They Huey P. Newton Reader

introduction
I 15
against the Panthers, I mean precisely that: a declaration of war by the
U.S. government against the Black Panther Party.
Perhaps the most unlikely target of FBI backlash was the Party's
free community service programs. As mentioned earlier, our Ten Point
platform for self-defense included pragmatic concerns of social welfare
alongside issues of armed resistance. To this end the Party, in late
1968, initiated a series of Survival Programs, or grassroots outreach
programs, which provided free groceries, clothing, medical care, legal
assistance, and other basic necessities to thousands of people nationwide.
"We called them 'survival programs pending transformation of
society,' since we needed long-term programs and a disciplined organization
to carry them out," Huey writes of this pioneering work. "They
were designed to help the people survive until their consciousness is
raised, which is only the first step in the revolution to build a new
America." Among the most successful of these offerings was the Breakfast
for Children Program, which provided free hot meals to schoolchildren.
Our programs were also enormously effective in
communicating the Party's teachings to the people, and law enforcement
agencies accordingly took dramatic, if unsuccessful, measures to
sabotage operations. Police raided the Breakfast for Children Program,
ransacked food storage facilities, destroyed kitchen equipment, and
attempted to disrupt rclations between the Black Panthers and local
business owners and community advocates, whose contributions made
the programs possible. "The ostensible reason for this was that children
participating in the program were being propagandized, which
simply meant that they were being taught how to think, not what to
think," Huey comments. Nevertheless, the Survival Programs endured,
growing to address issues of employment, housing, prisoner aid, and
senior safety as well as other concerns in the 1970s.
Compounding the state's frustrated attempts to end the Survival
Programs was its concurrent failure to convict Huey in the murder of
Officer Frey. Freed in July 1970, Huey returned to the streets to resume
the leadership he had administered indirectly from his prison cell during
the past three years. Unbeknownst to him, however, the landmark
trial had exalted his image among the people to heights beyond his
control. No longer Oakland's native son nor even the renowned Black
Panther charged with killing a policeman, Huey had become a sym-