Then he took Frey's gun, shot him again, this time fatally, and spun to shoot Heanes in the right arm. Certain that the two officers were about to kill him, Newton pulled his gun out of his jacket, fired at Frey, and wounded him. Frey called for backup from an Officer Heanes.
In October 1967 Newton and a Panther friend were stopped by an Oakland police officer, John Frey, at approximately 4:00 a.m. Wearing uniforms of black leather jackets, black berets, baby blue shirts, and bandoliers, they were a menacing and fearsome sight.Īs the party grew in numbers and influence, so did the hostility of the local police. Party received national publicity when Seale and Cleaver, together with twenty-eight other members of the party, showed up at the California legislature in Sacramento to protest a proposed gun control law they assumed was aimed at themselves. These three men formed the triumvirate of the Black Panther Party, with Seale as chairman, Newton as defense minister, and Cleaver as minister of information. He almost immediately became a member of the group and accepted the responsibility of serving as chief author of its newspaper, the Black Panther, which was published from 1967 to 1970. In an essay entitled "Meeting the Panthers," Cleaver described his awe of the fully armed pair and their command of the attention and respect, especially of the women in the room. In February 1967 Newton and Seale met Eldridge Cleaver, who had been released from prison only three months earlier, at a neighborhood meeting of activist groups in San Francisco. Perhaps the most remarkable facet of the Ten-Point Program is that two young men from a community college attempted such a project as part of a fully conceived, long-range plan of action that required many years to accomplish. The task of changing the situation of African Americans even in the smallest degree was seen as so huge that almost any activist program could be made relevant to one of the ten points or goals. Newton always insisted on a holistic perception that did not permit the separation of theory from practice, the military from the theoretical.
The founders drew a direct connection between the Ten-Point Program and street engagements with police. On the other hand, on the day they founded the party, Newton and Seale drew up a list of ten demands, along with the reasons for them, entitled "What We Want" and "What We Believe." Among their goals were education relevant to the lives of oppressed black people, an end to the economic exploitation of the black community by white businessmen, freedom for all black prisoners (on the grounds they had not been tried before juries of their peers), decent housing for blacks, and an end to police brutality. Originally, their main activity was the observation of police interaction with African-American residents of Oakland, with the intent of ending police brutality.
The purpose of the Black Panther Party was complex even the Panthers have not always agreed. Together they created the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a revolutionary organization that continues to be among the best known of the 1960s. Newton met Bobby Seale while both were students at Oakland City College (now Merritt College). from the University of California, Santa Cruz, though he had no other college or university degrees. Eventually, through a special arrangement with the university, Newton earned a Ph.D. Though his reading skills were poor, he matriculated at Oakland City College (now Merritt College), a two-year school. Newton was expelled from various schools in the Oakland system but finally graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959.
His father worked at as many as three jobs at a time-he was a longshoreman, a handyman, a truck driver, and a Baptist preacher-but he was unable to keep his youngest sonįrom feeling rage at the oppression he sensed all around him. Newton, the youngest of seven children born to Walter and Armelia (Johnson) Newton, spent a troubled childhood in depressed neighborhoods of Oakland, California. 22 August 1989 in Oakland, California), cofounder, with Bobby Seale, of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California, in October 1966.
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