-
Huey Newton
Huey P. Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on February 17, 1942, and named for former governor Huey P. Long. -
Angela Davis
Writer, activist and educator Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Davis is best known as a radical African-American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues. She knew about racial prejudice from her experiences with discrimination growing up in Alabama. As a teenager, she organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police. She also knew several of the young African-American girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing. -
Black Panther Creation
Founded in 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale called their group The Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Unlike many of the other social and political organizers of the time, they took a militant stance, advocating the ownership of guns by African Americans, and were often seen brandishing weapons. A famous photograph shows Newton - the group’s minister of defense - holding a gun in one hand and a spear in the other. The group believed that violence - or the threat of violence - might be needed -
1 Black Panther Party Opens
The first BPP office was open at 5624 Grove Street, Oakland, CA -
Angela Davis joins the Black Panther Party
As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, in the late 1960s, she joined several groups, including the Black Panthers. But she spent most of her time working with the Che-Lumumba Club, which was all-black branch of the Communist Party. -
Angela Davis Arrest
Angela was being hunted down by FBI due to murder of Superior Court Judge Harold J. Haley in a courthouse gun battle and kidnapping charges. After serving 18 months in jail nvestigation cleared Angela of the charges and confirm her boyfriend George Jackson committed the crimes with her gun. -
Huey is Free
August 22, 1989, a destitute, perpetually stoned Newton was murdered by a black drug dealer whom he had failed to pay. As his body was laid to rest amid eulogies by Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, and others who had conspired with Newton and learned to fear him, the 2,000 or so Bay Area radicals and Oakland blacks who had come to mourn him shouted, "Huey Is Free!" -
Angela Davis Now
After spending time traveling and lecturing, Davis returned to teaching. Today, she is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches courses on the history of consciousness. Davis is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class (1980) and Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
