Twenty-three years ago today, Huey P. Newton – revolutionary, agitator, rhetorician, co-founder and Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party – was shot and killed when a drug deal went wrong. He was forty-seven years old. After his glory years in the 1960s during which time Newton was the leading voice in the Panthers’ crusade to establish equality for black Americans through militant organisation and community programs, the subsequent slog, drudgery and cultural disintegration of the 70s and 80s saw Newton drifting into the very downward spiral against which he’d so long railed. Ironically, his murderer, a young dealer named Tyrone Robinson, had once been a recipient of the “Free Breakfast”, one of the many initiatives that Newton had set up in his hometown of Oakland, California to improve life for the poor blacks of his community. As the crack-addicted Newton stared into the barrel that would soon fire three bullets into his face, he said to his killer: “You can kill my body, but you can’t kill my soul. My soul will live forever.”
Ignominious though his death may have been, Huey P. Newton’s life was anything but. He was a man of destiny who had set out to change the course of his own people’s destiny, in his own words, ‘by any means necessary.’ Speaking at Newton’s funeral, his fellow Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale said: “He stood for all of us, and he did so in ways very few people could even attempt … The debt we owe to HPN is one that can never be paid and may never even be fully understood.”
It’s so easy to forget recent history, to take for granted change once it has occurred. The fate of a hero is not an easy one, as Huey P. Newton himself said: “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man”; but to watch the film above is to be reminded of the trail Huey P Newton and the Panthers blazed, and the critical social changes that occurred in their wake.
Dorian I was a great fan of your blog last year and I’d just like to thank you for bringing it back. You and your husband are very generous to share your learning and ideas as you do.
Thank you again. It is such a unique and rich concept.
I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never heard of Huey Newton. I watched the clip and then found some more about the Black Panthers on YouTube and couldn’t stop watching. Incredible. Why is he not world famous?
besause certain people feel its best if he does not become more renowed because it might cause a stir up. FYI his death is a lie in this statement he was shot but it wasnt by a drug dealer and he was far from a crack addict he was actually a smart individual but this is what the government wanted you to see and know but AMERICAN AGENTS killed HUEY P NEWTON (do your research beyond google)
Thanks, lemongirl – glad to see you here.
Anon, no need to be embarrassed. Huey P. Newton’s legacy has most definitely been marginalised because of the manner of his death – so we don’t hear as much about him as you’d expect of such a great thinker. But, as Stokely Carmichael said, “Our Black heroes are important to us because of the way they lived their lives, not the fashion in which they met their death.”
The Panthers were perhaps the most important American revolutionaries post-1776, and I’ll be remembering them and HPN frequently here on On This Deity over the next year.
Reading a novel, 2666 by Bolanos, and Newton’s history as told by Bobby Seale in a fictionalized version. The names are changed but it’s obvious. I appreciate your decisive account of Newton’s death. It isn’t covered elsewhere, even Wikipedia ignores comment. Thank you.
Ok,so I also know barely anything about him but I chose him to do me school research project on and I found he is a great perosn to do this project on
Right on, Dakota. Seriously, read HPN’s “Revolutionary Suicide”. You’ll learn more in that one book about the real world than you will in all your years at school.
I went online to a poster shop to purchase a black panther group poster for self and the shop said they sold more posters than any other site,only they had no knowledge of the black panther party or hewey p newton,bobby seals,stokley carmichael,and the person I was talking to was interested in listening to my interpitation of these men and who they were in american history.
My husband is Huey P. Newton second cousin on his mother’s side of the family and I must say that I believe that Huey P. Newton was a real trooper and Iadmire his efforts for standing up for our African American people.