The Foundation: Mission Statment
The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation is a community-based, non-profit research, education, and advocacy center dedicated to fostering progressive social change. By preserving the history of multicultural activism and community self-determination, by educationg the public about this history's continued relevance, and by creating a crucible for practicing ongoing progressive change, guided by the writings and teachings of Huey P. Newton, the Foundation seeks to empower all people, but especially urban youth, to be builders of a true global community.
About the Foundation
The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation was founded in 1993 in Oakland, California, by David Hilliard and Fredrika Newton. Its purpose is to honor the legacy of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton, effecting progressive social change by teaching practical lessons of community service. Beginning in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party pioneered free social service programs that now are in the mainstream of American life. The Party's Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation, operated with Oakland's Children's Hospital, was among the nation's first sickle cell testing programs, and inspired the federal government's initial funding of sickle cell research. Its Free Breakfast Program served as a model for such children's programs nationwide. The Foundation is committed to enhancing community awareness of these and other contributions that have served the needs of America's most disempowered citizens. These contributions are the basis for the work that remains to be done to build a meaningful, inclusive society for all.
The Foundation has just completed a new book, The Huey P. Newton Reader, which can be purchased at Amazon.
In addition, the Foundation has finished collaborating with the making of the film, The Huey P. Newton Story. Read about it at PBS.org.
http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/index.html
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http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm
The Ten Point Plan
1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.
2, WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.
4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.
We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.
5. WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.
6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR All BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.
We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.
7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.
We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.
8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.
We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.
9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U. S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR All PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.
We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.
10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
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http://www.blackpanther.org/vision.htm
Vision
The original vision of the Black Panther Party was to serve the needs of the oppressed people in our communities and defend them against their oppressors. When the Party was initiated we knew that these goals would raise the consciousness of the people and motivate them to move more firmly for their total liberation. We also recognized that we live in a country which has become one of the most repressive governments in the world; repressive in communities all over the world. We did not expect such a repressive government to stand idly by while the Black Panther Party went forward to the goal of serving the people. We expected repression.
http://www.blackpanther.org/vision2.htm
We knew, as a revolutionary vanguard, repression would be the reaction of our oppressors, but we recognized that the task of the revolutionist is difficult and his life is short. We were prepared then, as we are now, to give our all in the interest of oppressed people. We expected the repression to come from outside forces which have long held our communities in subjection. However, the ideology of dialectical materialism helped us to understand that the contradictions surrounding the Party would create a force that would move us toward our goals. We also expected contradictions within the Party, for the oppressors use infiltrators and provocateurs to help them reach their evil ends. Even when the contradictions come from formerly loyal members of the Party, we see them as part of the process of development rather than in the negative terms the oppressors' media use to interpret them. Above all, we knew that through it all the Party would survive.
http://www.blackpanther.org/vision3.htm
The Party would survive because it had the love and support of the people who saw their true interests expressed in the actions of the Party. The Party would also survive because it would be a political vehicle which continued to voice the interests of the people and serve as their advocates.
The importance of a structured political vehicle has always been apparent to us. When we went to Sacramento, we went for the purpose of educating the people and building of a permanent political vehicle to serve their true interests. In our most recent communication with both the North and South Vietnamese Revolutionary governments, they pointed out that they understood what we were doing and saw it as the correct strategy. They said that a "structured organization is related to politics as a shadow to a man." We recognize that the political machine in America has consistently required Black people to support it through paying taxes and fighting in wars, but that same machine consistently refuses to serve the interests of the Black community. One of the problems is that the community does not have a structured organization or vehicle which serves its needs and represents the people's interest. You can no more have effective politics without a structured organization than you can have a man without his shadow. Oppressed Black people --the lumpenproletariat-- did not have a structured organization to represent their true interests until the Black Panther Party arose from within the community, motivated by the needs and conditions of the people.
http://www.blackpanther.org/vision4.htm
Across the country there have been coalitions of Black people and Black caucuses, but these have not served the people as political vehicles. They have merely served as bourgeois structures to get Black candidates into political office. Once elected, the machinery used to thrust these people into office simply passed out of existence or became ineffective insofar as serving the true interests of the Black oppressed people.
http://www.blackpanther.org/vision5.htm
A truly revolutionary vehicle which will survive the repression it encounters daily is made up of a number of characteristics. First of all, there is a small but dedicated cadre of workers who are willing to devote their full time to the goals of the organization. Secondly, there is a distinct organized structure through which the cadre can function. It is this combination of structure and dedicated cadre which can maintain the machinery for meeting the people's needs. In this way a printing press can be maintained to review the events of the day and interpret them in a manner which serves the people. Information can be circulated about daily phenomena to inform the people of their true meaning. Programs of service can be carried out to deliver to the people the basic needs that are not met elsewhere because the lumpenproletariat are the victims of oppression and exploitation. A cadre and a structure, however, are not what make the political vehicle a revolutionary one. It is the revolutionary concepts which define and interpret phenomena, and establish the goals toward which the political vehicle will work. A revolutionary vehicle is in fact a revolutionary concept set into motion by a dedicated cadre through a particular organized structure.
http://www.blackpanther.org/vision6.htm
Such a vehicle can survive repression because it can move in the necessary manner at the appropriate time. It can go underground if the conditions require, and it can rise up again. But it will always be motivated by love and dedication to the interests of the oppressed communities. Therefore the people will insure its survival, for only in that survival are their needs serviced. The structured and organized vehicle will guarantee the weathering of the test of internal and external contradictions.
The responsibility of such a political vehicle is clear. It is to function as a machine which serves the true interests of the oppressed people. This means that it must be ever aware of the needs of the communities of the oppressed and develop and execute the necessary programs to meet those needs. The Black Panther Party has done this through its basic Ten-Point Program. However, we recognize that revolution is a process and we cannot offer the people conclusions we must be ready to respond creatively to new conditions and new understandings. Therefore, we have developed our Free Breakfast Program, our Free Health Clinics, our Clothing and Shoe Programs, and our Buses to Prisons Program as well as others, responding to the obvious needs of Black people. The overwhelmingly favorable response to these programs in every community is evidence that they are serving the true interests of the people.
Serving the true interests of the people also means that the political vehicle must stand between the people and the oppressive forces which prey upon them in such a manner that the administrators will have to give the appropriate response. Such articulation requires us to have a political organ which will express the interests of the people and interpret phenomena for them. Again, the existence of such a political vehicle is justified only so long as it serves the true interests of the people. Serving the true interests of the people, however, does not mean that the vehicle is simply a reflector of public opinion, for the opinions of the people have often been molded and directed against their true interests by slick politicians and exploitative educators. Their diversion tactics often lead the people down blind alleys or onto tangents which take them away from their true goals. We can easily see this when we apply the concept of American democracy to the Black community.
Democracy in America (bourgeois democracy) means nothing more than the domination of the majority over the minority. That is why Black people can cast votes all year long but if the majority is against us, we suffer. Then the politicians and educators try to deceive the community with statements such as "It's rule by the majority, but the rights of the minority are protected." If, in fact, participating in the democratic process in America were in the interest of the Black community there would be no need for a Free Breakfast Program, there would be no need for Free Health Clinics or any of the other programs we have developed to meet the people's needs. The rights of the minority are "protected" by the standards of a bourgeois government, and anything which is not in their interest is not permitted. This may be democratic for the majority, but for the minority it has the same effect as fascism. When the majority decreed that we should be slaves, we were slaves where was the democracy in slavery for us? When the majority decreed that we should pay taxes, fight and die in wars, and be given inferior and racist education against our interests, we got all of these things. Where is democracy for us in any of that? Our children still die, our youth still suffer from malnutrition, our middle-aged people still suffer from sicklecell anemia, and our elderly still face unbearable poverty and hardship because they reach the twilight period of their lives with nothing to sustain them through these difficult times. Where is the democracy in any of this for Black people? Democracy means only that the majority will use us when they need us and cast us aside when they do not need us. A true understanding of the working and effect of American democracy for Black people will reveal most clearly that it is just the same as fascism for us. Our true interests and needs are not being served.
The political vehicle of the people must be guided by a consistent ideology which represents nothing more than a systematic and organized set of principles for analyzing and interpreting objective phenomena. An ideology can only be accepted as valid if it delivers a true understanding of the phenomena which affect the lives of the people. The development of a wide variety of truths about the community, its internal development and the external forces surrounding it will lead then to a philosophy which will help orient us toward goals which are in the true interests of the people.
The Black Panther Party was born in a period of stress when Black people were moving away from the philosophy and strategy of non-violent action toward sterner actions. We dared to believe that we could offer the community a permanent political vehicle which would serve their needs and advocate their interests. We have met many foes; we have seen many enemies. We have been slandered, kidnapped, gagged, jailed and murdered. We know now, more than ever before, that the will of the people is greater than the technology and repression of those who are against the interests of the people. Therefore we know that we can and will continue to serve and educate the people.
http://www.blackpanther.org/legacynew.htm
WHAT WAS THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY?
The Black Panther Party was a progressive political organization that stood in the vanguard of the most powerful movement for social change in America since the Revolution of 1776 and the Civil War: that dynamic episode generally referred to as The Sixties. It is the sole black organization in the entire history of black struggle against slavery and oppression in the United States that was armed and promoted a revolutionary agenda, and it represents the last great thrust by the mass of black people for equality, justice and freedom.
The Party's ideals and activities were so radical, it was at one time assailed by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States." And, despite the demise of the Party, its history and lessons remain so challenging and controversial that established texts and media would erase all reference to the Party from American history.
The Black Panther Party was the manifestation of the vision of Huey P. Newton, the seventh son of a Louisiana family transplanted to Oakland, California. In October of 1966, in the wake of the assassination of black leader Malcolm X and on the heels of the massive black, urban uprising in Watts, California and at the height of the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Newton gathered a few of his longtime friends, including Bobby Seale and David Hilliard, and developed a skeletal outline for this organization. It was named, originally, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The black panther was used as the symbol because it was a powerful image, one that had been used effectively by the shortlived voting rights group the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom Organization. The term "self defense" was employed to distinguish the Party's philosophy from the dominant nonviolent theme of the civil rights movement, and in homage to the civil rights group the Louisiana based Deacons for Defense. These two, symbolic references were, however, where all similarity between the Black Panther Party and other black organizations of the time, the civil rights groups and black power groups, ended.
Immediately, the leadership of the embryonic Party outlined a Ten Point Platform and Program (see the end of this article for full text). This Platform & Program articulated the fundamental wants and needs, and called for a redress of the longstanding grievances, of the black masses in America, still alienated from society and oppressed despite the abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Moreover, this Platform & Program was a manifesto that demanded the express needs be met and oppression of blacks be ended immediately, a demand for the right to self defense, by a revolutionary ideology and by the commitment of the membership of the Black Panther Party to promote its agenda for fundamental change in America.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE FOUNDING OF THE PARTY
There was no question that the end of the several centuries of the institution of slavery of blacks had not resulted in the assimilation of blacks into American society. Indeed, there was a violent, postemancipation white backlash, manifested in the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed by the benign neglect of the President and the Congress, codified in the so called Black Codes. The rampant Iynching of blacks became a way of life in America, along with the de facto denial to blacks of every civil right, including the rights to vote, to worship, to use public facilities.
From that time forward, then, blacks were obliged to wage fierce survival struggles in America, creating at once the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to promote integration of blacks into society as full, firstclass citizens and the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) of Marcus Garvey to promote independence of blacks and eventually a return to Africa. At the same time, there were the effective efforts of former slave Booker T. Washington to establish a separate socioeconomic scheme for blacks. America's response to all such efforts was violent and repressive and unyielding. Thus, despite the mass uprisings by blacks in resistance to the unrelenting violence and the law's delay, despite tacit urgings by blacks to be afforded some means to survive, despite the bold endeavors by blacks to live separate lives in America or leave America, for the next half century, blacks, in the main, found themselves denied of every possible avenue to either establish their own socioeconomic independence or participate fully in the larger society.
Not until nearly 60 years after Plessy was there even the most minimal relief, in the Supreme Court's holding in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education. In Brown, the Supreme Court stated that "separate" was "not equal" for blacks in America (at least with respect to public education). It is noteworthy that Dr. Kenneth Clark (the black psychologist on whose study the Brown court based its findings as to the negative impact on black children of the separate but equal doctrine) noted in 1994 that American schools were more segregated at that time than in 1954, when Brown was decided.
Even after Brown, blacks struggled to integrate and become full partisans in American society, to no avail. From the famous 1955, Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott to the subsequent voter rights efforts to the dangerous sit ins in all white public facilities led by SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) workers, the civil rights movement challenged America. Under the spiritual guidance and the nonviolent philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. millions, blacks and whites, protested and marched for freedom and justice for America's black minority, as so many were murdered or maimed for life along the way. Finally, in 1964, the U.S. Congress passed a civil rights act that outlawed racial segregation in public facilities.
It was too little too late. As the images of nonviolent blacks and other civil rights workers and demonstrators being beaten and water hosed by police, spat on and jailed, merely for protesting social injustices shot across America's television screens (a new and compelling phenomenon in American life and popular culture), young urban blacks rejected nonviolence. The full expression of this was the violent protest to the brutal police beating of a black man in Watts (Los Angeles), California in the 1965 rebellion that shocked America and set off other such responses to oppression. By 1967, there had been more than 100 major black, urban rebellions in cities across the country. In the same time frame of the same year, 1965, the Vietnam war erupted. As television reports revealed the horrible realities of the war, good American soldiers killing Vietnamese children, America's white youth called the question, and rallied against the war. America's youth, black and white, had become openly hostile to the established order.
http://www.blackpanther.org/legacytwo.htm
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 Jackson's 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 1973, 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.
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http//www.blackpanther.org/newsalert.htm
There Is No New Black Panther Party: An Open Letter From the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation
In response from numerous requests from individual's seeking information on the "New Black Panthers," the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation issues this public statement to correct the distorted record being made in the media by a small band of African Americans calling themselves the New Black Panthers. As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the Foundation, which includes former leading members of the Party, denounces this group's exploitation of the Party's name and history. Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black community, this band would graft the Party's name upon itself, which we condemn.
Firstly, the people in the New Black Panthers were never members of the Black Panther Party and have no legitimate claim on the Party's name. On the contrary, they would steal the names and pretend to walk in the footsteps of the Party's true heroes, such as Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton, George Jackson and Jonathan Jackson, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Fred Hampton, Mark Cark, and so many others who gave their very lives to the black liberation struggle under the Party's banner.
Secondly, they denigrate the Party's name by promoting concepts absolutely counter to the revolutionary principles on which the Party was founded. Their alleged media assault on the Ku Klux Klan serves to incite hatred rather than resolve it. The Party's fundamental principle, as best articulated by the great revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was: "A true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." The Black Panthers were never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the "white establishment." The Party operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people.
Furthermore, this group claims it would "teach" the black community about armed self-defense. The arrogance of this claim is overwhelmed by its reactionary nature. Blacks, especially in the South, have been armed in self-defense for a very long time; indeed, the spiritual parent of the Party itself was the Louisiana-based Deacons for Defense. However, the Party understood that the gun was not necessarily revolutionary, for the police and all other oppressive forces had guns. It was the ideology behind the gun that determined its nature.
Because the Party believed that only the masses of people would make the revolution, the Party never presumed itself to be above the people. The Party considered itself a servant of the people and taught by example. Given massive black hunger, the Party provided free breakfast for children and other free food programs. In the absence of decent medical facilities in the black community, the Party operated free medical clinics. In the face of police brutality, the Party stood up and resisted. Considering the overwhelming number of blacks facing trials and long prison terms, the Party developed free legal aids and bussing-to-prison programs.
The question the Foundation raises, then, is who are these people laying claim to the Party's history and name? Are they reactionary provocateurs, who would instigate activities counterproductive to the people's interests, causing mayhem and death? Are they entertainers, who would posture themselves before the media, and, according to numerous sources, with empty guns, to spin gold for themselves? Are they, given the history of their late-leader Khalid Muhammad, a group of anti-Semites like the very Ku Klux Klan they allegedly oppose? What is their agenda?
Conditions for blacks in America today are worse than when the Black Panther Party was formed in 1966. Blacks in the main continue to live in poverty; disproportionate percentages of blacks die from AIDS and cancer, as the black infant mortality rate continues to be double that of whites. There is a desperate need for liberation agenda. The Black Panther Party unarguably set the example, espousing principles and a history that certainly should be embraced by all those still struggling for freedom. Rather than appropriating the Party's name, however, groups that purport to represent African Americans ought to follow the Party's true historical example. In the absence of such commitment, the Foundation denounces the usurpation of the Black Panther Party name by this questionable band of self-appointed leaders.
For further reading on the Black Panther Party, please visit our website at www.blackpanther.org. Books by and about the Black Panthers can also be purchased online through this site. Suggested reading includes Revolutionary Suicide, To Die for the People, War Against the Panthers, This Side of Glory, and A Taste of Power.
Legacy of the BPP
http://www.blackpanther.org/foundation.htm
Email: hpnfdn@blackpanther.org
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Update: 04-14-2006
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