Huey P. Newton, a co-founder of the Black Panther Party and a symbol of black militancy in the 1960s, was found dead on a street Tuesday morning with three bullet holes in his head, police said.
Newton, 47, was found on the street in a housing project in West Oakland at 5:44 a.m., police spokesman Douglas Crain said.A 10-foot pool of blood marked the spot where the 47-year-old Newton was found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.
About a dozen officers cordoned off the city block in a low-income neighborhood in West Oakland. Several hours later, Newton's body had been taken away from the street in front a gray, two-story house.
"I saw him lying down on the street. I called my wife to the window," said a resident of the neighborhood, Roy Johnson. He said he did not hear any gunshots and did not call the police.
No further details were immediately available.
Newton and Bobby Seale started the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966, and, unlike the peaceful methods espoused by Martin Luther King Jr., they advocated radical measures including violence and armed self-defense to improve the lives of American blacks.
Newton, Seale and the Panthers stood for black power until the organization disbanded in 1982, leaving a legacy of violence.
In a speech in Philadelphia in 1970, Newton said the group's goals were power to the people to determine their own destiny, full employment and decent housing, an end to capitalist exploitation and an end to police brutality, unfair jury trials and confinement of political prisoners.
Newton himself had a long arrest record that dated to 1967 and included charges of violent crimes as well as embezzling and drug, weapons and parole violations.
In 1967, Newton was wounded and arrested in a gun battle that killed an Oakland policeman. Newton served 22 months of a two-to-15-year prison sentence for his death before the case was reversed by the California Court of Appeals in 1970 because of faulty instructions to the jury.
He fled to Cuba in 1974 after he was accused of the street corner murder of a black 17-year-old prostitute in Oakland and pistol-whipping his tailor. The murder and assault charges were dropped when two trials conducted after his return to the United States ended with hung juries.
Last March 14, Newton received a suspended two-year prison sentence for stealing $15,000 in state education funds for a community school run by the group.
Newton, who was born the youngest of seven children in Monroe, La., attended Oakland City College, where he founded the Afro-American Society, and then studied at San Francisco Law School.