After serving in the air force he attended Merritt College and was moved to radicalism once he heard Malcolm X speak. It was during his time at Merritt College that he befriended Huey Newton who he joined in forming a group that was known as the Black Panther Party of Self Defense, sooner shortened to the Black Panther Party as an alternative to the non violent civil rights movement. .
In the words of Huey Newton himself "I think that before the Black Panther Party my life was very similar to that of most black people in the country. I"m from a lower class, working class family and I've suffered abuses of the power structure and I've responded as black people are responding now, so I see very little difference to my personality than any other black person living here in racist America." This view of his life is the view that he wanted the whole of Black America to realize. Newton wanted to see a united front fight of its oppressors. However in the formation of the Black Panthers, Huey Newton stressed that it wasn't a racial fight, but a fight of the lower class against the bourgeoisie of America. In the words of Malcolm X, a black leader, who Huey was most commonly referred to in the same breath, "the Negro revolution is not a racial revolt. We are interested in practicing brotherhood with anyone really interested in living according to it" .
It is this concept of the lower class against the bourgeoisie, which I wish to look at in terms of the Black Panther Party's ideology. The ideology of the Black Panther Party is the historical experiences of Black people in America translated through Marxism-Leninism theory. It was the Marxist idea of a class system revolt between a bourgeoisie (US government and its officials) and a proletariat (Black and other oppressed people) which appealed to Huey Newton and his partner Bobby Seale. Under Marxist theory, the rising of the proletariat would cause a revolution of society and an overthrow of the system in charge.
