Huey Newton

Early Years

Huey Newton was born on February 17, 1942. His family moved to Oakland, California, in his childhood because of the racial discrimination against Black communities in the Southern states.

Newton had a difficult childhood and was arrested many times as a teenager for minor crimes, such as vandalism or gun possession.

After graduating high school, he was illiterate, so he taught himself to read. Newton was a voracious reader, and during his tenure at the Merritt college, he read the works of Marx, Lenin, Malcolm X, and other communist thinkers and civil rights leaders.

A life of activism

During his tenure at the Merritt college, he became involved in politics, joining a handful of Black organisations and partnerships. In 1966, he founded, along with Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense.

The global success of the Black Panther resulted in many opportunities for Newton. For example, Newton visited China in 1970. He was welcomed by large crowds of Chinese people who supported the Black Power movement and criticised American imperialism.

While Newton is primarily known for his activism, some controversies surrounded him. In 1974, Newton was accused of killing a sex worker. That led him to exile to Cuba in 1973 to avoid prosecution. Though he stood trial for the murder in 1977 and was acquitted in 1978, other accusations of violence persisted.

Huey Newton returned to college and earned a PhD in Social Philosophy at the University of California in 1980. He later developed a drug addiction and faced many criminal charges

The once famous activist died in 1989 in Oakland, California. He was shot by a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.

Huey Newton and the Black Panthers

Huey Newton, alongside Bobby Seale, founded the Black Panthers Party in 1966. This was to challenge the discrimination against Black people and the harsh economic and social conditions these communities faced in the US. Newton's role was the Minister of Defense and ideologist. The slogan of the movement was “freedom by any means necessary”.

Fig. 2 Black Panther Party historical sign in North Oakland, Santa Fe

This organisation's political orientation was Marxist-Leninist when socialism was a national security issue for the United States because of the Soviet Union’s threat.

The party's original purpose was to protect African American communities from police brutality, arming patrols who would oversee black neighbourhoods, but eventually called for arms to every member of the black community and called on the government to exclude black people from the Army's draft.

Their main goal was to improve the living conditions of African Americans, such as better housing, jobs and education for these communities. The party did not dismiss the use of force or its threat to achieving the social change they were fighting for.

The Black Panthers quickly expanded to many cities in the US, such as Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit. In 1967, the organisation had over 10,000 members in 68 chapters across the United States⁵. It also gained solid international support from other revolutionary movements, which allowed Huey P Newton to visit China in 1970 and exile in Cuba in 1973.

By the mid-1970s, factionalism began to tear the Black Panthers apart. Newton wanted an approach favouring gradual social change, while other members wanted to build relationships with foreign revolutionary movements. The Black Panther Party eventually dwindled because of this. By 1980 it had only 27 members.³

Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed part of a black generation of students and activists who wanted to challenge racism and improve many African American communities' social and economic conditions in the United States.

Seale and Newton became friends at Merritt college. They started working with the Afro-American Association to organise students and demand representation on Pioneer Day.

The duo later joined more radical organisations, such as the Maoist Revolutionary Movement. Both wanted to create a new way of doing Black politics. Their experience and aspirations led to the creation of the Black Panthers Party for Self Defense.

Together Seale and Newton wrote the doctrines that formed the 10-Point Program of the Black Panther Party, a document that detailed the founders' vision of the fight against racism and exclusion of Black communities.

Seale was one of the “Chicago Eight” (later the Chicago Seven), a group of activists who protested against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic Convention and were accused of conspiracy and inciting a riot in the Convention.

Political views of Huey Newton

In college, Newton became involved in activism for the rights of Black communities in the US.

Huey Newton developed a Marxist/Leninist view of the Black community. He saw Black people as a community controlled by the police, white business people, and local authorities. Following his Marxist-Leninist approach, he believed that the Black community should empower themselves and seize control of the oppressing institutions.

While to begin with, Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party were heavily associated with Black Nationalism, and still are to this day, following international support from other leftist movements, Newton developed the concept of intercommunalism. This stated a political and economic view about the strategy the Black Panther Party would follow in the next decades.

According to Newton, reactionary intercommunalism could develop, t. This is the development of very small communities of elites with total control over technology and power within the state. According to Newton, through a coordinated response, marginalised communities could fight and build a united front against this reactionary intercommunalism. This is what he terms revolutionary intercommunalism.

The development of this ideology moved Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party away from Black Nationalism. Newton also believed it to be compatible with Communism, as he argued that if revolutionary intercommunalism were to be successful, these 'liberated communities' could join forces against imperialism.

Books by Huey P Newton

Huey Newton wrote many books detailing his fight against racism and fostered other revolutionary movements worldwide. We will state some of his most remarkable books:

• Revolutionary Suicide (1973): His autobiography. Here, Newton recounts his childhood, the early stages of his career as an activist and how his stance in jail forged his spirit.

• To Die With the People (1972): This is a collection of remarkable speeches and writings produced by Newton that details the origins and meteoric rise of the Black Panther Party.

• Revolutionary Intercommunalism (2006): Newton develops his views about modern imperialism and reactionary intercommunalism.

• War Against The Panthers: A study of repression in America (1996): This is Huey Newton's PhD thesis. It reconstructs the events and gives a unique perspective on the black community in the 1960s.