#Huey p. newton and tyrone robinson trial

Within a year, the Panthers were running armed patrols in their neighborhoods to both protest and protect against, among other things, unchecked police violence.ĭuring this time (1968-72), the FBI's COINTELPRO was very active in targeting the Panthers, killing many and arresting many on trumped-up charges. Seale and Newton were very active in recruiting African-Americans into their new organization, and within a year, were a notable force within the Bay Area. After a coin toss, Seale became chairman, and Newton Minister of Defense. He lobbied the school to offer the first ever black history course, and with his friend Bobby Seale, he founded the Black Panther Party. He read the works of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Che Guevara, among others, but was especially drawn to the writings of Malcolm X. While attending Merritt College, a community college in Oakland, California, he became very involved in radical politics. He robbed houses to support himself while studying law to become a better burglar. As a teenager, he was arrested many times for petty crimes (including arrests for both possession of a firearm and vandalism before reaching the age of 14), but attended college.

Newton was determined to educate himself and, despite his poor literacy, read Plato's Republic until he understood it. He attended school, but was still illiterate. His family moved to California when he was still very young.

He was named after the quasi- socialist/ populist governor, Huey Long.

His mother was a sharecropper, and his father was a Baptist minister. Several weapons charges over the years resulted in three convictions for which he served various amounts of jail time.Huey Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, to Armelia and Walter Newton. He had been sentenced earlier this year to 90 days in San Quentin Prison for possessing drug paraphernalia, which was a violation of his parole in an earlier case. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to stealing $15,000 in state aid to the school and was sentenced to six months in jail. In 1982, Newton was accused of embezzling $600,000 from a Panther-run elementary school. Another 1974 charge involving the pistol-whipping of a tailor was dropped.

#Huey p. newton and tyrone robinson trial

He was accused of the 1974 murder of a prostitute, but the trial ended with a hung jury. The conviction was later overturned, and a second trial ended with a hung jury. He was convicted in 1968 of the murder of an Oakland police officer during a bloody gun battle that erupted in 1967 during a routine traffic stop. Newton’s encounters with the law began in 1964, when he was convicted of felony assault with a knife. Tom Orloff, saw him simply as a criminal “who played no positive role in the community.” While some, such as his attorney, Charles Garry, said they saw him as a leader in the fight for “humanity, equality of the races (and) the dignity of black Americans,” others, such as Alameda County Chief Assistant Dist. Newton, 47, a leading and controversial figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s, was shot in the head and left to die on an Oakland street corner near where he and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. As a result of his statement that he killed Newton, Robinson was rebooked Friday night on suspicion of murder. Police said Robinson, an Oakland resident, admitted the killing prior to his scheduled arraignment Friday on the weapons charge, and the arraignment was postponed until Tuesday. Mike Sitterud said Friday that there is “no indication at all” that White and Jackson, who were arraigned Friday on the gun-possession charges, were involved in Newton’s death. The three were booked on suspicion of being ex-convicts in possession of firearms. Police said that after the stop, the three men “got cute” with the officers, who then discovered two guns in the vehicle.

The stop was made near where Newton died. Robinson and two other ex-convicts-Mark White and Rodney Jackson-were stopped in Oakland on suspicion of running a red light about 14 hours after the murder. Mercado told reporters that the gun believed used to shoot Newton-a 9-millimeter pistol-has been recovered at the rear of a house “associated with Robinson.” Ballistics tests are scheduled to see if, in fact, the gun was used in the killing. Robinson said he and Newton had met earlier in the evening at a “crack” house where cocaine was being dispensed.