Seale, Bobby (1936-…), a civil rights activist, cofounded the Black Panther Party, a radical political organization in the United States. A chief goal of the party was to protect African Americans from police actions that many blacks considered brutality.
Loading the player...Bobby Seale
Robert George Seale was born on Oct. 22, 1936, in Dallas. He dropped out of high school to join the United States Air Force. He was later court-martialed and given a bad conduct discharge for disobeying a colonel. Seale returned to high school and received his diploma.
In 1962, Seale began attending Merritt College in Oakland. He joined the campus’s Afro-American Association (AAA), an organization that stressed black separatism and self-improvement. Through AAA, Seale met Huey P. Newton, another student activist. Inspired by the ideas of the African American leader Malcolm X, Seale and Newton formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966. The party later dropped “for Self-Defense” from its name.
The Black Panthers had many clashes with the police. In 1968, Seale participated in disruptive demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Seale and seven other demonstrators from radical groups were arrested and charged with conspiracy to incite a riot. Seale’s frequent outbursts during the trial led the judge to order that Seale be bound and gagged in the courtroom. In 1969, the judge separated Seale’s case from that of the other defendants, but Seale was ordered to serve a four-year prison sentence for contempt of court. While on trial in Chicago, Seale was charged with murdering a former Black Panther suspected of being a police informer. In 1971, the murder trial ended in a hung jury and the charges against Seale were dismissed. The following year, the federal government suspended the contempt charges and released Seale from prison.
In 1973, Seale ran for mayor of Oakland. Although he lost, he won a third of the votes. The following year, he left the Black Panthers. Since then, he has worked with a variety of community and political groups.
Seale wrote Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1970) and A Lonely Rage: The Autobiography of Bobby Seale (1978).
See also African Americans (Black militancy) ; Black Panther Party ; Newton, Huey P.
