“WHAT WE BELIEVE” 5TH POINT

Pictured is the fifth point of the draft of the original 10 Point Program, handwritten in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, titled “What We Believe.” The text in the picture reads: “We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.”

It seems likely that Newton’s own experiences inspired the fifth point. Newton struggled throughout high school–when he graduated, he had been suspended over thirty times and could barely read. Newton says in an interview with Kellita Smith, then a student at OCS, that his disengagement from school stemmed from the lack of history, books, or discussion about Black and brown people in the curriculum. When he taught himself to read, he started learning more about the history of Africa before colonization, and his interest in himself and his education grew tremendously. Therefore, the statement that education must facilitate a “knowledge of self” asserts the necessity of learning about one’s own history and current position in society.

The fact that the original draft of the 10 point program was preserved also indicates that at the time of its creation, Newton and Seale thought that it may become a historical document, and indicates their desire for an archive. The spelling errors in the draft demonstrate that the fifth point comes from lived experiences of not being provided for by the educational system.