Revolutionary Suicide

324 Pages·2009·1.37 MB·English

by  Fredrika Newton (intro.)

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Acknowledgements

PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

PART TWO
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13

PART THREE
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21

PART FOUR
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25

PART FIVE
Chapter 26
Chapter 27

PART SIX
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33

EPILOGUE
REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE
HUEY P. NEWTON was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on February 17, 1942, to
Walter and Armelia Newton. He is the cofounder of the revolutionary Marxist-
Leninist organization the Black Panther Party, and was the Party’s ranking leader
and chief ideologue and strategist. In 1966, Newton enrolled in Merritt College
in Oakland, where he became a member of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, led the
effort to establish the first black history course, and met Bobby Seale. In October
1966, Newton and Seale founded what was then known as the Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense. The Party urged members to challenge the status quo
with armed patrols of the impoverished streets of black Oakland, and to form
coalitions with organizations representing other oppressed groups.
Internationally, Newton directed the Party to form coalitions with the
Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cubans, as with, among others, African national
liberation organizations like FRELIMO in Mozambique, ZANU in Zimbabwe,
and the ANC in South Africa.
Within one year of the Party’s founding, in October 1967, Newton was
wounded and arrested by Oakland police and charged with the murder of a
police officer, spawning the worldwide protest that came to be known as the
“Free Huey Movement.” Convicted of manslaughter, Newton was released in
July 1970 for a new trial. He would be tried on this charge several times
thereafter but never convicted. Upon his release, he led the Party’s more than
forty chapters to build up its community service programs, called Survival
Programs, operating under the slogan “Survival Pending Revolution.”
From the outset, the Party was a target for elimination by the U.S. government
under the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) program, which
openly stated that its agenda was to disrupt or destroy the Party. By 1981 the
Party had been driven into its demise. In the aftermath, Newton earned a Ph.D.
from the University of California, Santa Cruz, publishing his dissertation War
Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in the United States. Prior to that,
Newton had authored Revolutionary Suicide and To Die for the People, in
addition to numerous other treatises and articles, and was the coauthor with
psychoanalyst Erik Erikson of the book In Search of Common Ground. On
August 22, 1989, Newton was tragically shot to death on the blighted streets of
West Oakland, leaving behind his widow, Fredrika Newton.

FREDRIKA NEWTON was raised in Berkeley, California, by her mother,
Arlene Slaughter. She attended Wesleyan University, where she earned her B.A.
Prior to that, in 1969, as a young teenager, Mrs. Newton joined the Black
Panther Party, and in 1970 she met Huey P. Newton. In 1984, after the demise of
the Party, they married. In the wake of Huey P. Newton’s death in 1989, Fredrika
Newton, along with former Black Panther leader David Hilliard, established the
Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, a nonprofit educational corporation. She
continues to serve as the foundation’s president, and oversees its archive,
materials publications, and other activities, including a number of community-
based programs.

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First published in the United States of America by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1973
This edition with an introduction by Fredrika Newton published in Penguin Books 2009

Copyright © Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, 1973
Introduction copyright © Fredrika Newton, 2009
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Newton, Huey P.
Revolutionary suicide / Huey P. Newton, with J. Herman Blake ; introduction by Fredrika Newton.
p. cm.—(Penguin classics deluxe edition)
Originally published: New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
eISBN : 978-1-101-14047-5
1. Newton, Huey P. 2. Black Panther Party—Biography. 3. Black power—United States.
4. African Americans—Biography. I. Blake, J. Herman. II. Title.
E185.97.N48A3 2009
322.4’2092—dc22
[B] 2009003017
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For my mother and father, who have given me strength and made me unafraid of
death and therefore unafraid of life