page_title: Bobby Seale
section_title: Black Panthers
hierarchical_section_title: Bobby Seale / Black Panthers
caption_attribution_description: English: &#160; Author/Creator: Seale, Bobby, 1936- Markle, Arnold. Date: 1971. Part of: Robert Templeton Drawings and sketches related to the trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, New Haven, Connecticut. Physical Description: 1 drawing color ill., oil pastels 24.6 x 20.3 cm. Folder or box number: Box 3 Subjects: Black Panther Party. African American political activists. African Americans. Black militant organizations. Black power. Political activists. Trials (Conspiracy) Trials (Kidnapping) Trials (Murder) Connecticut. Superior Court (New Haven County) Genre/Form: Drawings Portraits Pastels (Visual works) Cite as: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository: Beinecke Rare Book &amp; Manuscript Library, Yale University Bibliographic Record Number: 2026730 Call Number: JWJ MSS 33 View our Record: Permalink Flickr data on 2011-08-26: License: CC BY-SA 2.0 User: Beinecke Library
context_page_description: Robert George Seale is an American political activist. He and fellow activist Huey P. Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party.
context_section_description: Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton were heavily inspired by the teachings of activist Malcolm X, who was 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. Before the Black Panther Party, Seale and Newton created a group known as the Soul Students Advisory Council. The group was organized so to allow it to function 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". Seale and Newton then created the Black Panther Party to organize the black community and 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."
  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. 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," a set of guidelines to the Black Panther Party's ideals and ways of operation. Seale and Newton decided to name Newton Minister of Defense and Seale became the Chairman of the party. During his time with the Panthers, he underwent surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of its COINTELPRO program.
  In 1968, Seale wrote Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, published in 1970.
  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. Bobby Seale, while in prison, stated, "To be a Revolutionary is to be an Enemy of the state. To be arrested for this struggle is to be a Political Prisoner." The evidence against Seale was slim, as he was not a participant in the planning for the convention's protest activity and had gone to Chicago as a last-minute replacement for activist Eldridge Cleaver. He had also been in Chicago for only two days of the convention. During the trial, one of Seale's many vociferous protests led Judge Julius Hoffman 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. On November 5, 1969, Judge Hoffman sentenced him to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt, each count for three months of his imprisonment because of his outbursts during the trial, and eventually ordered Seale severed from the case, leading to the proceedings against the remaining defendants being renamed the "Chicago Seven". 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.
  While serving his four-year sentence, Seale was put on trial again in 1970 in the New Haven Black Panther trials. Several officers of the Panther organization had murdered a fellow Panther, Alex Rackley, who had confessed under torture to being a police informant.  The leader of the murder plan, George Sams, Jr., turned state's evidence and testified that Seale, who had visited New Haven only 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, which coi
caption: Seale on trial in 1970, State Attorney Arnold Markle in the background.
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