"Born in Monroe, Louisiana on February 17, 1942, Huey P. Newton was named after the populist governor Huey Long. His parents moved to Oakland, California during World War II seeking economic opportunities. Newton attended Merritt College, where he met Bobby Seale. At Merritt, Newton fought to diversify the curriculum and hire more black instructors. He also was exposed to a rising tide of Black Nationalism and briefly joined the Afro-American Association. Within this group and on his own, he studied a broad range of thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, E. Franklin Frazier, and James Baldwin.
Newton eventually developed a Marxist/Leninist perspective, where he viewed the black community as an internal colony controlled by external forces such as white businessmen, the police, and city hall. He believed the black working class needed to seize [the] control of the institutions that most affected their community and formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with Bobby Seale in October 1966 to pursue that goal.
Newton became the Minister of Defense and main leader of the Party. Writing in the Ten-Point Program, the founding document of the Party, Newton demanded that blacks need the “power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.” That power would allow blacks to gain “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.”
-https://www.blackpast.org/
TEN-POINT PROGRAM:
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1966/10/15…
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