As Black History Month winds down, it is only fitting to think about the heroes from the freedom struggle who rarely get appropriate respect and attention. As Mumia Abu Jamal reminds us, Huey Newton has left an indelible, yet often unacknowledged, mark on American life.

IN MEMORY OF THE MINISTER OF DEFENSE: DR. HUEY NEWTON, PH.D.
By Mumia Abu Jamal
It is somehow fitting that February, the shortest month, has been
designated Black History Month. For whatever Black folks have gotten
from this country, it was given grudgingly, through gritted teeth, if at
all.

It was in February, 1942, when Huey P. Newton was born, in Oak Grove,
Louisiana, the youngest of seven children. He was named after Louisiana
Governor, Huey Long, a man regarded as a Populist.

But Huey’s family would leave the state, and settle in Oakland,
California, where Huey would make his own name.

He was the co-founder, with Bobby Seale, of the Black Panther Party [for
Self-Defense], which rose to become of the most advanced Black
revolutionary organizations of the 1960s and ’70s.

It grew into a national organization, with 44 chapters and branches all
across America; from West, to Midwest; from Boston, to Baton Rouge.

Huey, although poorly educated in Oakland schools, would push himself to
learn about the world around him, and through the Party, would teach an
entire generation about a world bubbling with revolutionary discontent.

The Party, inspired by Black freedom struggles in the Deep South, tried
to put into practice the revolutionary teachings of Malcolm X, who
preached self-defense. Because it was always growing and changing, party
members studied his writings, as well as the works of China’s Mao
Tse-Tung, Cuba’s ‘Che’ Guevara, and the writings of Franz Fanon, who
helped in Algeria’s revolution against France.

Huey’s revolutionary influence would help the Party grow into the tens
of thousands; but, his growing paranoia, fed by the FBI, would also
cause the Party to down-size, as Panthers came from as far away as
Philadelphia, to help the Party during its electoral phase, when Seale
ran for Oakland’s mayor, and other leading people ran for city council
seats.

Given his revolutionary ideas, and his uncompromising opposition to the
capitalist State, don’t expect any U.S. Postal Service commemorative
stamps anytime soon. Nor will you ever see any U.S. presidents attend
any of his memorials.

Huey would be just fine with that. His life’s work, the Party, was
designed to give a voice to the poor and oppressed, not the well-to-do
nor the high-born!

He wasn’t a civil rights activist — he was a revolutionary, who wanted
to totally transform American social reality.

His life, and his ignoble death, at the hands of a drug dealer, is
detailed in half a dozen books (including one of my own), but he remains
a symbol of resistance to racist police terror, and the determination of
a people to defend themselves.

That his name and his life isn’t better known is a tribute to the very
forces that he fought against, and that the Party fought against. The
Black bourgeoisie and the rulers, who wanted Black youth to be as
uninformed about the centuries-long Black Freedom struggle as possible.

Perhaps, if he were alive today, and 64 years old, he would be baffled
at how bleak and sour Black life has become for millions of his people.
But, maybe not.

He was a man of unusual brilliance, who saw deeply into how societies
work. His books, like ‘Revolutionary Suicide’ (1973), ‘To Die for the
People’ (1973), ‘War Against the Panthers’ (1996), and the compilation,
‘The Huey P. Newton Reader’ (2002) betray the workings of a first-rate
mind on a wide range of social and political issues.

He may not be remembered by the rulers or the rich, but he will not be
forgotten by the poor and the impoverished.

He will be remembered because the same ugly reality facing his
generation face Black young people today, and history exists to teach us
of our present.

He was 24 years old when he made a vast, and deep, contribution to Black
freedom and dignity. He didn’t bow, and he didn’t beg.

He stood up, and fought back, and urged others to stand with him.
Thousands did so.

They will do so again.