Quotes- Huey P Newton Reader

born 1942
1989
You can be in jail, but the soul breaker is your “last” end of the world.
41-
After fifteen days the guards pulled me out and sent me back to a regular cell for twenty-four hours, where I took a shower and saw a medical doctor and a psych. They were worried that prisoners would become mentally disorganized in such deprivation. Then, because I had not repented, they sent me back to the hole. By then it held no fears for me. I had won my freedom.
Soul breakers exist because the authorities know that such conditions would drive them to the breaking point, but when I resolved that they would no conquer my will, I became stronger than they were. I understood them better than they understood me. No longer dependent on the things of the world, I felt really free for the first time in my life. In the past I had been like my jailers; I had pursued the goals of capitalistic America. Now I had a higher freedom.

- A people who have suffered so much for so long at the hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere.
Executive Mandate- 1967

I am a witness to the enlightened dreams as well as the torture of the dreamer. I came to know that he was the truest revolutionary, seeking always to bring harmony between the nature of things and the state of things, to transform dark into light, to challenge fear and hate with courage and love.
Fredricka Newton- Wife

Fear and Doubt: May 15,1967- pg 133

With whom, with what, can he, a man, identify? As a child he had no permanent male figure with whom to identify; as a man, he sees nothing in society with which he can identify as an extension of himself. His life is built on mistrust, shame, doubt, guilt, inferiority, role confusion, isolation and despair. He feels that he is something less than a man, and it is evident in his conversation:
“ The white man is ‘The Man” he got everything, and he knows everything, and a nigger ain’t nothing.”
In a society where a man is valued for according to occupation and material possessions, he is without possessions. He is unskilled and more often than not, either marginally employed or unemployed. Often his wife( who is able to secure a job as a maid, cleaning for white people) is the breadwinner. He is, therefore, viewed as quite worthless by his wife and children. He is ineffectual both in and out of the home.
He cannot provide for, or protect his family. He is invisible, a nonentity. Society will not acknowledge him as a man. He is a consumer and not a producer. He is dependent on the White man(“Then Man) to feed his family, to give him a job, to educate his children,serve as the model that he tries to emulate. He is dependent and he hates “ the man” and he hates himself. Who is he? Is he a very old adolescent or is he the lave he used to be?
“What did he do to be so Black and blue?”

45
Bobby and I entered a period of intense exploration trying to solve some of the ideological problems of the Black movement; partly we needed to explain to our own satisfaction why no Black political organization had succeeded. The only one we thought had promised long-term success was the organization of Afro-Am. Unity started by MX, but malcolm had died too soon to pull his program together. Malcolm’s slogan had been, ‘ By any means necessary,” but nothing we saw was taking us there. We still had only a vague conception of what freedom ought to mean to Black people, except in abstract terms borrowed from politicians, and that did not help people on the block. Those lofty words were meant for intellectuals and the bourgeoisie, who were already fairly comfortable.

47
Just then, however, Soul Students had a hot issue- the establishment of a program of Afro-American history and culture in college’s regular curriculum. Although it was a relevant program, the authorities were resisting it tooth and nail. Every time we proposed a new course, they countered with reasons why it could not be; at the same time, ironically, they encouraged us to be ‘concerned.’ This was simple trickery; they were dragging their feet.

* the militant & Muhammad speaks
51 We continue to believe that the Black Panther Party exists in the spirit of Malcolm