Newton Predicts An Armed Revolt
Calls Rebellion Inevitable As Jury Way As His Fate
WALLACE TURNER / New York Times 8sep68
[More on the Black Panther Party]
OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 7 — Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther leader, predicted in an interview today that Negro armed revolt was inevitable while two floors below a jury debated whether to find him guilty of the murder of an Oakland police officer.
Huey P. Newton and attorney, Charles R. Garry, at the Alameda County Courthouse Jail, Oakland, CA 26 Sept 1968. |
"We feel it is necessary to prepare the people for the event of an actual physical rebellion," Newton said in the interview. He explained that the Black Panthers were trying to help Negro people satisfy their complaints against society and "at the same time prepare them for what we feel is inevitable to come and that is an armed rebellion."
If you shortly after 10 PM, a jury recessed. It will resume deliberations in the morning. Newton was interviewed in the jail on the 10th floor of the Alameda County Courthouse. On the eighth floor, a jury of seven women and five men had been in its third day of consideration of charges of murder and armed assault against him. The charges grew out of a shooting Oct. 28, 1967, in which Newton and the policemen were wounded and another policeman was killed.
When he testified, Newton denied shooting Patrolmen John Frey and Herbert Heanes. The events involved in the trial were not discussed in the interview.
Newton expressed a fate hope that no Black revolution would be necessary, but said he did not really believe this. He said he considers himself a "student of revolution "and said" I hope someday to become a revolutionary."
His teachers, he said, were Ernesto Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh and Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Mau Mau in Kenya, Africa, to whose designation as a revolutionary Newton affixed the phrase "at one time."
Newton also said that the Panthers had achieved their union with white young radicals in part through the help of the police. The statements were in his expression of views:
"With the young radicals in general there is a change in attitude because of certain objective changes in conditions for them. For instance, they are being beaten and brutalized by the storm troopers just as blacks have always been brutalized and now they're changing their values.
"I've been inspired by the dedication of the white revolutionaries the spirit they've shown. They're not just articulating euphemisms about what should be but they are actually engaging in practice, and they're integrating theory with practice and this is necessary to become a revolutionary."
Superior Judge Monroe Friedman late this afternoon resolved a controversy that had arisen after jury had begun its deliberations.
The dispute concerning the words on a tape recording of a statement to the place by Henry Grier, a principal prosecution witness, who had said that he had seen Newton wrestle with officer Frey, then shoot him.
The defense counsel, Charles Garry, read into the record Mr. Grier's statement to the police to contrasted with a statement made when the witness had testified.
The statement he read was a transcript provided by Lowell Jensen, the deputy prosecutor.
Yesterday Mr. Garry obtained a copy of the original recording of the statement, which had been taken on a dictation machine.
By running the soundtrack through amplifying equipment he reached the conclusion that the meaning of one sentence had been reversed by reporting a word as "did" when it should have been "didn't."
Mr. Grier was telling of how he had seen Newton denied of the killing. The sentence originally was recorded as "I did get a clear picture, clear view of his face, but because he had his head kind of down facing the headlights of the coach, I couldn't get a good look."
Judge Friedman listened to a recording made by Mr. Garry staff and ruled that the transcript was wrong, that the statement had been, "I didn't get a clear picture."
He ordered that a corrected transcript be delivered to the jury.
|
To
send us your comments, questions, and suggestions click
here |
