Huey P. Newton: Little Red Books for Shotguns and the Black Panthers' Fall

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In the mid-1960s two California students raised money for shotguns by reselling copies of Mao's Little Red Book to campus socialists at a markup. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale had met at Merritt College in Oakland in 1962, children of families who came west for wartime shipyard jobs that later vanished. After San Francisco police killed an unarmed Black man named Matthew Johnson, Newton studied the California Penal Code, found that loaded rifles and shotguns could be carried openly if not pointed at anyone, and organized armed patrols that watched Oakland police stops while he recited the law to officers. In autumn 1966 they founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, borrowing a panther logo from a Lowndes County, Alabama voting rights group and adopting blue shirts, leather jackets and berets alongside the Ten Point Program.

The armed march into the California statehouse in May 1967 made the Panthers famous but sped passage of the Mulford Act, which Governor Ronald Reagan signed. That October a shootout left Officer John Frey dead and Newton wounded; his manslaughter conviction was later overturned, and while he was jailed the Free Huey campaign grew the party to about 5,000 members and launched the Free Breakfast for Children program and free clinics. J. Edgar Hoover called the party the greatest threat to internal security, and COINTELPRO forged letters, stoked feuds and joined the 1969 Chicago raid that killed Fred Hampton. Newton's later years brought purges, exile in Cuba, violence against members and the 1982 closing of the Oakland school amid embezzlement tied to his drug addiction.

• Newton's post-prison idea of intercommunalism argued that global capitalism linked oppressed communities worldwide.
• Party clinics tested for sickle cell anemia, a condition the medical establishment largely ignored.
• Elaine Brown led the party during Newton's exile and resigned after school administrator Regina Davis was beaten.
• Newton was implicated in the murder of bookkeeper Betty Van Patter, who had reportedly found financial irregularities.
• The FBI fueled a deadly conflict in Los Angeles between the Panthers and the US Organization.