Existing comment:
"Free Huey!"
In the early hours of Oct. 28, a traffic-stop altercation between Black Panther leader Huey Newton and Oakland, Calif., police left one officer dead, another injured and Newton shot in the stomach. At the hospital, Newton was beaten by police and arrested for murder. Newspapers nationwide ran a photograph of a badly injured Newton shackled to a gurney, his body contorted in pain. Newton was convicted on manslaughter in 1968, but the verdict was later overturned.
he Panthers used Newton's arrest to channel black anger and reinvigorate their fight for decent housing, education and employment. The party's Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver launched a massive campaign promoting Newton as an icon of black resistance and his arrest as the start of a revolution against America's racist power structure.
With a rallying cry of "Free Huey!" a local group with fewer than 100 members became a national movement. |