establish the Medical Committee for Human Rights.[109] Political activities In 1968, BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver ran for Presidential office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.[110] They were a big influence on the White Panther Party, tied to the Detroit/Ann Arbor band MC5 and their manager John Sinclair (author of the book Guitar Army), which also promulgated a ten-point program. 1969 Chronology Early 1969: In late 1968 and January 1969, the BPP began to purge members due to fears about law enforcement infiltration and various petty disagreements. January 14, 1969: The Los Angeles chapter was involved in a shootout with members of the black nationalist US Organization, and two Panthers are killed. January 1969: The Oakland BPP begins the first free breakfast program for children. March 1969: There is a second purge of BPP members. April 1969: Members of the New York chapter, known as the Panther 21 are indicted and jailed for a bombing conspiracy. All would eventually be acquitted. May 1969: Two more southern California Panthers are killed in violent disputes with US Organization members.[94] May 1969: Members of the New Haven chapter torture and murder Alex Rackley, who they suspected of being an informant. July 17, 1969: Two policemen are shot and a Panther is killed in a gun battle in Chicago.[94] Late July 1969: The BPP ideology undergoes a shift, with a turn toward self-discipline and anti-racism. August 1969: Bobby Seale is indicted and imprisoned in relation to the Rackley murder. October 18, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police outside a Los Angeles restaurant.[94] Mid-to-late 1969: COINTELPRO activity increases. November 13, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Chicago.[94] December 4, 1969: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed by law enforcement in Chicago.[27] Late 1969: David Hilliard, current BPP head, advocates violent revolution. Panther membership is down significantly from the late 1968 peak. Shoot-out with the US Organization Violent conflict between the Panther chapter in LA and the US Organization, a black nationalist group, resulted in shootings and beatings and led to the murders of at least four Black Panther Party members. On January 17, 1969, Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, in a gun battle with members of the US Organization. Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries. Two more Panthers died. Black Panther Party Liberation Schools Paramount to their beliefs regarding the need for individual agency to catalyze community change, the Black Panther Party (BPP) strongly supported the education of the masses. As part of their Ten-Point Program which set forth the ideals and goals of the party, they demanded an equitable education for all black people. Number 5 of the "What We Want Now!" section of the program reads: "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 present-day society." To ensure that this occurred, the Black Panther Party took the education of their youth into their own hands by first establishing after-school programs and then opening up Liberation Schools in a variety of locations throughout the country which focused their curriculum on Black history, writing skills, and political science.[111] Intercommunal Youth Institute The first Liberation School was opened by the Richmond Black Panthers in July 1969 with brunch served and snacks provided to students. Another school was opened in Mt. Vernon New York on July 17 of the subsequent year.[111] These schools were informal in nature and more closely resembled after-school or summer programs.[112] While these campuses were the first to open, the first full-time and longest-running Liberation school was opened in January 1971 in Oakland in response to the inequitable conditions in the Oakland Unified School District which was ranked one of the lowest-scoring districts in California.[113] Named the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), this school, under the directorship of Brenda Bay, and later, Ericka Huggins, enrolled twenty-eight students in its first year, with the majority being the children of Black Panther parents. This number grew to fifty by the 1973–1974 school year. To provide full support for Black Panther parents whose time was spent organizing, some of the students and faculty members lived together year around. The school itself was dissimilar to traditional schools in a variety of ways including the fact that students were separated by academic performance rather than age and students were often provided one on one support as the faculty to student ratio was 1:10.[113] The Panther's goal in opening Liberation Schools, and specifically the Intercommunal Youth Institute, was to provide students with an education that wasn't being provided in the "white" schools,[114] as the public schools in the district employed a eurocentric assimilationist curriculum with little to no attention to black history and culture. While students were provided with traditional courses such as English, Math, and Science, they were also exposed to activities focused on class structure and the prevalence of institutional racism.[115] The overall goal of the school was to instill a sense of revolutionary consciousness in the students.[112] With a strong belief in experiential learning, students had the opportunity to participate in community service projects as well as practice their writing skills by drafting letters to political prisoners associated with the Black Panther Party.[115] Huggins is noted as saying, "I think that the school's principles came from the socialist principles we tried to live in the Black Panther Party. One of them being critical thinking—that children should learn not what to think but how to think ... the school was an expression of the collective wisdom of the people who envisioned it. And it was ... a living thing [that] changed every year.[112] Joan Kelley oversaw funding for the Intercommunal Youth Institute which was provided through a combination of Black Panther fundraising and community support.[113] Oakland Community School In 1974, due to increased interest in enrolling in the school, school officials decided to move to a larger facility and subsequently changed the school's name to Oakland Community School. During this year, the school graduated its first class.[114] Although the student population continued to grow ranging between 50 and 150 between 1974–1977, the original core values of individualized instruction remained.[113] In September 1977, the school received a special award from Governor Edmund Brown Jr. and the California Legislature for "having set the standard for the highest level of elementary education in the state.[114] The school eventually closed in 1982 due to governmental pressure on party leadership which caused insufficient membership and funds to continue running the school.[113] Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark In Chicago, on December 4, 1969, two Panthers were killed when the Chicago Police raided the home of Panther leader Fred Hampton. The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton was shot and killed, as was Panther guard Mark Clark. A federal investigation reported that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, and police fired at least 80 shots.[116] The only shot fired by the Panthers was from Mark Clark, who appeared to fire a single round determined to be the result of a reflexive death convulsion after he was immediately struck in the chest by shots from the police at the start of the raid. Hampton was sleeping next to his pregnant fiancée and was subsequently shot twice in the head at point-blank range while unconscious. Coroner reports show that Hampton was drugged with a powerful barbiturate that night, and would have been unable to have been awoken by the sounds of the police raid.[117] His body was then dragged into the hallway. He was 21 years old and unarmed at the time of his death. Seven other Panthers sleeping at the house at the time of the raid were then beaten and seriously wounded, then arrested under charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers involved in the raid. These charges would later be dropped. Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan announced to the media later that the Panthers were first to shoot in the interaction and that they showed a "refusal to cease firing... when urged to do so several times." New York Times reporting would later demonstrate that this was not in fact the case and found a great deal of fake evidence being used by Chicago Police to assert their claims.[118] Former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen asserts that the Bureau was guilty of a "plot to murder" the Panthers.[119] Hampton had been slipped the barbiturates which had left him unconscious by William O'Neal, who had been working as an FBI informant. Hanrahan, his assistant and eight Chicago police officers were indicted by a federal grand jury over the raid, but the charges were later dismissed.[98][120] In 1979 civil action, Hampton's family won $1.85 million from the city of Chicago in a wrongful death settlement.[121] Torture-murder of Alex Rackley In May 1969, three members of the New Haven chapter tortured and murdered Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old member of the New York chapter, because they suspected him of being a police informant. Three party officers—Warren Kimbro, George Sams, Jr., and Lonnie McLucas—later admitted taking part. Sams, who gave the order to shoot Rackley at the murder scene, turned state's evidence and testified that he had received orders personally from Bobby Seale to carry out the execution. Party supporters responded that Sams was himself the informant and an agent provocateur employed by the FBI.[122] The case resulted in the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1970. Kimbro and Sams were convicted of the murder, but the trials of Seale and Ericka Huggins ended with a hung jury, and the prosecution chose not to seek another trial. International ties Activists from many countries around the globe supported the Panthers and their cause. In Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Finland, for example, left-wing activists organized a tour for Bobby Seale and Masai Hewitt in 1969. At each destination along the tour, the Panthers talked about their goals and the "Free Huey!" campaign. Seale and Hewitt made a stop in Germany as well, gaining support for the "Free Huey!" campaign.[123] 1970 Chronology January 1970: Leonard Bernstein holds a fundraiser for the BPP, which was notoriously mocked by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Spring 1970: The Oakland BPP engages in another ambush of police officers with guns and fragmentation bombs. Two officers are wounded.[124] May 1970: Huey Newton's conviction is overturned, but he remains incarcerated. July 1970: Newton tells The New York Times that "we've never advocated violence". August 1970: Newton is released from prison. In 1970, a group of Panthers traveled through Asia and they were welcomed as guests of the governments of North Vietnam, North Korea, and China. The group's first stop was in North Korea, where the Panthers met with local officials to discuss ways in which they could help each other fight against American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver traveled to Pyongyang twice in 1969 and 1970, and following these trips he made an effort to publicize the writings and works of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in the United States.[125] After leaving North Korea, the group traveled to North Vietnam with the same agenda in mind: finding ways to put an end to American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver was invited to speak to Black GIs by the North Vietnamese government. He encouraged them to join the Black Liberation Struggle by arguing that the United States government was only using them for its own purposes. Instead of risking their lives on the battlefield for a country that continued to oppress them, Cleaver believed that the black GIs should risk their lives in support of their own liberation. After leaving Vietnam, Cleaver met with the Chinese ambassador to Algeria to express their mutual animosity towards the American government.[126] When Algeria held its first Pan-African Cultural Festival, they invited many important figures from the United States. Among the important figures invited to the festival were Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. The cultural festival allowed Black Panthers to network with representatives of various international anti-imperialist movements. This was a significant time, which led to the formation of the International Section of the Party.[127] It is at this festival that Cleaver met with the ambassador of North Korea, who later invited him to an International Conference of Revolutionary Journalists in Pyongyang. Eldridge also met with Yasser Arafat, and gave a speech supporting the Palestinians and their goal of achieving liberation.[128] 1971 Chronology January 1971: Newton expels Geronimo Pratt who, since 1970, had been in jail facing a pending murder charge. Newton also expels two of the New York 21 and his own secretary, Connie Matthews, who flee the country. February 1971: a fall-out between Newton and Cleaver ensues after they argue during a live broadcast link-up. Newton expels Cleaver and the entire international section from the party. Spring 1971: the Newton and Cleaver factions engage in retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[129] May 1971: Bobby Seale is acquitted of ordering the Rackley murder, and returns to Oakland. Mid-to-late 1971: nationally, hundreds of Party members quit the BPP.[130] Late-September 1971: Newton visits and stays in China for 10 days.[131] Newton focuses the BPP on the Party's Oakland school and various other social service programs. In early 1971, the BPP founded the "Intercommunal Youth Institute" in January 1971,[132] with the intent of demonstrating how black youth ought to be educated. Ericka Huggins was the director of the school and Regina Davis was an administrator.[133] The school was unique in that it did not have grade levels but instead had different skill levels so an 11-year-old could be in second-level English and fifth-level science.[133] Elaine Brown taught reading and writing to a group of 10- to 11-year-olds deemed "uneducable" by the system.[134] The school children were given free busing; breakfast, lunch, and dinner; books and school supplies; children were taken to have medical checkups; many children were given free clothes.[135] Split Significant disagreements among the Party's leaders over how to confront ideological differences led to a split within the party. Certain members felt that the Black Panthers should participate in local government and social services, while others encouraged constant conflict with the police. For some of the Party's supporters, the separations among political action, criminal activity, social services, access to power, and grass-roots identity became confusing and contradictory as the Panthers' political momentum was bogged down in the criminal justice system. These (and other) disagreements led to a split. Some Panther leaders, such as Huey P. Newton and David Hilliard, favored a focus on community service coupled with self-defense; others, such as Eldridge Cleaver, embraced a more confrontational strategy. Eldridge Cleaver deepened the schism in the party when he publicly criticized the Party for adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda and called for Hilliard's removal. Cleaver was expelled from the Central Committee but went on to lead a splinter group, the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party.[136] The split turned violent, as the Newton and Cleaver factions carried out retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[129] Delegation to China In late September 1971, Huey P. Newton led a delegation to China and stayed for 10 days.[131] At every airport in China, Huey was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the Little Red Book and displaying signs that said "we support the Black Panther Party, down with US 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 a DPRK ambassador, a Tanzanian ambassador, and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.[137] Huey was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing. Huey described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government".[138] 1972–74 Chronology Early 1972: Newton shuts down chapters around the country, and calls the key members to Oakland. Mid-1972: BPP members or supporters win a number of minor offices in the Oakland city elections. 1973: The BPP focuses nearly all of its resources on winning political power in the Oakland city government. Seale runs for mayor; Elaine Brown runs for city council. Both lose, and many Party members resign after the losses. Early 1974: Newton embarks on a major purge, expelling Bobby and John Seale, David and June Hilliard, Robert Bay, and numerous other top party leaders. Dozens of other Panthers loyal to Seale resigned or deserted. August 1974: Newton murders Kathleen Smith, a teenage prostitute. He flees to Cuba. Elaine Brown takes over the leadership in his absence. December 1974: Accountant Betty van Patter is murdered, after threatening to disclose irregularities in the Party's finances. Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland In 1972, the party began closing down dozens of chapters and branches all over the country and bringing members and operations to Oakland. The political arm of the southern California chapter was shut down and its members moved to Oakland, although the underground military arm remained for a time.[139] The underground remnants of the LA chapter, which had emerged from the Slausons street gang, eventually re-emerged as the Crips, a street gang who at first advocated social reform before devolving into racketeering.[140] The party developed a five-year plan to take over the city of Oakland politically. Bobby Seale ran for mayor, Elaine Brown ran for city council, and other Panthers ran for minor offices. Neither Seale nor Brown were elected. A few Panthers won seats on local government commissions. Minister of Education Ray "Masai" Hewitt created the Buddha Samurai, the party's underground security cadre in Oakland. Newton expelled Hewitt from the party later in 1972, but the security cadre remained in operation under the leadership of Flores Forbes. One of the cadre's main functions was to extort and rob drug dealers and after-hours clubs.[139] Newton indicted for violent crimes In 1974, Huey Newton and eight other Panthers were arrested and charged with assault on police officers. Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid prosecution for the murder of Kathleen Smith, an eighteen-year-old prostitute. Newton was also indicted for pistol-whipping his tailor, Preston Callins. Although Newton confided to friends that Kathleen Smith was his "first nonpolitical murder", he was ultimately acquitted, after one witness's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had been smoking marijuana on the night of the murder, and another prostitute witness recanted her testimony.[141][142] Newton was also acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges.[143][clarification needed] 1974–77 The Panthers under Elaine Brown In 1974, as Huey Newton prepared to go into exile in Cuba, he appointed Elaine Brown as the first Chairwoman of the Party. Under Brown's leadership, the Party became involved in organizing for more radical electoral campaigns, including Brown's 1975 unsuccessful run for Oakland City Council.[144] The Party supported Lionel Wilson in his successful election as the first black mayor of Oakland, in exchange for Wilson's assistance in having criminal charges dropped against Party member Flores Forbes, leader of the Buddha Samurai cadre.[139] In addition to changing the Party's direction towards more involvement in the electoral arena, Brown also increased the influence of women Panthers by placing them in more visible roles within the previously male-dominated organization. Death of Betty van Patter Panther leader Elaine Brown hired Betty Van Patter in 1974 as a bookkeeper. Van Patter had previously served as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine, and was introduced to the Panther leadership by David Horowitz, who had been the editor of Ramparts and a major fundraiser and board member for the Panther school.[145] Later that year, after a dispute with Brown over financial irregularities,[146] Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Some weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach. There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with van Patter's murder, but the Black Panther Party leadership was "almost universally believed to be responsible".[147][148] Huey Newton later allegedly confessed to a friend that he had ordered Van Patter's murder, and that Van Patter had been tortured and raped before being killed.[142][149] 1977–82 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party In 1977, Newton returned from exile in Cuba, and received complaints from male members about the excessive power of women in the organization, who now outnumbered men. According to Elaine Brown, Newton authorized the physical punishment of school administrator Regina Davis for scolding a male coworker. Davis was hospitalized with a broken jaw.[150] Brown said "The beating of Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words 'Panther' and 'comrade' had taken a gender on gender connotation, denoting an inferiority in the female half of us."[151][152][153] Brown resigned from the party and fled to LA.[154] Although many scholars and activists date the Party's downfall to the period before Brown's leadership, a shrinking cadre of Panthers struggled through the 1970s. By 1980, Panther membership had dwindled to 27, and the Panther-sponsored school closed in 1982 amid a scandal over Newton embezzling funds for his drug addiction.[144][155] Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton In October 1977 Flores Forbes, the party's assistant chief of staff, led a botched attempt to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial, who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. After attacking the wrong house by mistake, the occupant returned fire and killed one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, while the other two assailants escaped.[156] One of them, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy. Fearing that Malloy would discover the truth behind the botched assassination attempt, Newton allegedly ordered a "house cleaning", and Malloy was shot and buried alive in the desert. Although permanently paralyzed from the waist down, Malloy escaped and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[157] Newton denied any involvement or knowledge and said the events "might have been the result of overzealous party members".[158] Newton was ultimately acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith, after Crystal Gray's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had smoked marijuana on the night of the murder, and he was acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges. Women and womanism From its beginnings, the Black Panther Party championed black masculinity and traditional gender roles.[159]:6 A notice in the first issue of The Black Panther newspaper proclaimed the all-male organization as "the cream of Black Manhood ... there for the protection and defense of our Black community".[160] Scholars consider the Party's stance of armed resistance highly masculine, with guns and violence proving manhood.[161]:2 In 1968, several articles urged female Panthers to "stand behind black men" and be supportive.[159]:6 The first woman to join the party was Joan Tarika Lewis, in 1967.[162] Nevertheless, women were present in the party from the early days and expanded their roles throughout its life.[163] Women often joined to fight against unequal gender norms.[164] By 1969, the Party newspaper officially instructed male Panthers to treat female Party members as equals,[159]:2[159]:6 a drastic change from the idea of the female Panther as subordinate. The same year, Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois chapter conducted a meeting condemning sexism.[159]:2 After 1969, the Party considered sexism counter-revolutionary.[159]:6 The Black Panthers adopted a womanist ideology responding to the unique experiences of African-American women,[165] emphasizing racism as more oppressive than sexism.[166] Womanism was a mix of black nationalism and the vindication of women,[165]:20 putting race and community struggle before the gender issue.[165]:8 Womanism posited that traditional feminism failed to include race and class struggle in its denunciation of male sexism[165]:26 and was therefore part of white hegemony.[165]:21 In opposition to some feminist viewpoints, womanism promoted a vision of gender roles: that men are not above women, but hold a different position in the home and community,[165]:42 so men and women must work together for the preservation of African-American culture and community.[165]:27 Henceforth, the Party newspaper portrayed women as intelligent political revolutionaries, exemplified by members such as Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Erika Huggins.[159]:10 The Black Panther Party newspaper often showed women as active participants in the armed self-defense movement, picturing them with children and guns as protectors of home, family and community.[159]:2 Police killed or incarcerated many male leaders, but female Panthers were less targeted for much of the 1960s and 1970s. By 1968, women made up two-thirds of the party, while many male members were out of duty. In the absence of much of the original male leadership, women moved into all parts of the organization.[163][167] Roles included leadership positions, implementing community programs, and uplifting the black community. Women in the group called attention to sexism within the Party, and worked to make changes from within.[168] From 1968 to the end of its publication in 1982, the head editors of the Black Panther Party newspaper were all women.[159]:5 In 1970, approximately 40% to 70% of Party members were women,[159]:8 and several chapters, like the Des Moines, Iowa, and New Haven, Connecticut, were headed by women.[161]:7 During the 1970s, recognizing the limited access poor women had to abortion, the Party officially supported women's reproductive rights, including abortion.[159]:11 That same year, the Party condemned and opposed prostitution.[159]:12 Many women Panthers began to demand childcare to be able to fully participate in the organization. The Party responded by establishing on-site child development centers in multiple US chapters. "Childcare became largely a group activity", with children raised collectively, in accord with the Panther's commitment to collectivism and the African-American extended-family tradition. Childcare allowed women Panthers to embrace motherhood while fully participating in Party activism.[169] The Party experienced significant problems in several chapters with sexism and gender oppression, particularly in the Oakland chapter where cases of sexual harassment and gender conflict were common.[170]:5 When Oakland Panthers arrived to bolster the New York City Panther chapter after 21 New York leaders were incarcerated, they displayed such chauvinistic attitudes towards New York Panther women that they had to be fended off at gunpoint.[171] Some Party leaders thought the fight for gender equality was a threat to men and a distraction from the struggle for racial equality.[159]:5 In response, the Chicago and New York chapters, among others, established equal gender rights as a priority and tried to eradicate sexist attitudes.[161]:13 By the time the Black Panther Party disbanded, official policy was to reprimand men who violated the rules of gender equality.[161]:13 Gender dynamics In the beginning, recruiting women was a low priority for Newton and Seale.[172] Seale stated in an interview that Newton targeted "brothers who had been pimping, brothers who had been peddling dope, brothers who ain't gonna take no shit, brothers who had been fighting the pigs". Also, they didn't realize that women could help the fight until one came into an interest meeting asking about "female leadership".[173] Regina Jennings recalls that many male leaders had an "unchecked" sexism problem and her task was to "lift the bedroom out of their minds." She remembers overhearing members: "Some concluded that the FBI sent me, but the captain assured them with salty good humor that, 'She's too stupid to be from the FBI.' He thought my cover and my comments too honest, too loud, and too ridiculous to be serious." She recalls her days in Oakland, California as a teenager looking for something to do to add purpose to her life and her community. She grew up around police brutality, so it was nothing new. Her goal in joining was "smashing racism" because she viewed herself as Black before she was a woman. In her community, that identity is what she felt held her back the most.[173] Women's role The Black Panther Party was involved in many community projects as part of their organization. These projects included community outreach, like the breakfast program, education, and health programs.[163] In many cases women were the ones primarily involved with administering these types of programs. From the beginning of the Black Panther Party education was a fundamental goal of the organization. This was highlighted in the Ten Point Platform, the newspaper that was distributed by the party, and the public commentary shared by the Panthers.[163] The newspaper was one of the primary and original consciousness-raising and educational measures taken by the party.[163] Despite the fact that men were out distributing the newspaper, women like Elaine Brown and Kathleen Cleaver were behind the scenes working on those papers.[174] Elaine Brown Elaine Brown rose to power within the BPP as Minister of Information after Eldridge Cleaver fled abroad. In 1974, she became chair for the Oakland chapter. She was appointed by Huey Newton, the previous chair, while Newton and other leaders dealt with legal issues.[163][175] From the beginning of her tenure as chair, she faced opposition and feared a coup. She appointed many female officials, and faced backlash for her policies for equality within the organization. When Huey Newton returned from exile and approved of the beating of a female Panther school teacher, Brown left the organization.[175] Gwen Robinson In an interview with Judson Jeffries, Gwen Robinson reflects on her time in the Black Panther Party Detroit Division.[176] She explains that she joined in October 1969 with despite doubts from her mother, who had participated in a march with Martin Luther King Jr. in the early part of the decade. She chose the Black Panther Party (BBP) because "[She] felt a closeness and a bond with them" more than other organizations like the "SNCC, NAACP, the Urban League, the Nation of Islam, Shrines of Madonna, Eastside Voice of Independent Detroit (ESVID), the Republic of New Africa, and the Revolutionary Action Movement."[176] In 12th grade, she decided to work full-time with the Party, dropping out of chaotic Denby High School in Detroit. "There were some students who would use the N-word freely" and "a P.E. instructor accused [her] of stealing her keys." She was "shoved" into the pool when she refused to swim for fear of wetting her hair, while a White teacher who taught Afro-American history would kick people out "if you challenged his position on certain Black leaders."[176] In the BBP, she "was living as part of a collective" where all work was shared, and she enjoyed working all day selling newspapers. She climbed the ranks and became the branch's Communications Secretary in January 1971, after her predecessor left due to "some issues related to sexism". In this branch, unlike the average BBP divisions, the "brothers" never turned violent or physical: "That kind of thing didn't take place in Detroit." She left the organization in 1973, keeping a link through her husband, their circulation manager. Summing up the legacy of the Detroit branch, she says, "It's crucial that people realize that the strength of the organization was rooted in discipline, deep commitment, and a genuine love for the people."[177] Gay Liberation Movement Huey Newton expressed his support for the Women's Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement in a 1970 letter published in the newspaper The Black Panther titled "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements".[178] Written one year after the Stonewall Riots, Newton acknowledged women and homosexuals as oppressed groups and urged the Blank Panthers to "unite with them in a revolutionary fashion".[179] The Black Panther Party and the Gay Liberation Movement shared common ground in their fight against police brutality.[180] Aftermath and legacy New York City Councilman Charles Barron is one of the numerous former Panthers to have held elected office in the US There is considerable debate about the impact of the Black Panther Party on the wider society or even their local environments. Author Jama Lazerow writes: As inheritors of the discipline, pride, and calm self-assurance preached by Malcolm X, the Panthers became national heroes in black communities by infusing abstract nationalism with street toughness—by joining the rhythms of black working-class youth culture to the interracial élan and effervescence of Bay Area New Left politics ... In 1966, the Panthers defined Oakland's ghetto as a territory, the police as interlopers, and the Panther mission as the defense of community. The Panthers' famous "policing the police" drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the police brutality that had come to characterize life in black urban communities.[181] Professor Judson Jeffries of Purdue University calls the Panthers "the most effective black revolutionary organization in the 20th century".[182] The Los Angeles Times, in a 2013 review of Black Against Empire, an "authoritative" history of the BPP published by University of California Press, called the organization a "serious political and cultural force" and "a movement of intelligent, explosive dreamers".[183] The Black Panther Party is featured in exhibits[184] and curriculum[185][186] of the National Civil Rights Museum. Numerous former Panthers have held elected office in the United States, some into the 21st century; these include Charles Barron (New York City Council), Nelson Malloy (Winston-Salem City Council), and Bobby Rush (US House of Representatives). Most of them praise the BPP's contribution to black liberation and American democracy. In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring "Fred Hampton Day" in honor of the slain leader.[121] In Winston-Salem in 2012, a large contingent of local officials and community leaders came together to install a historic marker of the local BPP headquarters; State Representative Earline Parmone declared "[The Black Panther Party] dared to stand up and say, 'We're fed up and we're not taking it anymore'. ... Because they had courage, today I stand as ... the first African American ever to represent Forsyth County in the state Senate".[187] In October 2006, the Black Panther Party held a 40-year reunion in Oakland.[188] Black Panther 40th Reunion, 2006. In January 2007, a joint California state and Federal task force charged eight men with the August 29, 1971, murder of California police officer Sgt. John Young.[189] The defendants have been identified as former members of the Black Liberation Army, with two linked to the Black Panthers.[190] In 1975, a similar case was dismissed when a judge ruled that police gathered evidence using torture.[191] On June 29, 2009, Herman Bell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sgt. Young. In July 2009, charges were dropped against four of the accused: Ray Boudreaux, Henry W. Jones, Richard Brown and Harold Taylor. Also that month Jalil Muntaquim pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter, becoming the second person convicted in this case.[192] Since the 1990s, former Panther chief of staff David Hilliard has offered tours in Oakland of sites historically significant to the Black Panther Party.[193] Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers Various groups and movements have picked names inspired by the Black Panthers: Assata's Daughters, an all-black activist group in Chicago, was founded in 2015 by Page May; the group is named after Black Panther Assata Shakur and has objectives similar to the Black Panther's 10-Point Program.[194] Gray Panthers often used to refer to advocates for the rights of seniors (Gray Panthers in the United States, The Grays – Gray Panthers in Germany). Polynesian Panthers, an advocacy group for Māori and Pacific Islander people in New Zealand. Black Panthers, a protest movement that advocates social justice and fights for the rights of Mizrahi Jews in Israel. White Panthers, used to refer to both the White Panther Party, a far-left, anti-racist, white American political party of the 1970s, as well as the White Panthers UK, an unaffiliated group started by Mick Farren. The Pink Panthers, used to refer to two LGBT rights organizations. Dalit Panthers, an Indian social reform movement, which fights against Caste Oppression in Indian Society. The British Black Panther movement, which flourished in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was not affiliated with the American organization although it fought for many of the same rights.[195][196] The French Black Dragons, a black antifascist group closely linked to the punk rock and rockabilly scene. The Young Lords Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named after the Black Panther Party's founder. Memphis Black Autonomy Federation In April 1977 Panthers were key supporters of the 504 Sit-Ins, the longest of which was the 25-day occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building by over 120 people with disabilities. Panthers provided daily home-cooked meals in support of the protest's eventual success, which eventually led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) thirteen years later.[197] New Black Panther Party Main article: New Black Panther Party In 1989, a "New Black Panther Party" was formed in Dallas, Texas. Ten years later, the NBPP became home to many former Nation of Islam members when its chairmanship was taken by Khalid Abdul Muhammad. The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center list the New Black Panthers as a black separatist hate group.[198] The Huey Newton Foundation, former chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale, and members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this New Black Panther Party is illegitimate and they have strongly objected to it, stating that there "is no new Black Panther Party".[199]
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