Robert George "Bobby" Seale (22 October 1936-) was an African-American political activist and author who co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 and was one of the eight men tried in relation to the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, Illinois, despite having nothing to do with those particular anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
Biography[]
Seale in 1968
Robert George Seale was born in Liberty, Texas on 22 October 1936, and he was raised in Dallas, San Antonio, and Port Arthur before his family moved to Oakland, California in 1944 amid the Great Migration. He joined the US Air Force in 1955 and was dishonorably discharged for fighting with a commanding officer at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and he proceeded to work as a sheet metal mechanic. While a student at Merritt Community College, he joined the black separatist Afro-American Association (AAA), and he came to meet Huey P. Newton and Bobby Hutton and co-founded the Black Panther Party with them in 1966. They adopted the late Malcolm X's slogan "by any means necessary" as their rallying cry, organizing the African-American community to fight against racism and classism in a Marxist and black nationalist struggle. He was arrested in connection with the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, which he had not taken part in, and he was one of the "Chicago Eight" charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot by Judge Julius Hoffman. Seale was apparently only charged with such crimes to scare the jury into convicting the other, all-white defendants, and Seale's vocal protests against Judge Hoffman throwing him into the same trial led to the judge ordering that Seale be forcibly gagged. On 5 November 1969, Judge Hoffman sentenced Seale to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt, and he was released in 1972 after his sentence was overturned.
Seale went on to run for Mayor of Oakland in 1973, losing the run-off to incumbent Mayor John H. Reading. In 1974, he quit the party after being severely beaten and whipped by Newton and his guards during an argument over Newton's plans to make a movie about the Black Panthers, and he wrote an autobiography in 1988, appeared in several documentaries, and became an author.
Gallery[]
