Huey P. Newton: Prelude to Revolution

Oakland, 1966: Fed up with years of harassment of African Americans by local police, a group of young activists institute armed patrols to put a stop to police brutality. Thus the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was born. Abandoning Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance, the Panthers embraced more militant policies, including self-determination and separatism for their people. Huey P. Newton was a co-founder of the Black Panthers, an organization FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called “the greatest internal threat to the security of the United States.” He spent four years in prison for manslaughter before his conviction was overturned in 1971. This powerful documentary features an exclusive interview by film-maker John Evans with Newton during his incarceration, wherein Newton discusses his goals as a revolutionary, including self-determination for African Americans, full employment, decent housing for the poor and disenfranchised, an end to police brutality, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.