The life of the Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton has been given the Hollywood treatment.
Starring André Holland as the influential African-American activist, Apple TV+'s The Big Cigar tells the true story of Newton’s escape to Cuba, helped along by a producer who set up a fake movie shoot to transport the political activist – who was under ferocious FBI surveillance – out of the country.
The series is based on a 2012 Playboy article of the same name written by Joshuah Bearman, who has previous, having written a piece for Wired in 2007 that would go on to inspire Ben Affleck's three-time Academy Award-winning film Argo.
But what happened in real life to Newton, and how did he end up in the mad Hollywood caper?
The back story
Newton was born in Louisiana in 1942, but because of the level of violence that Black people faced in the area, his family moved to Oakland, California. Here, Newton and his family still experienced racism, and he stated that he was “made to feel uncomfortable and ashamed of being black” from a young age.
This made him want to rebel against authority, and in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote: “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.” He also claimed he never learned to read until he had left high school.
In a bid to prove the education authorities wrong, he went on to earn an Associate of Arts degree, and studied law at Oakland City College and at San Francisco Law School.
While he was studying law, he became interested in the societal systems that perpetuated discrimination against Black people and involved himself with groups that sought to counteract the status quo. In October 1966, Newton founded the Black Panthers with Bobby Seale, in a bid to “defend the community against the aggression of the power structure, including the military and the armed might of the police”.
As part of the Black Panthers’ reach, under Newton’s leadership, the party founded over 60 community support programs including food banks, medical clinics, free transport to prisons for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing cooperatives, and an ambulance service. They also arranged the Free Breakfast for Children programme which fed thousands of children in poverty every day in the 1970s.
However, in 1967, Newton and a friend were pulled over by Oakland Police Department officer John Frey. Frey called for police backup, and there was a shootout. Frey died, while Newton and policeman Herbert Heanes both ended up in hospital with gunshot wounds.
Newton was arrested for Frey’s murder and in 1968, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. A widespread “Free Huey” campaign began and finally in 1970, the charges were overturned and Newton was released.
The Big Cigar
However, by 1974, there were more accusations of murder and violence against Newton, including the death of a sex-trafficked 17-year-old, Kathleen Smith, who was fatally shot, and Preston Callins, a tailor who was pistol-whipped.
But the film producer Bert Schneider (played by Alessandro Nivola) – who was behind The Monkees and Easy Rider – had recently become friends with Newton. He suggested a way to evade the authorities and get Newton and his then-girlfriend, Gwen Fontaine (Tiffany Boone) out of the country. His plan was to set up the scene of filming a fake movie – called The Big Cigar – which would be taking place in Havana, Cuba.
He pulled it off: both Newton and Fontaine made it out to Cuba, and they lived here for three years until 1977, until he finally decided to return to the US to stand trial for the murder of Smith and the assault on Callins.
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There was a case of attempted murder on Crystal Gray, a key witness for the prosecution in the Smith murder trial, but the failed Black Panther assassins turned up at the wrong house (one of the would-be killers died in the ensuing gun fight, and a hit was placed on the surviving assailants). Following the attempt on her life, Gray ultimately refused to testify against Newton and after two trials and two deadlocked juries, the prosecution decided not to retry Newton for Smith's murder.
Callins eventually told the jury that he did not know who assaulted him, and Newton was acquitted of the assault in 1978, but was convicted of illegal firearms possession and served nine months in prison in 1987.
In August 1989, aged 47, Newton was murdered by Tyrone Robinson in Oakland.
‘The Big Cigar’ streams on Apple TV+ from 17 May
Laura Martin is a freelance journalist specializing in pop culture.
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