Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist

by Judson L. Jeffries

Overview

Huey P. Newton's powerful legacy to the Black Panther movement and the civil rights struggle has long been obscured. Conservatives harp on Newton's drug use and on the circumstances of his death in a crack-related shooting. Liberals romanticize his black revolutionary rhetoric and idealize his message.

In Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist, Judson L. Jeffries considers the entire arc of Newton's political role and influence on civil rights history and African American thought. Jeffries argues that, contrary to popular belief, Newton was one of the most important political thinkers in the struggle for civil rights.

Huey P. Newton's political career spanned two decades. Like many freedom fighters, he was a complex figure. His international reputation was forged as much from his passionate defense of black liberation as from his highly publicized confrontations with police.

His courage to address police brutality won him admirers in ghettos, on college campuses, and in select Hollywood circles. Newton gave Black Power a compelling urgency and played a pivotal role in the politics of black America during the 1960s and 1970s.

Few would deny that Newton's life (1942-1989) was strewn with incidences of violence and that his police record was long. But Newton's struggles with police took place in a rich and troubled context that included urban unrest, police brutality, government repression, and an intense debate over civil rights tactics.

Stripped of history and interpretation, the violence of Newton's life brought emphatic indictments of him. Newton's death attracted widespread media attention. However, pundits offered little on Newton as freedom fighter or as theoretician and activist.

Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist dispels myths about Newton's life, but the book is primarily an in-depth examination of Newton's ideas. By exploring this charismatic leader, Jeffries's book makes a valuable contribution to the scant literature on Newton, while also exposing the core tenets and evolving philosophies of the Black Panther Party.

Judson L. Jeffries is an assistant professor of political science at Purdue University. He is the author of Virginia's Native Son: The Election and Administration of Governor L. Douglas Wilder (2000), and his work has been published in such periodicals as Western Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Political Science, and Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578068777
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	753,484
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Judson L. Jeffries is professor of African American and African studies at The Ohio State University-Columbus. He is editor or author of numerous books, including On the Ground: The Black Panther Party in Communities across America, and coeditor (with Shannon M. Cochran and Molly Reinhoudt) of Feel My Big Guitar: Prince and the Sound He Helped Create, both published by University Press of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Acknowledgments	xv
	Introduction	xvii
	Out of the Ashes of Despair Rises a Militant Phoenix: The Birth of the Black Panther Party	3
	Distortions, Misrepresentations, and Outright Lies: Setting the Record Straight	18
	Newton's View of People and the State	42
	Critiquing Newton's Critique of Pan-Africanism	53
	The Party Line: The Ideological Development of the Black Panther Party	62
	What Did He Do to Be So Black and Blue?: Blacks and the American Political, Economic, and Social Order	83
	The "Bad Nigger" Personified	106
	Conclusion: The Legacy of Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party	120
	Postscript: Literary Criticisms of Newton's Work	137
	Appendix	147
	Notes	151
	Bibliography	175
	Index	193