

One of the reasons, he argued, why black people continued to be persecuted was their lack of knowledge of the social institutions that could be made to work in their favor. While recruiting, Newton sought to educate those around him about the legality of self-defense.

Newton would frequent pool halls, campuses, bars and other locations deep in the black community where people gathered in order to organize and recruit for the Panthers. They sometimes made news with a show of force, as they did when they entered the California Legislature fully armed in order to protest a gun bill aimed at disarming them. The group believed that violence – or the threat of it – might be needed to bring about social change. The party's political goals, including better housing, jobs, and education for African-Americans, were documented in their Ten-Point Program, a set of guidelines to the Black Panther Party's ideals and ways of operation. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service, which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers.
#Huey p. newton date of birth free
The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. Under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs (renamed survival programs in 1971) including food banks, medical clinics, sickle cell anemia tests, prison busing for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing cooperatives, their own ambulance service and the Oakland Community School, which provided high-level education to 150 children from impoverished urban neighborhoods. The party achieved national and international renown through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and the politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The Black Panther Party's beliefs were greatly influenced by Malcolm X. The Black Panther Party was an African-American left-wing organization advocating for the right of self-defense for black people in the United States. Seale became chairman and Newton became minister of defense. In college, Newton read the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, Émile Durkheim, and Che Guevara.ĭuring his time at Merritt College, he met Bobby Seale, and the two co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) in October 1966. Newton learned about black history from Donald Warden (who later would change his name to Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour), the leader of the AAA. He joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity's Beta Tau chapter, and played a role in getting the first African-American history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. Founding of the Black Panther PartyĪs a student of the Merritt College in Oakland, Newton became involved in Bay Area politics. He later continued his studies and, in 1980, he completed a PhD in social philosophy at Santa Cruz. Newton continued his education, studying at San Francisco Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he earned a bachelor's degree.

Plato's Republic was an influential work in Newton's early adult life. He attended Merritt College, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1966. Newton graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959. Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black". Despite this, Newton said he never went without food and shelter as a child. They moved often within the San Francisco Bay Area during Newton's childhood. The Newton family was close-knit, but quite poor.

As a response to the violence, the Newton family migrated to Oakland, California, participating in the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South.
