American political activist who co-founded the Black Panther Party that became a symbol of black militancy in the mid-1960’s and 1970’s.
Named for Huey Long, the youngest of seven children, Newton moved with his family to Oakland, CA during World War II where his dad found work in the shipyards. An angry, wayward wunderkind, spoiled and cruel, he went to adolescent extremes. Attending Oakland City College, he founded the Afro-American Society and later studied at San Francisco Law School.
In 1966 he joined forces with Bobby Seale and established the Black Panther for Self Defense Party which appealed to a cross section of black Americans. They did not believe in the non-violent ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and became almost immediate antagonists of civil obedience, targets of sharp police resentment. Described as a bestial and a pagan punk, Newton committed crimes against the organization he had founded, taking money earmarked for programs for poor blacks to support his cocaine and alcohol addictions. He hustled local prostitution rings for money and worked in collusion with the criminal element against police. Women were regarded as sexist playthings, often brutalized and never given cultural equality.
In 1967 Newton killed a police officer and during the eight-week trial demonstrators surrounded the courthouse shouting Panther slogans and demanding his release. Convicted of voluntary manslaughter, he was sent to the California Men’s Colony. His conviction was later overturned by the California court of appeals. On 8/06/1974, in a street brawl he allegedly shot and killed a prostitute named Kathleen Smith who was 17 years old. He fled the country to Cuba where he stayed for two and a half years. His trial for the murder of Kathleen Smith took place in 1979 and resulted in two hung juries; he was freed and never tried again, the charges were dropped.
In 1980 Newton earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, with a doctoral thesis of “War Against the Panthers: Study of Repression in American.” He was charged with embezzling state and federal funds from educational and nutritional programs that he had headed in 1985 and 1987 and eventually sent to jail for a conviction of illegal possession of guns.
Completing a life of rebellion against social order, on 8/22/1989, about 5:00 PM, he was fatally shot by a small-time drug dealer, Oakland, CA.
Link to Wikipedia biography