Abstract
On October 27, 1967, Huey Percy Newton was celebrating his last day on criminal probation.1 He spent the day delivering a speech at San Francisco State University (SFSU) as a special guest of the newly formed SFSU Black Student Union (BSU). The BSU requested his presence mainly because the Black Panther Party’s Sacramento protest boosted his personal reputation. Although Newton never participated in the protest, requests for more information on him and the Party were pouring in from all over California; and he was responding as quickly as he possibly could. He needed the money for bail. Bobby Seale was still serving time in the Sacramento jail on weapons charges for his role in the protest.2
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Notes
Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 171–73.
Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1991), 103. In one incident, Bobby Seale reports that he was stopped by a group of twenty-five young black males ranging from eight to twelve years old. “These young brothers were crazy about Huey,” says Seale. He goes on, “They (Black kids) used to come up to me: ‘You Bobby Seale, ain’t you? Huey’s (emphasis added) partner?’ I’d say, ‘Right brother, I’m Bobby Seale. I’m Huey P. Newton’s partner. We stick together. Huey’s our Minister of Defense.’ Brother Huey was a symbol to these brothers and sisters, in a way that other Black organizations had never been.”
Mario Van Peebles, Ula Taylor, and Tarika Lewis, Panther: A Pictorial History of the Black Panthers and the Story Behind the Film (New York: New Market Press, 1995), 55–57.
David Hilliard and Donald Weise (eds.), The Huey P. Newton Reader (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 76.
For a historiography of the police-Panther shoot-outs, see generally Curtis Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), xxii;
Charles Jones (ed.), The Black Panther Party: Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1998);
Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams (eds.), In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006);
Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (eds.), Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy (New York: Routledge Books, 2001);
Earl Anthony, Spitting in the Wind: The True Story Behind the Violent Legacy of the Black Panther Party (Malibu, CA: Rountable Publishing, 1990);
David Hilliard, Huey: The Spirit of the Panther (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006).
David C. Baldus, Charles Pulaski, and George Woodworth, “Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical Study of the George Experience,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 74, no.3 (1983), 661–753.
Charles E. Jones, “The Political Repression of the Black Panther Party in 1966–1971, The Case of the Oakland Bay Area,” Journal of Black Studies 18, no.4 (1988), 415–17. For a more exhaustive history of the Black Panther Party by Professor Jones, Jones (ed.), The Black Panther Party.
Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, Raven: The Untold Story of Reverend Jim Jones and his People (New York: Dutton Books, 1982), 133.
Sarah Blackburn, White Justice: Black Experience Today in America’s Courtrooms (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 85; Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 202–3; Kathy Mulhern, “Stalking the Panthers,” Commonwealth, October 11, 1968, 59–62.
Blackburn, White Justice, 14, 37–44, 85. During Newton’s three years in jail, the party grew phenomenally and took on increasingly violent characteristics. For a complete story of the trial, see Blackburn, White Justice. For an excellent study on black retaliatory violence, see Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988).
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© 2012 Donald F. Tibbs
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Tibbs, D.F. (2012). The Trial of Huey P. Newton. In: From Black Power to Prison Power. Contemporary Black History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137013064_3
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