Shrine to Huey Percy Newton

An American Martyr

Huey Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1942. He was named after Senator Huey Long, a senator who did his best one can in the U.S. goverment to help impoversed people. To escape the violence against Black people in the South, his family moved to Oakland, California. He grew up extremely poor, never learnt to read from school, and got caught up in crime. He later got a doctorate, and founded the heroic Black Panther Party. He worked tirelessly for the advancement of the rights of Black people and workers in the United States until his murder in 1989.

Dr. Newton understood well the oppression that is caused in the public school system, as he experience it himself. In his autobiography, he describes how he was made to be ashamed of being Black, and how the school system actively puts down working class people to ensure they remain part of the lower class.

"During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire."

Dr. Newton taught himself how to read with poetry and Plato's Republic.