26 years ago today Black revolutionary icon Huey Newton was killed in the streets of Oakland, California
On August 22, 1989, co-founder of the Black Panther Party For Self Defense (BPP) Huey P. Newton was murdered. Newton was fatally shot on Center Street in the Lower Bottoms neighborhood of West Oakland by a 24-year-old Black Guerrilla Family member. His last words to his killer before being shot twice in the head were,
You can kill my body, and you can take my life, but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!”
Newton’s killer, Tyrone Robinson, was convicted of the murder in 1991 and sentenced to up to 32 years to life in prison.
Born in born in Monroe, Louisiana February 17, 1942, Huey Newton attended the University of California, Santa Cruz and studied law attaining his Bachelor’s Degree and PhD. While Newton attended Merritt College in California, Newton and his comrade, Chairman Bobby Seale, organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966 with Huey as Minister of Defense. The BPP achieved national and international recognition through their active role in the Black Liberation Movement and in politics dealing with race relations of the 1960s and 1970s. The Party’s political agenda included better housing, better jobs, and proper education for all Black people, which was all documented in their Ten-Point Program.
In the years leading up to Newton’s death, the BPP was under heavy ridicule from the powers that be and classified as a hate group. In time the BPP was dismantled as it’s leaders were either killed, imprisoned or addicted to drugs. Still even today the works an ideas of the prolific leader Huey P. Newton live on and “will live forever”…
-Infinite Wiz (@InfiniteWiz)
