An illiterate high-school graduate,
Newton taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland, California
and the San Francisco School of Law, where he met Bobby Seale. In Oakland during
1966 Heuy Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense on
October 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.
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 a 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 campuses. The pronouncements, fists, and decrees made by
Newton and other top leaders came forth with little discussion by the membership.
Those who disagreed were denounced as
"pigs" and "counter revolutionaries" 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 into two. One faction of the party, led by Newton, opted for "Black
capitalist" strategy. Another faction, led by Eldridge 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-tooth
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.