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huey newton
Youth for Socialist Action is reprinting here an article on Black Panther Party founder and leader, Huey P. Newton. The article, which appeared in the September 1989 issue of Socialist Action newspaper, was written at the time of Huey’s death by Michael Schreiber. We are reprinting it to serve as a brief introduction to the mixed legacy of Newton and the Black Panther Party.
I read the news today: “Former Black Panther Huey Newton found dead on West Oakland street,” sang the headlines. “Newton’s death by violence seemed preordained,” the newswriters explained. The reason? “Cocaine and alcohol,” they pointed out.
I then went on to read what some people thought about Huey Newton. Law-enforcement officers were especially eager to share their opinions it seemed. They had worked for years to put Newton behind bars; now they felt vindicated.
“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” Assistant District Attorney Tom Orloff observed. “He was nothing more than a gangster.” And Sheriff Charles Plummer heartily agreed. “An intimidator,” he said.
Other opinions appeared on the inside pages. “For everyone under 30, it’s just another dead guy in Oakland,” shrugged San Francisco Examiner columnist Rob Morse. On the other hand, attorney Charles Garry ventured that Newton was a historic figure – right up there with Martin Luther King.
A gangster? Just another dead guy? Or an historic figure? These were pretty damning words coming from such ruling class figures. To get another opinion I approached one of my union brothers, Frank, who works on the streetcars with me. Twenty years ago, Frank came to the Bay Area from his native Louisiana in order to join the Black Panther Party.
“Huey Newton? I loved the man,” Frank told me. “In his early years, Huey made a profound contribution. He helped Black people get over our fear. We saw that they’ll shoot you down even if you don’t fight. So you might as well stand up for your rights.”
“Followed Malcolm X”
Like it or not, Huey Newton was a hero to thousands of people like Frank. “Free Huey” was a rallying call for young people – Black and white – all over America.
Newton’s role as a leader of the Black Panther Party was an important one in the history of the Black liberation movement; that’s why his failures also loom so large, and are worth looking at.
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense on Oct. 22, 1966. “Peaceful demonstrators all over America are being brutalized,” Seale recently explained. “We decided to take the stand Malcolm X told us to and defend ourselves.”
Six months later, Newton was one of about 40 Panthers who startled the country when they entered the California state capitol carrying loaded weapons. That incident is still highlighted as evidence of the Panther’s “gangsterism.”
Actually, the Panther’s campaign against police brutality and repression was a far cry from “gangsterism,” and rapidly gained support in the Black community.
The Panthers began to build an organization of a new type; it was one that held great promise.
Other militant Black organizations that had come out of the civil rights struggle, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), saw themselves as small bands of “specialists.” The Panthers, on the other hand, set out to build a large membership organization in which masses of people could get involved in the struggle.
During the next two years, hundreds of Black youth around the country – including college and high school students – flocked into Panther chapters in their areas.
Need for alliances
The Panthers published a Ten Point Program that incorporated demands coming out of the struggle of the Black community. But unfortunately they never seriously attempted to build a movement around those demands. They generally refused to make common cause with other groups in united-front-type action coalitions.
Readers of the Panther’s newspaper were exhorted to build a “Marxist-Leninist Vanguard.” At the same time though the Panthers gave support to Black politicians who were up and coming in the ruling-class Democratic Party. This contradiction, and empty jargon like “Off the Pigs!” did nothing to educate the Panther cadre and only cut them off from movement in the Black community and the campuses.
The pronouncements, fiats, and decrees made by Newton and the other top leaders came forth with little discussion by the membership. Those who disagreed were denounced as “pigs” and “counterrevolutionaries” and purged from the party. Such undemocratic functioning only helped pave the way for disruption by the FBI and the police.
In the early 1970s, soon after Newton was released from jail on his manslaughter conviction (he was later cleared of all charges), the Black Panther Party split in two. One faction of the party, led by Newton, opted for a “Black capitalist” strategy. Another faction, led by Eldredge Cleaver, kept up the old “pick up the gun” rhetoric.
From time to time during the next few years, Black and white supporters of the Panthers continued to haunt the fringes of protest demonstrations, hawking the “Panther Paper” and admonishing the crowd with their slogans. The Panthers though were about to go the way of the saber-toothed tiger – into extinction.
But the Panthers have not been forgotten. A new generation is awakening in the Black communities. These young people will fulfill the promise shown by Huey Newton and his comrades when, for a brief instant, they electrified the nation.
