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By Hans Uwe Petersen
On March 1, 1973, there was a queue in front of the entrance to Folkets Hus – now Vega – in Rejsbygade. The people had come to hear Huey P. Newton talk about America’s Black Panther Party. The meeting was so crowded that several hundred people left in vain. The same thing happened two days later when 8-900 people gathered for a similar meeting in Stakladen in Aarhus.
Although there was a lively interest in meeting a representative of “the other America” at the time, the success of the meetings was also conditioned by the organizers’ – Never Again War, the Danish Vietnam Committees, the Danish Communist Party, the Danish Communist Youth, the Danish Students’ Union Council, Communist Students, the National Organization of Apprentices, the Social Democratic Society, the Socialist People’s Party and the Left Socialists – skilled press work prior to the meetings.
Newton had been detained by the authorities for so long on his departure from Seattle that he did not reach the gate until two minutes before the flight took off. This caused the second pilot on the SAS flight to Copenhagen to refuse to allow him to board the plane. As a result, Newton arrived at Kastrup with a 24-hour delay, where he was met by Jørgen Dragsdahl. In the meantime, the press had been informed of the incident, which found its way into the newspaper columns and created extra interest in Newton’s visit to the country. SAS management was so embarrassed by the incident that they invited representatives of the organizers to a meeting, where the airline’s spokesperson went to great lengths to apologize for what had happened.
Huey P. Newton
Newton grew up in Oakland, California, where his family had moved in 1945 for better job opportunities. Encountering discrimination and segregation in American society led him to feel embarrassed to be black during his school years. While attending Oakland City College, he became politically interested and was instrumental in the creation of a black history course. During this time he met Bobby Seale and together they founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966 with Seale as president and Newton as Secretary of Defense. The two also jointly wrote the party’s program. During this period, the party moved in a gray area between a militant defense against police abuse and an armed struggle against the prevailing social order. In October 1967, Newton was charged with killing a policeman and the following year he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the California Court of Appeal overturned the verdict and after a series of retrials, the charges against Newton were dropped.
Read an interview with Newton.
After his acquittal, Newton sought to change the party line and rhetoric. He advocated a much more down-to-earth reform program and direct social work among African-Americans.
Nevertheless, Newton found himself in constant conflict with the authorities. In 1974, several cases were brought against him and he was also accused of killing a young prostitute. Newton then fled to Cuba, where he lived in exile for three years. In Cuba he worked as a teacher, among other things. He returned to the US in 1977 and volunteered to turn himself in to the authorities, believing that due to a changed political climate he now had the possibility of a fair trial. Once again, the case ended with the charges against him being dropped.
In 1985, Newton was arrested for embezzling funds from the Black Panther Party’s education and nutrition program. In 1989, he was convicted of misappropriating funds from a school run by the party. During these years, Newton struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. On August 22, 1989, Newton was shot and killed by a drug dealer.
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African-American civil rights and self-defense movement in the United States that had its heyday of activity in the 1960s and 1970s. The party was founded to provide armed resistance to the societal oppression of the African-American population at the time.
A trigger for the party’s formation was the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, which led to nationwide riots during which hundreds of blacks were killed. When Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in early 1966, they presented a 10-point program.
The 10-point program called for: freedom and self-determination, jobs, abolition of exploitation, education reform, exemption from military service, an end to arbitrary police abuse, the release of all black prisoners and fair trials with black juries and black prosecutors, and a referendum of the African-American population on their national status.
The party’s goals and ideology underwent a radical change over the years. While the leaders’ rhetoric spoke of a revolutionary class struggle based on the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Mao, the party also had a nationalist reputation that attracted a wide variety of people. The party never developed a unified policy and there were significant differences between the leadership and members.
By the early 1970s, there were around 100 local party groups. At the same time, the internal differences sharpened, which was also facilitated by the FBI’s infiltration of the party. This led to a split in 1971 into two factions. While one, led by Huey P. Newton, wanted to concentrate on legal political work among the African-American population, the other faction advocated intensified armed struggle. From the early 1980s, the Black Panther Party ceased to appear in public as a party.
The meeting in the People’s House
During the meeting in the People’s House, to which Newton arrived hidden in the back seat of the Koppel brothers’ car, he sought in his opening speech to explain the Black Panther Party’s then ‘survival program’. It was the result of an internal party showdown with Elder Cleaver, who advocated escalating the armed resistance to urban guerrilla warfare. In contrast, Newton considered it necessary to completely abstain from armed action in favor of a more pragmatic and reform-oriented line. In keeping with the spirit of the times, Newton argued that the ‘survival program’ to prevent the Black Panther Party’s isolation from fellow African Americans was neither revisionist nor revolutionary, but merely a strategic-tactical problem. For Newton, it was more important to develop the party’s service programs – including the distribution of breakfast for children and participation in political elections – in the local black communities.
The audience’s keen interest was also reflected in the fact that a question and answer session produced around 150 written questions, only a few of which were answered by a very articulate Newton. The questions were about how he, as a Marxist, could advocate ‘black capitalism’. Newton described it as the lesser evil and that the position was based on the thoughts of the then Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao.
While the two public meetings were a great success, which was also reflected in the fact that the event in Stakladen raised DKK 3,500 to support the Black Panther Party’s work, Newton – in the words of Aktuelt – received a cold shoulder during a meeting with members of parliament from the Socialist People’s Party, the Radical Left and the Social Democratic Party. While Huey P. Newton had hoped for both political and financial support, the later Social Democratic Minister of Defense and Justice Orla Møller declared that it was unthinkable that official Danish politics would provide the desired support to the Black Panther Party, partly because they did not want to interfere in another country’s internal affairs and partly because there were so many unresolved issues regarding the party’s activities in the US. In line with this, neither then Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen nor Foreign Minister K.B. Andersen had been able to make time for a conversation with Newton. The meeting at Christiansborg was arranged by Gert Petersen from SF, who was disappointed that only a few Radicals and Social Democrats participated in the conversation with Newton. However, Gert Petersen was also unable to promise financial help to the Black Panther Party and only expressed SF’s solidarity and moral support.
Huey P. Newton left Denmark on March 5 and continued his journey to win support for his party in the other Nordic countries.
Huey P. Newton’s book and other literature about the Black Panther Party can be borrowed from the Labor Movement Library and Archives.
Huey P. Newton’s archive is located in the Manuscript Division of the Stanford University Archives. Huey P. Newton’s archive (archive record).
