Huey P. Newton, American activist, co-founded the Black Panther Party (d. 1989)
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as cofounder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
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, and their own ambulance service. The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service, which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers.In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of police officer John Frey and injuries to himself and another police officer. In 1968, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for Frey's death and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the conviction was reversed and after two subsequent trials ended in hung juries, the charges were dropped. Later in life, he was also accused of murdering Kathleen Smith and Betty Patter, although he was never convicted for either death.
Despite graduating from high school not knowing how to read, he taught himself literacy by reading Plato's Republic and earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980. In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California, by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.
Newton was known for being an advocate of self-defense and of Palestinian statehood, and for his support of communist-led governments around the world. Newton also used his position as a leader within the Black Panther Party to welcome women and LGBT people into the party, describing homosexuals as "the most oppressed people".