Revolutionary Suicide is an autobiography written by Huey P. Newton with assistance from J. Herman Blake originally published in 1973.

The Party urged members to challenge the status quo with armed patrols of the impoverished streets of Oakland, and to form coalitions with other oppressed groups.

While he was in prison, he was visited regularly by J. Herman Blake, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz.

[9] The book goes on to describe his time growing up tough on the streets of Oakland, how he taught himself to read by studying Plato's Republic, his political awakening and the formation of the BPP with Bobby Seale.

[11] In another New York Times review Christopher Lehmann-Haupt writes that, while the book was eagerly anticipated, it is ”boring” and argues that Newton's main aim in the work is to the change the image of the Panthers.

[12] Ernest M. Collins from the Department of Government at Ohio University wrote a review, which praised Newton's writing when it was “confined to institutions with which he is familiar” but described his views on the wider political world as ‘shallow’.

[13] A review in the Times in London by John Arderne Rex called it “perhaps the best written book by a black leader to come out of the United States”.

[16] Jefferies said his writing did not compare favourably to Malcolm X or Martin Luther King but praised him as one of the most important black thinkers of the time.

[16] Brian Sowers pointed out the influence of Plato's ‘Republic” on Revolutionary Suicide, particularly the second half of the book, and compares Newton to a modern-day Socrates.

[17] The academic Davi Johnson, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Southwestern University claimed that Newton's rhetoric sat in a tradition mould of conservative rhetoric, and he and the Black Panther Party were not quite the outsider dangerous force portrayed in the media at the time.

[18] Another academic, Joanna Freer, writing in the journal American Studies, claims that author Thomas Pynchon critiqued Newton's concept of revolutionary suicide in his popular novel "Gravity's Rainbow”.

Freer says that Pynchon, through his character Wimpe, is critical of Newton's belief in Marxist dialectical materialism and in the idea that revolution was inevitable.

[20] The term "revolutionary suicide" was appropriated by Jim Jones, leader of the new religious and socialist movement Peoples Temple.

Jones ignored Newton's definition of the phrase, instead using the term to describe actual suicide as a form of revolutionary protest.

Jones' use of the phrase "revolutionary suicide," as recorded on an audio tape of the mass death, has been widely quoted and used in media coverage of the event.

[21] From 2013 the Black Lives Matter movement rose to prominence in the US in response to the continuing police brutality against African Americans.

He acknowledged that he took the name from Newton's work and explained how he interpreted the term as being about “ultimate freedom” adding "surely we can also be our own hangman if it gets too much?”.

In this section, he describes how he taught himself to read by borrowing his older brother Melvin's copy of Plato's “Republic”.

On his trip he met the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai though not the head of state, Communist Party Leader Chairman Mao Zedong.

In this he reiterates the difference between revolutionary and reactionary suicide and quotes both Mao's Little Red Book and the Gospel of St. Paul to illustrate his point.

The book's original cover photograph shows Newton sitting on a type of throne holding a rifle and a spear.

The photograph was described by Bobby Seale as a “centralized symbol of the leadership of black people in the community”.