Huey+Newton

**Early Life and Death** Huey P. Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana to Armelia and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist minister; he was the youngest child in his family, and was named after Huey Long. Newton's family moved to California when he was three. Despite completing his secondary education at Oakland Technical High School, Newton did not know how to read. During his course of self-study, he struggled to read Plato's Republic, which he understood after persistently reading it through five times. It was this success, he told an interviewer, that was the spark that caused him to become a leader. Newton once claimed he studied law to become a better burglar. As a teenager, he was arrested several times for minor offences and supported himself in college by burglarizing homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills areas and committing other petty crime. By age 14, he had been arrested for gun possession and vandalism. On August 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot on the 1400 block of 9th street in West Oakland by a 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member, Tyrone Robinson. Robinson was convicted of the murder in August 1991 and sentenced to 32 years for the crime. Official accounts claimed that the killer was a known drug dealer in Oakland. Robinson contended that Newton pulled a gun when the two met at a street corner in the neighborhood, Sergeant Mercado said, but investigators said they found no evidence Newton had been armed. The killing occurred in a neighborhood where Newton, as minister of defense for the Black Panthers, once tried to set up social programs to help destitute blacks. Newton's last words, as he stood facing his killer, were, "You can kill my body, but you can't kill my soul. My soul will live forever!" He was then shot three times in the face by Robinson, who went by the street name "Double."

While at Merritt College, Newton had become actively involved in politics in the Bay Area. He joined the Afro-American Association, became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. Beta Tau chapter, and played a role in getting the first black history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. He read the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara. It was during his time at Merritt College that Newton, along with Bobby Seale, organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966. Seale assumed the role of Chairman, while Newton became Minister of Defense.
 * Founding of the Black Panther**

We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.
 * Why the Panther Logo?**

This party was to promote "black power". One of they many important creation by this group was the ten point program. Another big creation by the party was the breakfast program it was a so called "survival pending revolution." In January, 1969, the **Free Breakfast for School Children Program** was initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area. Initially run out of a St. Augustine's Church in Oakland, the Program became so popular that by the end of the year, the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school.
 * Black Panther**

The Ten Point Program was as follows: 1. We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities' education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society. 2. We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people. 3. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States. 4. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression. 5. We want full employment for our people. 6. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community. 7. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings. 8. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. 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. 10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern technology.