Cover photo from poster hanging in Black Panthers office with bullet hole from police

There’s reactionary suicide, when you can’t take the pressure from outside forces so you end it all. Then there’s revolutionary suicide, when you refuse to accept the pressure from outside forces and in order to end it’s injustice, you are willing to end it all.

Cultivating this as his ethos, Huey P. Newton gives us insight into the birth of the real Black Panthers, media conception be damned. He touches on working with White radicals (but oftentimes clashing with their inherent drug use and in/effectiveness, the Black Panthers had a zero tolerance drug policy), adamantly adhering to the letter of the law (and yes, this includes bearing arms, he would keep law books on his person), betrayal… (he doesn’t mince words about Eldridge Cleaver), and how the America of today, that stands so proudly behind its constitution (though effective at the time) is profoundly different from it’s inception and those differences now put many, especially ‘minorities,’ at an inherent disadvantage-

“What I wanted to show was that black people and other minorities in this country had been betrayed by the American constitution, the legal foundation of government. I stressed that the united states of America came into being at a time when the nation comprised a narrow strip of land on the eastern seaboard and whose population was small and homogeneous both racially and culturally. The economic system then was different, too—essentially agricultural. A small population and fertile land meant that people were able to advance according to their motivation and ability. In this way, democratic capitalism flourished in the new nation.”

He continues with how industrialization and the change from producing basic needs to ‘products’ completely altered the landscape of America and its foundation of opportunity.

A lot of Newton’s theory and action is based upon why should one hold life so precious if that life isn’t able to be lived in fairness, with equal opportunity? If you’re living in hellish conditions then you don’t even really have a ‘life’ to risk, so fighting for what is just only makes sense.

While not the most compelling book I’ve ever read, it’s stayed with me, in my thoughts. At times I vehemently disagreed, became angry and wished I could verbally dispute things he wrote. Other times he put things so simply, so eloquently that I can’t believe our society hasn’t evolved infinitely more than it has. He also reminds me how imperative it is to gather information from the source. Obviously the media has blown up their version/vision/bastardization of the Black Panthers and used its perceived violence to escalate popular intrigue/fear. Like so many injustices, Newton is all too acutely aware of this and makes in depth note of it.

And an added bonus to intrigue/inspire you to read this is the following bad review on amazon-

The book is full of radical ideas and tries to brainwash with its single perspective. Death and violence is never an answer. They create more violence and death. Suicide as an act of death kills revolution and revolutionary thoughts. because it brings an end and it stops the search for ideals and utopia. Lack of support, wrong logic, intolerant, monolithic, logocentric, fascist. It need more voices and perspectives. It needs dialogue. Its author needs to read Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. Dangerous if readers do not apply critical thinking.