It focuses on the three key elements of the campaign outside the courthouse to free Newton. Newton while also sowing the seeds for the organization’s later decline. The analysis that follows demonstrates how the Free Huey campaign successfully cemented the BPP within 1968’s radical movement and iconized Huey P. As important, they elide the BPP’s martyrizing of Newton. 6ĤSuch approaches underestimate the role of the Free Huey campaign in defining the BPP’s development. 5 Less interested in the popular movement to free Newton, Lise Pearlman chronicles events inside the courtroom. Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin chronicle the inter-organizational tensions that emerged, while Joel Wilson and David Barber evaluate the BPP alliances with white radicals and Aaron Bae its multiracial alliances. 4 As the campaign gathered pace, the BPP reached out to other radical groups. 3 Curtis Austin, Donna Murch, and Robyn Spencer present the campaign as fundamental to the BPP’s meteoric growth as members and supporters joined in their thousands and transformed the organization. For Jane Rhodes, the campaign rendered the BPP media icons while enabling Eldridge Cleaver to cement himself at the organization’s head. Newton, The Real Trial of the 20 th Century? (Berkeley (.)ģMost historical assessments of the Free Huey campaign emphasize the role of the ‘Free Huey’ rallies in bringing the BPP to a wide audience, and similarly point to the mass media’s response to the BPP. 6 Lise Pearlman, The Sky’s The Limit: People v.Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black (.) Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Par (.) The BPP welcomed him upon his return much like the Bolsheviks received Lenin from exile, a near-legendary leader ready to spearhead the revolution. Convicted of voluntary manslaughter in September 1968, Newton’s conviction was quashed on appeal nearly two years later. The BPP set about deifying its imprisoned founder, transforming him into an international icon. Charged with murder, Newton faced the death penalty. In the early hours of October 28, 1967, Newton became embroiled in a melee with police officers Frey and Herbert Heanes, leading to Frey’s death and Newton receiving a gunshot wound. A series of arrests followed that deprived the BPP of its most skilled organizers, and the organization entered a decline. A collection of armed Panthers entered the California State Capitol Building in Sacramento to protest the so-called Mulford Bill. On May 2, 1967, prompted by a legislative proposal to end California’s citizens’ rights to bear arms in public, the BPP conducted one of the most sensational events of the 1960s. A widely-publicized confrontation with San Francisco police that followed the BPP’s armed protection of Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow, during a visit to the city in February 1967 elevated the organization to regional notoriety. Inspired by black nationalist, anticolonial, and internationalist traditions, the BPP took particular influence from Marxist theorists such as Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Mao Zedong, and especially Frantz Fanon’s coruscating critique of French colonialism as outlined in his classic text, The Wretched of the Earth. Attracting a small but committed membership, it conducted a sequence of armed police patrols that unnerved the Oakland Police Department while alerting locals to their rights as citizens under arrest. 2 Earl Caldwell, ‘Newton is Freed on $50,000 Bail’ New York Times August 6, 1970, 24 idem., ‘Young W (.)ĢFormed in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Newton and Bobby Seale, the BPP initially focused its energies on opposing police brutality in Oakland’s inner city and similar local neighborhoods.The ‘Free Huey’ campaign thus reveals both the ability of radical groups to generate and exploit the revolutionary fervor of the year and the problems inherent in such an approach. Yet this newfound fame was not unproblematic, since it revealed the ambiguities of the BPP’s philosophy and elevated Newton to mythic proportions that no living human could match. As important, the ‘Free Huey’ campaign enabled the BPP to surf 1968’s radical tide, forging links with other radical groups as it grew to international prominence. It transformed the BPP into one of the most visible political organizations of the era whilst redefining Newton as one of the key icons of 1968. His organization, which was on the point of collapse, rallied around him, courtesy of a major campaign that ran through his trial and his two years in prison, making ‘Free Huey’ a rallying cry for radicals across the globe. Newton was arrested and charged with the murder of a police officer. In October 1967, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Huey P.
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