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Bobby Seale |
Bobby Seale looked more the part of a kind, elderly gentleman on his way to Sunday service than the militant man that the FBI had once deemed a threat to the security of the nation.
Gone were the black leather jacket, shined black boots and shotgun of yesteryear.
However, the fiery passion that led Seale to co-found the Black Panther Party with friend Huey P. Newton more than 30 years ago was still present as he spoke to a full house in Eastern Michigan University’s McKenny Union ballroom.
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Bobby Seale |
Seale spoke to students Thursday evening about the creation and evolution of the Black Panther Party.
“The Black Panther Party is a piece of American history,” Seale said.
Unfortunately, it is a piece that is often misrepresented in both history books and film, he added.
The 1995 movie, “Panther,” for instance, is largely fictional. The poetic license directors employed was “tantamount to a bunch of poetic lies,” Seale said, denying any involvement with the film.
According to Seale, the FBI counter intelligence program COINTELPRO did much to distort the Panthers’ purpose, often portraying Huey Newton and him as “a couple of gun-toting chumps that pop up.”
Few individuals to this day know that Seale was an engineer and design major in college, a jazz drummer, a stand-up comedian, and a government employee who worked on the Gemini missile program.
However, despite his schooling, Seale had never heard the term “Afro-American” until he was 26 years old.
“It blew my mind,” he said. “I didn’t know that existed.”
Seale said African-American history was never a subject addressed in school. He jokingly recalled having to read Dick, Jane and Spot stories as a youngster where “the only thing black in the books was the spot on Spot.”
Seale immediately took to reading various books concerning African-American history and black dialect. He also joined a campus organization at Merritt College, where he had been taking various classes.
However, the years following Seale’s initial interest in African-American history were turbulent ones marked by the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X, as well as by the imprisonment of South African activist Nelson Mandela. Upset and angered, Seale felt compelled to do something.
In October 1966, Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party. Together, they wrote the group’s now-famous 10-point platform at Oakland’s War on Poverty office, where Seale was an employee.
The group began as an armed patrol of only 14 people dedicated to the defense of Oakland, Calif., African Americans against rampant police brutality. Panther members patrolled the city with law books, walkie-talkies, tape recorders and, of course, their shotguns, observing on-duty police officers.
“We were about capturing the imagination of the people,” he said.
As the group expanded across the country, it conducted medical clinics and served free breakfasts to schoolchildren.
Seale stressed that the Black Panthers coalesced with every nationality in an effort to rid the country of racist politics.
“I believe in black unity as a catalyst to humanize the world,” he explained.
Seale encouraged attendees to continue the Panther’s work in eliminating racism, reminding them that everyone’s struggles are interconnected.
For more information about Bobby Seale, visit www.bobbyseale.com.