First Published: Frontline, Vol. 7, No. 7, October 9, 1989.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In regard to Frances M. Beal’s article on Huey Newton’s demise (Frontline, September 25): I don’t think it does much good to berate the mass media for attacking Huey as a “thug” and a “gangster,” go on to report on the funeral in which he was praised as a hero and a powerful intellectual, and not make any attempt to reconcile or explain these completely polar points of view.
Huey, as a founder and leader of the Black Panther Party, became a symbol of the rage, frustration, courage and determination to be free that gripped the inner cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black Panther Party was able to inspire and mobilize urban youth to “serve the people” and involve themselves in political struggle in a way that no other organization did, before or since. No one can take that away from Huey and the party.
At the same time, the Black Panther Party was ideologically eclectic and, like most of the revolutionary organizations of the time, ultra-left and riddled with illusions about what it might take to topple “the system.”
It is abundantly clear that Huey eventually lost his ability to provide political leadership either for the Black Panther Party or for the broader Black community. There’s no particular reason to damn him for that. It was a hellified period and many of us lost our way. But there is also considerable evidence that somewhere along the line Huey became a true menace to the community and, as it turns out, to himself as well. The sociological, psychological and political reasons for this are undoubtedly complex and it is unquestionably true that in a just, non-racist society, Huey would not have had to go the way of all too many brothers. But it does us no good to evade the reality of his life script, participate in the cultivation of illusions and leave our flank open to those who have no other agenda than to belittle and malign the organizations, leaders and activists that have devoted themselves to the struggle for Black empowerment.
We cannot afford an interpretation of Huey’s life that is, in its own way, as distorted, uninstructive and self-serving as that of the “bourgeois propaganda machine.”
Linda Burnham,
Oakland, Calif.