![]() ![]() The Black Panther Party eventually cracked and broke apart from the strain ofit all. He becameperhaps the most enigmatic and controversial figure of an enigmatic and controversialera. He was accused by former supportersof any number of crimes, including murder, extortion, and forced sodomy. Newton,often in full view of Party, press, and public. These two personalities.therevolutionary and the peted side by side for the soul of Huey P. Some did.īut Huey Newton was more-or less-than a committed revolutionary.He was also a drug addict and a man with a violent temper and a personality thatcould quickly turn him trigger-quick into a brutal, remorseless thug. His militant actions and the attacks against him made him a heroto many African-Americans and to both the radical and the not-so radical white left.Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens said they were willing to die forHuey Newton and for the causes he championed. Huey was involvedin a shootout that left an Oakland police officer dead, was jailed several timesfor that and other offenses, and for a time was forced to leave the country and livein exile in Cuba. The police and FBI attacks againstNewton and his followers were as widespread as those against the American CommunistParty two decades before, and were just as devastatingly effective. He and Seale formed the Black PantherParty, an Oakland-based national organization that advocated Black Revolution andviolent retaliation against racist police brutality. What happened to Huey Newton between 1965-'-'89 changedthe history of this country, for good or ill. I fled the auditorium, declining his embrace. Across the great expanse of that vast college auditorium, withall the hundreds of students sitting in between us, it was like being locked in adark closet with a doberman pinscher. To look into those eyes was to lookinto your own death. His eyes had the look of the shark about them.a deepand ancient malevolence devoid of all mercy. His smile was cold and frozen, strained, as ifhis lips were strapped together by leather thongs that required the greatest effortof his face muscles to part. Yet I am unable to control my trembling,even now, thinking of that moment. ![]() Huey Newton has been dead for five years, and I am writing thesewords alone and in the safety of my desk at home. Huey acknowledged my presence from thepodium, asked me to stand, announced me to the crowd as one of his revolutionarycompatriots from the old days, and requested that I come up on stage and embracehim. Somehow, he spotted me anyhow.His wife came over to take a picture of me, for what purpose I can only imagine.She made little effort to conceal herself. ![]() ![]() I purposely satin the back of the auditorium, hoping for anonymity. I'd been away from home for 20 years and, having read froma distance of Huey's transformations, I wanted to see for myself. But he had a sense of humor and could be as reasonableas the next person, and I was never especially afraid around him in those days, evenin the tensest of situations.īut it was a much different Huey Newton I saw at the new MerrittCollege in the late 80's. We discussed and debated and argued, and he once came prettyclose to punching me out. The Huey Newton of 1965-'66 was tough and quick with his fists.He had a reputation as a street fighter, and he'd intimidate you if you let him.But I got along with him pretty well, considering we ended up on opposite sides ona number of issues. Huey and I were Black student organizers/agitatorsand aspiring revolutionaries in an era when it was not considered odd to be either. It was a world away from the old Merritt College, which had setsquat and brick-ugly in the heart of Oakland's sprawling, flatlands Black Community.That's where I had first met Huey Newton in the fall of 1965, a year before he andBobby Seale co-founded the Black Panther Party. The last time I saw Huey alive was in late 1988 or early '89, whenI drove up into an expensive subdivision of the Oakland hills to hear him speak atthe pristine and glistening, newly-built Merritt Junior College. I n the last years of his life, Huey P.Newton became the single most frightening individual I have ever known. THE SHADOW OF THE PANTHER HUEY NEWTON AND THE PRICE OF BLACKPOWER IN AMERICA ![]()
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