American Notes OAKLAND

It was not surprising that Huey P. Newton ended the way he did: lying in a pool of blood on a sidewalk in a crack-infested Oakland neighborhood with three bullets in his head. For much of his 47 years, Newton had preached and practiced violence as a necessary means of self-defense for blacks in urban America. He will be remembered most as the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, enthroned in a rattan chair, wearing a black beret, with a rifle in one hand and a spear in the other.

For a short time, Newton seemed to embody the spirit of ghetto uplift that the Panthers preached. After serving time in a celebrated case involving the shooting of an Oakland policeman, he earned a doctorate from the University of California. But after J. Edgar Hoover's FBI targeted the group, many of his fellow Panther leaders were killed, jailed or driven underground, and Newton's life returned to its meaner roots. Charges of murder and assault led to conviction for possessing a gun. There followed a string of drug offenses, drunk driving and embezzling $15,000 from a Panther-operated school.

At 5:30 a.m. last Tuesday, officers investigating a report of gunfire only two blocks from one of the Panthers' original headquarters found him dying in the street. On Friday police arrested a suspected drug dealer, who told them he shot Newton in self-defense after they argued over a cocaine sale. Investigators found no gun near Newton's body.