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Robert George "Bobby" Seale (born October 22, 1936 in Dallas, Texas), is an American civil rights activist, who along with Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founded the Black Panther Party For Self Defense on October 15, 1966.
Seale was one of the three children born to his mother, a homemaker, and his father, an African American carpenter, in the segregated South of Dallas, Texas. After moving to various places within Texas, his family relocated to Oakland, California during World War II. Seale attended Oakland High but dropped out and joined the U.S. Air Force. He spent three brief years in the Air Force before being kicked out for disobeying orders given to him by a colonel in South Dakota at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Upon his arrival back in Oakland, Seale began working at different aerospace plants as a sheet metal mechanic and attending night school to earn his high school diploma.
In 1962, at the age of 26, Seale began attending Merritt College, where he would join the Afro-American Association (AAA) and as a result meet Huey Newton, later his co-founder of the Black Panther Party. Seale and co-member Newton became increasingly skeptical about the direction of the AAA, and in particular, the AAA's tendency to analyze rather than act on the problems facing black Americans.
Both Seale and Newton, heavily inspired by Malcolm X, a civil rights leader assassinated in 1965, and his teachings, joined together in October of 1966 to create the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and adapt the slain activist slogan “Freedom by any means necessary” as their own. Seale became the chairman of the Black Panther Party and underwent FBI surveillance as part of its COINTELPRO program.
Bobby Seale was one of the original "Chicago Eight" defendants charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot, in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced him to four years of imprisonment for contempt because of his outbursts, and eventually ordered Seale severed from the case, hence the "Chicago Seven". During the trial, one of Seale's many outbursts led the judge to have him bound and gagged, as commemorated in the song "Chicago" written by Graham Nash and mentioned in the poem and song "H2Ogate Blues" by Gil Scott-Heron.
Seale was put on trial again in 1970 in the New Haven Black Panther trials. Several officers of the Panther organization had "executed" a fellow Panther, Alex Rackley, because they believed he was informing for the FBI. The leader of the murder plan, George Sams, Jr., turned state's evidence and testified that he had been ordered to kill Rackley by Seale himself, who had visited New Haven only hours before the murder. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale's trial, and the charges were eventually dropped. The New Haven trials were widely decried as an example of political repression by such relative moderates as Yale University president Kingman Brewster, Jr., and were accompanied by a large demonstration in New Haven on May Day, 1970, which coincided with the beginning of the American college student strike of May, 1970.
In more recent years, Seale’s actions differ greatly from the radical ones of his past. In 1987, he authored a cookbook called Barbequing with Bobby and was also a spokesman for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. In 2002, Seale began dedicating his time to Reach!, a group focused on youth education programs. Also, he currently teaches black studies at Temple University in Philadelphia and is also launching an instructional, nonprofit group helping people develop the necessary techniques and tools to set up community organization within their neighborhoods.
The trial of the Chicago Eight was depicted in the 1987 HBO television movie Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8, whose script relied heavily upon transcripts from the court proceedings. Seale was portrayed by actor Carl Lumbly.
Bibliography
Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, 1970 published by Arrow Books and Hutchinson & Co. Reprint ISBN 0-933121-30-X
A Lonely Rage - The Autobiography of Bobby Seale, 1978. ISBN 0-8129-0715-9
Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey P. Newton and the Price of Black Power in America, Addison-Wesley, 1994. ISBN 0-201-48341-6
Seale shares Panthers' history with UW The Daily Cardinal
Bobby Seale, October 22 Daily Bleed Calendar
Seize The Time Free online edition of his book
Barbeque Bill of Rights Bobby's "Declaration: Barbeque Bill of Rights"
SWINDLE Magazine Interview
References
^ Ancestry of Bobby Seale
External links
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Seale"
Categories: 1936 births | African Americans | Black Panther Party members | COINTELPRO targets | Living people | People from Berkeley, California | People from Oakland, California | Chicago Seven
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