#Huey p. newton shot trial
#Huey p. newton shot free

He joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity's Beta Tau chapter, and played a role in getting the first African-American history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. Founding of the Black Panther PartyĪs a student of the Merritt College in Oakland, Newton became involved in Bay Area politics. He later continued his studies and, in 1980, he completed a PhD in social philosophy at Santa Cruz.

Newton continued his education, studying at San Francisco Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he earned a bachelor's degree. In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, he states: 'Most of all, I questioned what was happening in my own family and in the community around me.' After that, he started 'questioning everything'.

#Huey p. newton shot trial

Plato's Republic was an influential work in Newton's early adult life he told the court during the trial for the killing of officer John Frey, that he had learned to read from studying the Republic. He attended Merritt College, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1966. Newton graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote:ĭuring those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was 'made to feel ashamed of being black'. As a teenager, he was arrested several times for criminal offenses, including gun possession and vandalism at age 14.

Despite this, Newton said he never went without food and shelter as a child. They moved often within the San Francisco Bay Area during Newton's childhood. The Newton family was close-knit, but quite poor. Īs a response to the violence, the Newton family migrated to Oakland, California, participating in the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South. This was the fifth-highest total of lynchings of any county in the Southern United States. Most murders had taken place around the turn of the 20th century. According to a 2015 report by the Equal Justice Initiative, from 1877 to 1950, a total of 37 Black people were documented as lynched in that parish. Monroe is located in Louisiana's Ouachita Parish, which has had a history of violence against Black people since the Reconstruction era. His parents named him after Huey Long, former governor of Louisiana. Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1942 during World War II, the youngest child of Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist preacher. Biography Early life and education Newton's senior year yearbook photo, 1959 Newton was known for being an advocate of self-defense and used his position as a leader within the Black Panther Party to welcome women and LGBT people into the party, holding the belief that homosexuals 'might be the most oppressed people'. In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family. He went on to earn a PhD in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980. Newton learned to read using Plato's Republic, which influenced his philosophy of activism. Later in life, he was also accused of murdering Kathleen Smith and Betty Van Patter, although he was never convicted for either death. In May 1970, the conviction was reversed and after two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the charges were dropped. In 1968, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for Frey's death and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of police officer John Frey and injuries to himself and another police officer. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service, which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers.

#Huey p. newton shot free

The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. 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 cooperatives, and their own ambulance service. He ran the party as its first leader, and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966. Huey Percy Newton (Febru– August 22, 1989) was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded of the Black Panther Party.