Huey P. Newton in Civil Rights Movement: "Black Power" Era
Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
Newton was the child of Black migrants who had left the Jim Crow South in the early 1950s in search of a better life in California.
He grew up in Oakland, in a hardworking, disciplined, religious household, which stressed education and dignity. While attending Oakland City College in the early 1960s, Newton read the works of radical, nationalist leaders such as Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Malcolm X.
In 1966, with friend Bobby Seale, Newton formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in response to police brutality and economic strife in the Black community.