Beginning with his founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966, Huey P.Newton (1941–89) set the political stage for events that would quickly place him and the Panthers at the forefront of the African American liberation movement for the next twenty years. Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Geronimo Pratt all came to international prominence through Newton’s groundbreaking political activism. Additionally, Newton served as the Party’s chief intellectual engine, conversing with world leaders such as Yasser Arafat, Chinese Premier Chou Enlai, and Mozambique President Samora Moises Machel among others.

The first comprehensive collection of writings by the Black Panther Party founder and revolutionary icon of the black liberation era, The Huey P.Newton Reader combines now-classic texts ranging in topic from the formation of the Black Panthers, African Americans and armed self-defense,Eldridge Cleaver’s controversial expulsion from the Party, FBI infiltration of civil rights groups, the Vietnam War, and the burgeoning feminist movement with never-before-published writings from the Black Panther Party archives and Newton’s private collection, including articles on President Nixon, prison martyr George Jackson, Pan-Africanism, affirmative action, and the author’s only written account of his political exile in Cuba in the mid-1970s.