Huey Newton - To Die for the People

Edited by Toni Morrison

City Lights BooksSan Francisco, California

2009 by Frederika S. Newton and David Hilliard

All Rights Reserved

Cover photo by Reginald A. Krasney

Cover design by Linda Ronan

Back cover photo by Stephen Shames

PERMISSIONS

Roy Wilkins syndicated column (Oakland Tribune, August 1970)
reproduced courtesy of The Register and Tribune Syndicate.
The lyrics from Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song by Melvin Van
Peebles. Copyright 1971 by Yeah, Inc. All rights reserved,
The article by William L. Patterson, entitled The Black Panther Party: A
Force Against U.S. Imperialism reprinted by permission of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Newton, Huey P.

To die for the people : the writings of Huey P. Newton / edited by Toni Morrison.

p. cm.

Originally published: New York : Random House, 1972; also published: New York : Writers and Readers Pub., 1995.

ISBN 978-0-87286-529-7

1. Black Panther Party. I. Morrison, Toni. II. Title.

E185.615.N4 2009

322.4'20973dc22

2009028734

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261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

To the fallen comrades of the Black Panther Party

To die for the racists is lighter than a feather. But to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.

HUEY P. NEWTON

To all those who contributed so generously so I could have the time, the place, the quiet and the space to work on this and other works.

Without the help of the Black Panther Party, Dr. Herman Blake, Franz Schurmann, Martin Kenner, my brother Melvin Newton, Donald Freed, and my editor Toni Morrison, this book would not have been possible.

To the editor of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service and Minister of Information Comrade Elaine Brown, to the late Comrade Samuel L. Napier, Circulation Manager, and to my secretary Gwen V. Fountaine, typist, Delois Burbie, and to my good friend Burt Schneider, whose generous encouragement greatly aided me in difficult times, my sincere thanks for their assistance.

The full measure of the genius of Huey P. Newton cannot be weighed or appreciated at this juncture, the year that marks the 20th anniversary of his death. We who knew and loved Huey are too close, his touch still warm upon our hearts. And there are still enemies, from within and without, who linger in the shadows, attempting to distort or discredit his contribution, destroy him even in death as the State attempted during his life. Glimpses of Hueys geniushis seminal analyses of the social construct and dialectic of the known world, and particularly of the still most powerful country in the world, the United States of Americacan be seen today, but the full weight of his original thinking has not been properly acknowledged, to provide light for new generations of revolutionaries. We must still await that day.

The lasting manifestation of Hueys genius resides in the fact that his vision was translated into transformative action in societyin the creation of the Black Panther Party, altering the status quo, urging humanity to a higher place, setting into motion ideas that revolutionized human thought and behavior, creating the possibility for a new and humane social paradigm. The Partys revolutionary ideology and practice are the irrefutable evidence and legacy of the brilliance of Huey P. Newton.

As for the record of Hueys thoughts and theories, there is much more than the speeches, essays and other writings included in this collection. Here, though, is a critical introduction. At the time of the original publication of this book in 1972, Huey had settled into active leadership of the Party he had founded six years earlier. After spending the previous three years incarcerated, and finally freed by the legendary, worldwide Free Huey campaign, Huey had seized command from the usurpers and demagogues who had sought to commandeer the Party and lead it toward an irrelevant death through involvement in headline-grabbing acts of bravado and terrorism, as described here in On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party. Huey believed such actions would only serve a reactionary agenda and lead to the meaningless deaths of Party members. In contrast, as the title of this volume suggests, he insisted that true revolutionaries commit their lives to the people and must be willing to die for the people, because, as Party leader Fred Hampton so eloquently stated, true revolutionaries loved the people.

Huey promoted the ideal that the Party serve the people, body and soul. In response to provocateurs who advanced the irresponsible idea that the time was ripe for armed struggle, he asserted that the gun was not necessarily a revolutionary tool. The reactionaries have guns, he emphasized. This was an important statement, not only because the Partys image had been reduced by State propaganda to that of Panthers with guns but also because it was Huey who had first articulated the Partys tenet of the right of the people to defend themselves, as pointed out here in Executive Mandate No. 1, May 2, 1967, and Huey who, by example, had led the Partys effort to demonstrate to the people that the States violence against them could be resisted with arms. Thus, at the time of the publication of this book, Huey was insisting that the Party make the focal point of its activities its Survival Programs, as he named them, which operated under the slogan survival pending revolution, as discussed in Black Capitalism Re-analyzed I: June 5, 1971.

Today, in this dawn of the 21st century, we see the absence of solutions like those the Party fostered decades ago through its Survival Programs. For example, while there is finally a broad recognition throughout the United States of the need for health care for everyone, there is powerful resistance to it by the capitalists, whose greed overwhelms the common cry. The sixth point of the Partys Ten-Point Platform and Program (as revised in 1972) was a demand for free health care for all oppressed people. Todays demand by the people for change has forced the rulers of the United States to make some adjustments, but the government has merely partnered with insurance companies to put forth a plan of universal health coverage. A review of the Party program would be instructive.

The Party not only promoted free health care as a human right, it put theory into practice through its Free Health Care Program. Under Hueys direction, the Party opened free health clinics in every chapter. By 1969, when the FBI declared the Party a terrorist organization, constituting the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States, there were over 40 Party chapters throughout the states, all of which operated free health clinics in the most depressed black communities, providing everything from free ambulance service to free Pap smears and, for the first time in America, free sickle cell anemia testing.

At the same time, with its Free Breakfast for Children Program, the Party was feeding free breakfasts to hundreds of thousands of black children throughout the United States every week. Soon the people came to successfully demand the government provide free breakfasts to