The New Huey P. Newton Reader

Name: The New Huey P. Newton Reader
Author: Huey P. Newton
ISBN: 9781609809003

by Huey P. Newton, David Hilliard, Donald Weise, Elaine Brown

384 pages2019Seven Stories PressISBN 9781609809003

Young Adult Politics Classics African Literature Asian Literature Latin American Literature

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About this book

The first comprehensive collection of writings by the Black Panther Party founder and revolutionary icon of the black liberation era, now in a new edition with a new introduction by former Black Panther Party chairman Elaine Brown. The Huey P. Newton Reader combines now-classic texts from Newton's books (Revolutionary Suicide, To Die for the People, In Search of Common Ground, and War Against the Panthers) ranging in topic from the formation of the Black Panthers, African Americans and armed self-defense, Eldridge Cleaver's controversial expulsion from the Party, FBI infiltration of civil rights groups, the Vietnam War, and the burgeoning feminist movement. Editors Hilliard and Weise also include never-before-published writings from the Black Panther Party archives and Newton's private collection, including articles on President Nixon, prison martyr George Jackson, Pan-Africanism, affirmative action, and the author's only written account of his political exile in Cuba in the mid-1970s. Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Geronimo Pratt all came to international prominence through Newton's groundbreaking political activism. Additionally, Newton served as the Party's chief intellectual engine, conversing with world leaders such as Yasser Arafat, Chinese premier Chou Enlai, and Mozambique president Samora Moises Machel among others. Beginning with his founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966, HUEY P. NEWTON (1941-89) set the political stage for events that would quickly place him and the Panthers at the forefront of the African American liberation movement for the next twenty years.

Publication Details

Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2019
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9781609809003
Language: en

About Huey P. Newton

Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American political and civil rights activist who, along with fellow Merritt College student Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party (1966–1982). Together with Seale, Newton created a ten-point program which laid out guidelines for how, in their words, the African-American community could achieve liberation. In the 1960s, under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs (renamed survival programs in 1971) including food banks, medical clinics, sickle cell anemia tests, prison busing for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing cooperates, and their own ambulance service. The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers. In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of a police officer John Frey and injuries to himself and another police officer. In 1968, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for Frey's death and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the conviction was reversed and after two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the charges were dropped. In 1974 he was accused of murdering 17 year-old Kathleen Smith. After two trials and two deadlocked juries, the prosecution decided not to retry Newton. He was also accused of involvement in the 1974 murder of Betty Van Patter. Despite graduating from high school not knowing how to read, he taught himself literacy by reading Plato's Republic and earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980. In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family. Newto