He is credited with assisting in the foundation of the Democratic Progressive Party, and serving as the state field director for the South Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1960 to 1969.

As an 8-year-old, Newman witnessed the Ku Klux Klan set fire to a caboose holding an arrested African American man.

[2] He would serve in United Methodist Churches in Georgia and South Carolina for the next forty years.

Newman was originally a member of the Republican Party, but he found himself increasingly dissatisfied with its position on segregation.

In 1983, Newman was the first African American elected to the South Carolina State Senate since Reconstruction in 1887 when Thomas J. Reynolds and Bruce H. Williams ended their terms.

[4] Speakers at a memorial service held for Newman in the South Carolina Senate chamber included former Governor John C.