(Apologies for not doing right by Huey Newton this year. Come back in the next few days, and find a more deserving presentation.)
Dr. Huey Percy Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party - an organization that truthfully "pioneered free social service programs" now considered mainstream models in uplift for the disenfranchised.
The Black Panther Party initiated this country's first Sickle Cell testing programs through the Party's "Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation" in conjunction with Oakland Children's Hospital "inspiring the federal government's early funding of such programs."
This work was revolutionary, and was the underpinning it seems to me from which the Panther's demands for freedom and liberation were a natural progression.
Once one begins the work of attempting to resolve individual folks' daily dilemmas is when one realizes the extent - the magnitude of oppression and White Supremacy.
From that vantage point is where we begin to realize that those quick fixes for life we concoct (whether we're students in our campus travels or folk traveling from our wooden paneled dens to our well stocked kitchens cabinets) are non-functional - useless in the real world.
The more we roll up our sleeves and engage folk who are living real lives - the more we learn - the more unintelligent the old adage, "why don't they just . . . get a job" begins to sound.
We begin to wonder in amazement how some of our people have made it as far as they have.
We evolve - and we become prouder and prouder of the people.
We develop in our community usefulness and we realize, we have to do more if we are to sleep at night.
It seems to me this is how freedom fighters are born - when we are keenly aware of the trails, tribulations, systemic supremacist barriers and amazingly stifling "rules and regulations" that deliberately prevent disenfranchised Black folk advancement.
Huey Newton fed, and clothed - he saw, he knew, and he did battle.
And then he died, murdered in the streets over drugs he is said to have used to medicate a broken heart - a distinguishable scenario, but perhaps a similar causation as it was with Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
Have a listen to the unjustly tried and convicted Death Row resident, journalist and activist, Mumia Abu Jamal on Huey P. Newton.
(Huey, oftentimes accused of "missing it" regarding the presence of women, and then simultaneously "getting it" as well constantly references to "men" here. This is to acknowledge the Sisters in every appropriate place at this website . . . there needing to be "goodwill toward folk").
"I claim this is a part of a reactionary set of conditions . . . Blacks destroy themselves by destroying his brother . . . the social forces are so overwhelmingly against us, that it's like a squadron of B52's or tanks bearing down on you . . . its suicide because you didn't try to do anything about it . . . when you take the lover away, there's nothing left."
They could never understand
what u set out 2 do
instead they chose 2 ridicule u
when u got weak
they loved the sight
of your dimming and flickering starlight
How could they understand what was so intricate
2 be loved by so many, so intimate
they wanted 2 c your lifeless corpse
this way u could not alter the course
of ignorance that they have set
2 make my people forget
"The Essence of Huey P. Newton" at darrelanderson.com
Roger Guenveur Smith chain-smokes, repeats odd phrases with manic intensity and reveals the physical degeneration caused by Newton's cocaine addiction through the constant twitching of his right leg . . .
Remembering Huey P. Newton: A People's Warrior for Real Change
by Larry Pinkney
At Born Black Magazine
" . . . it is irrefutable and well documented that the local, state, and federal authorities of the U.S. Government used every fiendish and despicable means to discredit, 'neutralize,' and destroy the Black Panther Party and its leaders, including Huey P. Newton."
(Mention which panel you're addressing, and your comment will hyperlink people back here)
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