Huey P. Newton's Family: Roots of a Revolutionary Suicide

Huey P. Newton's Family: Roots of a Revolutionary Suicide. was undertaken by the author at the request of Prof. Emeritus Melvin Newton (older brother of Huey Newton), Melvin's daughter Tracy Newton and son David Lautaro Newton. The project involved extensive family interviews and research to cover the background of Melvin and Huey P. Newton's parents, Walter and Armelia Newton, the tribal nature of family interactions, the lives of their siblings and other close relatives, their seven children and the collective family impact on Walter and Armelia's youngest son, iconic Black militant Huey P. Newton, who co-founded the Black Panther Party. Newton wrote in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide -- and testified to a captivated audience in his 1968 death penalty trial -- that an understanding of the treatment of African-Americans since colonial days was necessary to understand who he was and where he came from. That testimony had a profound impact on the jury that had Newton's life in their hands, particularly affecting middleclass Black banker David Harper, who became the jury's revolutionary choice for foreman. This book puts Huey P. Newton's experiences and those of his family into historical context. It starts with Walter Newton's heritage and his wife Armelia Johnson Newton's family background from their primarily African roots: to their Caucasian ancestors; to the slavery of their African-American ancestors; to their upbringing in the segregated South; their hard-scrabble adult lives in Arkansas and Louisiana in the early 20th century; their move West to Oakland as part of the Great Migration; the racism they faced in California; Huey and Melvin Newton's disparate school experiences; Huey's teenage years: his involvement in the Afro-American Association's informal studies of Black authors; Melvin's role in creating a pioneering ethnic studies program at Oakland's Merritt College; the formation of the Black Panther Party; the shootout with two Oakland police officers for which the Panther leader was arrested and that became the focus of international attention to the treatment of Black men by the American justice system; Huey Newton's historic 1968 death penalty trial; his Mafia phase; his subsequent Cuban exile; his frayed and reestablished family relationships: his death; the murder trial of his assailant; and Huey Newton's extraordinary lasting impact. SUBJECTS COVERED: Newton family history within the fabric of African-American history; the Great Migration; Alabama race history; Black Baptist churches; Louisiana race history; California race history; Oakland, CA race history; the 1968 death penalty trial of Huey Newton; Vietnam War protests; the murder trial of Tyron Robinson for the death of Huey Newton; Huey Newton's legacy.

About the Author :
Retired judge Lise Pearlman (www.lisepearlman.com) is a critically acclaimed author of five American history books, including three prior books covering Huey Newton and the Black Panthers. In 2022, she co-produced the Oscar semi-finalist film "American Justice on Trial" [re-released June 2025 under the title In the Crosshairs] based on her 2012 book, The Sky's the Limit: People v. Newton, The REAL Trial of the 20th Century? which won awards in the categories of law, U.S. history and multicultural nonfiction. She also wrote a prize-winning companion to the film entitled American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton [2016], which was lauded as "a world-changing true story," and a biography of Newton's pioneering woman lawyer, Fay Stender [Call Me Phaedra: The Life and Times of Movement Lawyer Fay Stender], winner of the 2018 International Book Award for biographies. In 2015, Pearlman had a cameo appearance in veteran documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson's PBS movie The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. She contributed comments as the country's leading expert on Newton's 1968 death penalty trial that transformed the American "jury of one's peers" from the traditional 12 white men to the diverse panels of men and women that Americans often taken for granted today. Over the past 25 years she has given numerous lectures on famous trials of the American 20th century and the impact of the Newton trial on the American jury to a wide variety of groups across the country from educational settings to professional gatherings to service organizations, and at bookstores, museums and libraries. In 2020, she published the true crime best seller, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1, The Man Who Got Away, which has garnered critical acclaim as "myth-smashing, beautifully written [and] powerfully argued" and a "must read" by every American. She is currently working with colleagues to seek the posthumous exoneration of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, based on newly analyzed evidence he was wrongly executed for the murder of Lindbergh's toddler son.Pearlman was in the first class of undergraduates at Yale University to include women (1971) when Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale faced trial in New Haven for murder. She moved to the Bay Area of California, graduated Order of the Coif from Berkeley Law (1974), clerked for California Chief Justice Donald Wright and was a Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School before becoming a litigator at an Oakland firm where she was named managing partner in 1984-the first established firm in California to be headed by a woman. In 1989 she was selected by the California Supreme Court as the first Presiding Judge of the State Bar Court. After retiring from the bench, she served as a mediator and arbitrator, Chair of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission, President of Women Lawyers of Alameda County and on the Board of California Women Lawyers where she first became acquainted with Fay Stender's phenomenal achievements as a lawyer, including as co-counsel for Huey Newton. Pearlman has lived for nearly 50 years in Oakland, CA where Huey Newton grew up, co-founded and headquartered the Black Panther Party, faced a series of trials and died on the street. She is married to San Francisco bankruptcy lawyer Peter Benvenutti. They have three grown daughters and four grandchildren.