Bobby Seale | |
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![]() Seale in 1971 | |
Born | Robert George Seale October 22, 1936 Liberty, Texas, U.S. |
Education | Merritt College |
Notable work | Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton |
Political party | Black Panther |
Spouses |
Leslie Johnson (m. 1974) |
Part of a series on |
African Americans |
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This article is part of a series about |
Black power |
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Robert George Seale (born October 22, 1936 [1] ) is an American political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton. [2] Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in Black communities, first in Oakland, California, [3] and later in cities throughout the United States. [4]
Seale was one of the eight people charged by the US federal government with conspiracy charges related to anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Seale's appearance in the trial was widely publicized and Seale was bound and gagged for his appearances in court more than a month into the trial for what Judge Julius Hoffman said were disruptions.
Seale's case was severed from the other defendants, turning the "Chicago Eight" into the "Chicago Seven". After his case was severed, the government declined to retry him on the conspiracy charges. Though he was never convicted in the case, Seale was sentenced by Judge Hoffman to four years for criminal contempt of court. The contempt sentence was reversed on appeal. [5]
In 1970, while in prison, Seale was charged and tried as part of the New Haven Black Panther trials over the torture and murder of Alex Rackley, whom the Black Panther Party had suspected of being a police informer. Panther George Sams, Jr., testified that Seale had ordered him to kill Rackley. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale's trial, and the charges were eventually dropped.
Seale's books include A Lonely Rage: The Autobiography of Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton , and Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (with Stephen Shames).
Bobby Seale was born in Liberty, Texas, to George Seale, a carpenter, and Thelma Seale (née Traylor), a homemaker. [6] The Seale family lived in poverty during most of his early life. After moving around Texas, first to Dallas, then to San Antonio, and Port Arthur, Seale's family relocated to Codornices Village [7] in Albany, California, during the Great Migration when he was eight years old. [8] Seale attended Berkeley High School, then dropped out in 1955 and joined the United States Air Force. [9] Three years later, a court martial convicted him of fighting with a commanding officer [ citation needed ] at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, [6] resulting in a bad conduct discharge. [10]
Seale subsequently worked as a sheet metal mechanic for various aerospace plants while studying for his high school diploma at night. "I worked in every major aircraft plant and aircraft corporation, even those with government contracts. I was a top-flight sheet-metal mechanic". [11] After earning his high school diploma, Seale attended Merritt Community College where he studied engineering and politics until 1962. [12]
While at college, Bobby Seale joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), a group on the campus devoted to self-education about African and African-American history, along with conversations about philosophy, religion, economics, and politics, including aspects of black separatism. [13] [14] "I wanted to be an engineer when I went to college, but I got shifted right away since I became interested in American Black History and trying to solve some of the problems." [15] Through the AAA group, Seale met Huey P. Newton.
In June 1966, Seale began working at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center in its summer youth program. Seale's objective was to teach the youth in the program Black American History and also encourage their responsibility toward the people in their communities. While working in the program, Seale met Bobby Hutton, who later became the first recruited member of the Black Panther Party. [16]
Seale married Artie Seale, and they had a son, Malik Nkrumah Stagolee Seale. [17]
Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton were strongly inspired by the teachings of activist Malcolm X, who had been assassinated in 1965. The two joined together in October 1966 to create the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which adopted the late activist's slogan "freedom by any means necessary" as their own. Prior to starting the Black Panther Party, Seale and Newton created a group known as the Soul Students Advisory Council. The group was organized to operate through "ultra-democracy", defined as individualism manifesting itself as an aversion to discipline. "The goal was to develop a college campus group that would help develop leadership; to go back to the black community and serve the black community in a revolutionary fashion". [18]
After the inception of Soul Students Advisory Council, Seale and Newton founded the group they are most identified with, the Black Panther Party. They wanted to organize the black community to express their desires and needs in order to resist the racism and classism perpetuated by the system. Seale described the Panthers as "an organization that represents black people and many white radicals relate to this and understand that the Black Panther Party is a righteous revolutionary front against this racist decadent, capitalistic system." [19]
Seale and Newton together wrote the doctrines "What We Want Now!", which Seale said were intended to be "the practical, specific things we need and that should exist", and "What We Believe", which outlines the philosophical principles of the Black Panther Party in order to educate the people and disseminate information about the specifics of the party's platform. [20] These writings were part of the party's Ten-Point Program. Also known as "The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Ten-Point Platform and Program", this was a set of guidelines to the Black Panther Party's ideals and ways of operation. Seale and Newton named Newton as Minister of Defense and Seale as the Chairman of the party. [21] During his time with the Panthers, Seale was kept under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of its illegal COINTELPRO program. [22]
In 1968, Seale wrote Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1970). [23]
Bobby Seale was one of the original "Chicago Eight" defendants charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While in prison, Seale said, "To be a Revolutionary is to be an Enemy of the state. To be arrested for this struggle is to be a Political Prisoner." [24] The evidence against Seale was slim, as he did not participate in activist planning for the convention's protests and had gone to Chicago as a last-minute replacement for activist Eldridge Cleaver. [25] [26] He was in Chicago for only two days of the convention. [26]
During the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman ordered Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom because of his outspoken objections to his personal lack of legal representation. He was repeatedly bound and gagged for several days of the trial. [27] [28]
Though he was never convicted in the case, on November 5, 1969, Judge Hoffman sentenced Seale to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt, each count for three months of imprisonment, because of his outbursts during the trial. He eventually ordered Seale severed from the case. Proceedings against the remaining defendants resulted in their being renamed the "Chicago Seven".[ citation needed ]
While serving his four-year sentence, Seale was tried in 1970 as part of the New Haven Black Panther trials. Several officers of the Panther organization had killed fellow Panther, Alex Rackley, who had confessed under torture to being a police informant. [29] The leader of the murder plan, George W. Sams Jr., turned state's evidence and testified that Seale, who had visited New Haven hours before the murder, had ordered him to kill Rackley. The trials were accompanied by a large demonstration in New Haven on May Day, 1970. This coincided with the beginning of the American college student strike of 1970. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale's trial, and the charges were eventually dropped. The government suspended his contempt convictions, and Seale was released from prison in 1972. [6]
While Seale was in prison, his wife, Artie, became pregnant. Fellow Panther Fred Bennett was said to be the father. Bennett's mutilated remains were found in a suspected Panther hideout in April 1971. [30] Seale was implicated in the murder, with police suspecting he had ordered it in retaliation for the affair, but no charges were pressed. [31]
In 1973 Seale ran for Mayor of Oakland, California as a Democrat. [32] [33] He received the second-most votes in a field of nine candidates [6] but ultimately lost in a run-off with incumbent Mayor John Reading. [32]
In 1974, Seale and Huey Newton argued over a proposed film about the Panthers that Newton wanted Bert Schneider to produce. According to several accounts, the argument escalated to a fight in which Newton, backed by his armed bodyguards, allegedly beat Seale with a bullwhip so badly that Seale required extensive medical treatment for his injuries. Afterward, he went into hiding for nearly a year, and ended his affiliation with the Party that year. [34] [35] Seale has denied that any such physical altercation took place, dismissing rumors that he and Newton were ever less than friends. [36]
Seale worked with Huey Newton to create the Ten Point platform. It included political and social demands they believed necessary for the survival of the Black population in the United States. The two men formulated the Ten Point Platform in the late 1960s, and from these ideologies developed the Black Panther Party. The document encapsulated the economic exploitation of the black body, and addressed the mistreatment of the black race. This document was attractive to those suffering under the oppressive nature of white power. The document is based on the conclusion that a combination of racism and capitalism resulted in fascism in the United States. The Ten Point Platform lays out the need for full employment of Black people, decent shelter, and decent education. They defined decent education as the full history of the United States, including acknowledgement of the genocide and displacement of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. The platform calls for the release of political prisoners.
The points are as follows: [37]
- We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.
- We Want Full Employment For Our People.
- We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.
- We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.
- We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.
- We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.
- We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.
- We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.
- We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.
- We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.
In 1978, Seale wrote an autobiography titled A Lonely Rage. Also, in 1987, he wrote a cookbook called Barbeque'n with Bobby Seale: Hickory & Mesquite Recipes, the proceeds going to various non-profit social organizations. [38] Seale also advertised Ben & Jerry's ice cream. [39]
In 1998, Seale appeared on the television documentary series Cold War , discussing the events of the 1960s. Bobby Seale was the central protagonist alongside Kathleen Cleaver, Jamal Joseph and Nile Rodgers in the 1999 theatrical documentary Public Enemy by Jens Meurer, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In 2002, Seale began dedicating his time to Reach!, a group focused on youth education programs. He has also taught black studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. Also in 2002, Seale moved back to Oakland, working with young political advocates to influence social change. [1] In 2006, he appeared in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon to discuss his friendship with John Lennon. Seale has also visited over 500 colleges to share his personal experiences as a Black Panther and to give advice to students interested in community organizing and social justice.[ citation needed ]
Since 2013, Seale has been seeking to produce a screenplay he wrote based on his autobiography, Seize the Time: The Eighth Defendant. [40] [41]
Seale co-authored Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, a 2016 book with photographer Stephen Shames. [42]
Huey Percy Newton was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded the Black Panther Party. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
The Chicago Seven, originally the Chicago Eight and also known as the Conspiracy Eight or Conspiracy Seven, were seven defendants – Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner – charged by the United States Department of Justice with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and 1960s counterculture protests in Chicago, Illinois during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Eight became the Chicago Seven after the case against codefendant Bobby Seale was declared a mistrial.
Merritt College is a public community college in Oakland, California. Merritt, like the other three campuses of the Peralta Community College District, is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. The college enrolls approximately 6,000 students.
The black power movement or black liberation movement was a branch or counterculture within the civil rights movement of the United States, reacting against its more moderate, mainstream, or incremental tendencies and motivated by a desire for safety and self-sufficiency that was not available inside redlined African American neighborhoods. Black power activists founded black-owned bookstores, food cooperatives, farms, media, printing presses, schools, clinics and ambulance services.
John Radford Froines was an American chemist and anti-war activist, noted as a member of the Chicago Seven, a group charged with involvement with the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Froines, who held a Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale, was charged with interstate travel for purposes of inciting a riot and with making incendiary devices, but was acquitted. He later served as the Director of Toxic Substances at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and then director of UCLA’s Occupational Health Center. He also served as chair of the California Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants for nearly 30 years before resigning in 2013 amid controversy and claims of conflict of interest.
Alex Rackley was an American activist who was a member of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late-1960s. In May 1969, Rackley was suspected by other Panthers of being a police informant. He was brought to Panther headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, held captive and tortured there for several days, condemned to death, taken to the wetlands of Middlefield, Connecticut, and murdered there.
George W. Sams Jr. was a member of the Black Panther Party convicted in the 1969 murder of New York Panther Alex Rackley, which resulted in the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1970.
In 1969-1971 there was a series of criminal prosecutions in New Haven, Connecticut, against various members and associates of the Black Panther Party. The charges ranged from criminal conspiracy to first-degree murder. All charges stemmed from the murder of 19-year-old Alex Rackley in the early hours of May 21, 1969. The trials became a rallying-point for the American Left, and marked a decline in public support, even among the black community, for the Black Panther Party.
Lonnie McLucas was a Black Panther Party member in Bridgeport, Connecticut who was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder for his involvement in the May 21, 1969 murder of New York City Panther Alex Rackley, in the first of the New Haven Black Panther trials in 1970.
The Ten-Point Program or The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Ten-Point Platform and Program is a party platform written by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966 for the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
Revolutionary Suicide is an autobiography written by Huey P. Newton with assistance from J. Herman Blake originally published in 1973. Newton was a major figure in the American black liberation movement and in the wider 1960s counterculture. He was a co-founder and leader of what was then known as the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defence with Bobby Seale. The Chief ideologue and strategist of the BPP, Newton taught himself how to read during his last year of high school, which led to his enrollment in Merrit College in Oakland in 1966; the same year he formed the BPP. 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. The party spread across America and internationally as well, forming coalitions with the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cubans. This autobiography is an important work that combines political manifesto and political philosophy along with the life story of a young African American revolutionary. The book was not universally well received but has had a lasting influence on the black civil rights movement.
Mark Everett Comfort was a community activist who worked in early Oakland grassroots civil rights movements in the 1960s, before moving to Lowndes County, Alabama.
Ericka Huggins is an American activist, writer, and educator. She is a former leading member of the political organization, Black Panther Party (BPP). She was married to fellow BPP member John Huggins in 1968.
Elbert Howard, better known as Big Man, was an American civil rights activist and author who was one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party.
Seize The Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton is a 1970 book by political activist Bobby Seale. It was recorded in San Francisco County Jail between November 1969 and March 1970, by Arthur Goldberg, a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. An advocacy book on the cause and principles of the Black Panther Party, Seize The Time is considered a staple in Black Power literature.
The Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (RPCC) was a conference organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) that was held in Philadelphia from September 4–7, 1970. The goal of the Convention was to draft a new version of the United States Constitution and to unify factions of the radical left in the United States. The RPCC represented one of the largest gatherings of radical activists across movements and issues in the United States. The Convention was attended by a variety of organizations from the Black Power Movement, Asian American Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, Anti-war movement, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation movements. Estimates of attendance range from 6,000 to 15,000. Attendees convened in workshops to draft declarations of demands related to various issues, which were ultimately intended to be incorporated into a new constitution which would function as the final vision of those movements. The RPCC also signified a shift in BPP focus from black self-defense to a broader revolutionary agenda. While conflicts did arise during the Philadelphia Convention, the conference was ultimately deemed a success by the Panthers. After the Philadelphia conference, attempts were made to reconvene to finalize and ratify the new constitution in Washington, DC a few months later but ultimately failed due to police interference and Panther disorganization.
All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50 was an exhibition hosted by the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) from October 8, 2016, to February 26, 2017. The exhibit was organized by OMCA's senior curator René De Guzman.
Constance Evadine Matthews, better known as Connie Matthews, was an organizer, a part of the Black Panther Party between 1968 and 1971. A resident of Denmark, she helped co-ordinate the Black Panthers with left-wing political groups based in Europe.
Seale was gagged and bound to a chair for two and a half days last week after he tussled with the courtroom marshals.