by R. Warner

Created on: February 16, 2008

"Hope has always been a scarce commodity in the Black community."
~Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide.

When I think about The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense-an image springs to my mind. I can see him. He is sitting in a wide-back wicker chair, wearing a black beret, a powder-blue button down shirt, and a leather coat. He has a weapon in each hand. In his left hand he is clutching a long African spear and in his right hand he holds a semi-automatic rifle. His stony expression completes the portrait: he is a modern warrior. Huey Newton was one of the most influential African-Americans in history and he was the co-founder of the Black Panther Party.

Huey Newton says he found his freedom in 1964 in the Alameda County Jail. He was twenty-twenty years old. He'd been placed in the county jail for holding awaiting sentence for assault. Shortly after arriving he was sent to the hole. The four and a half feet wide, by six feet long, by ten feet high hole was called the "soul-breaker". The walls were painted black and there were no windows or light, only a solid steel door. Newton was stripped and placed in the cell for thirty days.

Today, these strip cells have been outlawed throughout the United States. Psychiatrists believe that extreme sensory deprivation is a form of torture. The soul breaker helped Huey Newton realize that he was no longer dependent on the things of the world. His perspective shifted-and a movement was born.

Newton spent an additional six months in jail that year. Meanwhile, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, was choking the life from Jim Crow's reign in the south. It also made it illegal to segregate the races in schools, housing, or hiring. The bill was originally introduced by President John F. Kennedy in his civil rights speech. President Kennedy was assassinated shortly thereafter. This was also the year that three civil rights workers (two white and one black) disappeared in Mississippi. Their bodies were discovered six weeks later in a shallow grave which spawned a federal investigation.

1965 was a bloody year in America. In February, Malcolm X was assassinated. "Bloody Sunday" happened a few weeks later when a peaceful protest to support voter's rights in Montgomery turned brutal. Police attacked the protesters and fifty people were hospitalized after police used tear gas, whips, and clubs. In August the race riots in Watts, California erupted.

A routine traffic stop escalated when a group of African-Americans watched police officers brutalize

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