REMEMBERING DR. HUEY P. NEWTON
"I don't expect the white media to create positive
black male images. Positive black male images
are created through revolution"-Huey P. Newton
28 Years Ago, a broken, lonely, mentally abused, and drug addicted man was murdered in the same streets where his party once set out to bring power to a powerless people. For him, the revolution never came. The world he fought for was never achieved. Yet he and his party did change the world forever. He has been lionized, demonized, romanticized, and vilified. Depending on who you ask, he is both hero and villain. He has been called an anti-social gangster, a visionary, a dangerous sociopath, and a brilliant theoretician. Dr. Huey P. Newton was many different things to many people but in the darkest hour of white repression against black progress, Dr. Newton and Professor Seale took to the streets armed with law books, tape recorders and shot guns. Their mission: to patrol the police department in an attempt to bring light to the issues of police brutality in the Black Community. While he was forever frozen inside of the iconic image taken in 1966, bamboo wicker chair with shotgun in one hand and spear in the other, Newton became the symbol of the a black masculinity that proved inspirational and also problematic.
Dr. Newton was not a powerful public speaker. Even as he struggled to define himself inside of the context of turbulent 60's as an organizer, he genius could not be denied. As his contributions to the struggle of African-Americans are being continuously questioned by fair weather 60's liberals turned 80's conservative, Newton's ideas have become far more pronounced nearly 30 years after his death. While these detractors steadily deny his effect on the times, Newton published a groundbreaking book called Deceit and Self Deception in reference to Flight 90 with Dr. Robert Trivers. A strong critic of Western Imperialism and foreign policy, Newton articulated a theory that stated that due to the expansion of global finance and technology, the sovereignty of nations had been carefully eroded. This process led him to logically conclude that America was no longer an nation, but an Empire. Newton concluded that this transformation created vast communities under the rule of american corporate interests. He defined this as Reactionary Inter-Communalism. He stated that the resistance by oppressed communities to this expansion and conquest by these powers, was an example of Revolutionary Inter-Communalism. 40 years later, political scientists, historians, and activists would call this phenomenon globalism.
While his visionary genius has been suppressed, what has been over-played is his descent into criminality and drug addiction. It has been alleged that Dr. Newton may have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and PTSD as a result of the government run urban spycraft program: COINTELPRO. Dr. Newton would later publish a book based on his doctoral thesis from UCLA Santa Cruz called War Against the Panthers. The book detailed the exploits and operations against not only the party, but other progressive organizations going back over five decades. Newton's interviews, speeches and autobiography have been republished and distributed; and is as relevant today, as when he wrote them in 1974. Although he would suffer an ignominious death as a destitute, alienated drug addict, his vast contributions cannot be so easily swept into the ashes of history. Even as we see the riots in Charlottesville, VA, the re-emergence of a police state, and the consolidation of a virulent brand of global capitalism, we are forced to confront the same questions, that Dr. Newton confronted over 50 years ago. We may not have his presence, but we should at least display the best of his courage and intellect as we figure out how mankind will alter the conditions that are destructive to life.
