Raymond Hewitt
*Raymond Hewitt was born on January 1, 1941. He was a teacher and Black Panther activist.
Raymond "Masai" Hewitt worked as a schoolteacher and was a Marxist activist, working with the United Front, a socialist organization. He joined the Black Panther Party in 1967 and was its Minister of Education. The Panthers considered Hewitt a strong understanding of political and Marxist theory.
He was a target of COINTELPRO, a scheme intended to destroy the Black Panther Party. In 1970, the FBI created the false story that he impregnated married white actress Jean Seberg, a supporter of the Black Panther Party, and befriended Hewitt. On August 23, 1970, Seberg gave premature birth to a baby girl who died two days later. She held a funeral in her hometown with an open casket that allowed reporters to see the infant's white skin, which disproved the rumors. Seberg and her husband later sued Newsweek for libel and defamation. By 1973, Hewitt had become critical of the ever-increasing domination of the Panthers by Huey Newton.
In a meeting of the Party's Central Committee, Hewitt suggested that the Central Committee by that point served only to confirm Newton's decisions: In a central committee meeting, I did not attend, Masai brazenly stated, like the boy who announced the emperor was nude, that the Party operated based on Huey's will. The Central Committee had become no more than a rubber stamp for it. The Party had to address that weakness to allow for a true consensus of will, at least the will of the central committee under the principles of democratic centralism. Huey had reduced the governing body of the Party to little more than glorified members of the rank and file, Masai added.
He concluded by claiming that he was not, therefore, a central committee member, as were none of the rest. In return, Newton stripped Hewitt of his role as Minister of Education; within weeks, Hewitt had left the Party. Hewitt fathered one daughter with fellow Black Panther leader Elaine Brown. He was married to activist Ester Soriano, with whom he had three sons. Hewitt remained an activist for the rest of his life. He worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Southern Africa Resource Center, the International Human Rights Coalition of Los Angeles, and the Philippine Support Committee.
On March 2, 1988, Hewitt suffered a heart attack. He was taken to Midway Hospital, where he died a short time later.
