Red Emma’s

In this much-needed intellectual history, Delio Vásquez establishes Newton as a true philosopher. Newton developed innovative theories for how the most oppressed could spearhead revolutionary change in a rapidly developing technological society. Inspired by his ideas, the Panthers forged alliances with Black student unions and street gangs, Hollywood elites and poor whites, the gay liberation movement and Third World nations.

Newton left behind dozens of unpublished manuscripts analyzing politics, feminist thought, education, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and theology – texts presented here for the first time. Vásquez also puts into proper perspective Newton's late descent into addiction and madness – a direct effect of US government techniques of cognitive war that targeted his body and mind in ways that remain all too relevant today.

Delio Vásquez is a scholar of political theory, Black Studies, philosophy, and social movement history based at New York University. He is the author of Huey P. Newton: I am We (Polity Books, 2026), a new intellectual history of the co-founder of the Black Panther Party. His research most broadly examines processes of criminalization, philosophies of lived experience, and the possibility of empathy in contemporary society. He has prior taught in the department of Philosophy & Religion at American University in Washington D.C. and Wallkill Correctional Facility in New York. He holds a PhD in the History of Consciousness from the University of California Santa Cruz, with concentrations in Politics and in Feminist Studies. Dr. Vásquez was born and raised in the Bronx, NY.

Omavi Shukur is a writer, attorney, and law professor. He has tried criminal and civil rights cases in various federal and state courts. As an organizer, he worked alongside formerly incarcerated people to end the federal benefits ban for people with felony drug convictions in his home state, Arkansas. His latest law review article, (Un)American Revolutionaries in the Courtroom, is forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal. As a poet, he’s still shooting in the gym.