The Wake

Photo by Joey Peters

As part of a speech at the Coffman Union Theater, Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale called for a broader and more profound progressive movement. In the voice of a veteran revolutionary, he brought up a wide range of issues, many of them on the current national radar.

On Iraq: “We need to end this damn war.” On global warming: “It’s interconnected to every civil rights issue.” On the upcoming Presidential election: “Obama is a very progressive brother. I like sister Hillary Clinton too, although she’s not going to win this one.” On racist crappy politicians: “They categorize you and pin you as something you’re not.”

He talked about filmmaker Carl Franklin’s proposal to have him participate in a six-hour Black Panther HBO documentary. According to Seale, HBO wasn’t willing to contract his literary property.

“I told him, ‘I was kicking Nazis’ asses when you were swimming around in your daddy’s nutsack!” he said.
An iconic figure of the 1960s and early ‘70s, Bobby Seale is known to most as a leader of the pro-black, anti-racist Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, one of the many activist movements that sprang up in the midst of the Civil Rights and anti-war era. Established in Oakland by Seale and Huey P. Newton in 1966, the Black Panthers grew to 48 nationwide chapters and totaled nearly 5,000 members by 1968. At the foundation of the Panthers’ ideology was a ten-point program that called for full employment, decent housing, military service exemption and ultimately freedom, among other things, for all African-Americans.

In 1968, Seale was involved in the mass protests of the Democratic Convention in Chicago. He was soon charged with conspiracy to incite rioting in the “Chicago Eight” trial (later known as the “Chicago Seven” after Judge Julius Hoffman exiled Seale from the case) alongside Youth International Party founders Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and Students for a Democratic Society founders Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis. When Judge Hoffman denied postponing the trial after refusing to allow Seale to represent himself, Seale’s trial outbursts prompted the judge to have him chained, shackled and gagged in the courtroom. It led to what Seale described as “two years of jail without bail.”

During that jail time, Seale was indicted for allegedly ordering the execution of Alex Rackney, a former Black Panther suspected of being a government informant. The case resulted in a hung jury and led to Seale’s release from jail. He returned to Oakland to find the Black Panthers on the verge of destruction after constant infiltration from the FBI’s Counter Intelligence program (COINTELPRO), which aimed to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” organizations of political dissent.

Despite its disintegration, Seale is confident of the Black Panthers’ achievements, mentioning their success in feeding 250,000 poor black kids in the Free Breakfast for School Children Program by 1969. The program prompted then–California State Rep. Willie Brown to push for $5 million worth of free breakfast programs, Seale said.

“It was one of our great grassroots accomplishments,” he said. “It pushed other states to do the same thing.”
While the Panthers were widely seen as militant, Seale said they picked up guns solely for self-defense against police brutality. He pointed out that shootouts never occurred during the Party’s first year of existence and alluded to the support the Party had from the young white left.

“We didn’t care if you were white, black, green, yellow or polka-dot,” he said. “It was all about where your heart, mind and soul was.”

Seale is vehemently critical of the New Black Panther Party, a Black Nationalist organization set up independently of the old Party in the late ‘80s. Seale said they’re antithetical to the original Panther message.

“We’d invite them to events to try to teach them but they don’t want to learn,” he said. “They haven’t set up one community program since 1988 and they call themselves the New Black Panthers? That’s an insult to my dead brothers and political prisoners!”

At 71, Seale’s still pulling for a society of cooperative humanism.

“He’s an animated speaker,” said Jack Spencer, one of the students attending this Black Students Union-sponsored event. “He’s got some important things to say.”