Founder of the Black Panther Party

Program Title - An Evening With Bobby Seale

Bobby Seale is one of the last surviving architects of one of the most important social change movements in American and African-American history. Along with Huey Newton, he co-founded the Black Panther Party (BPP) in 1966 and was one of the original eight defendants in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. In 1969, Seale was indicted (along with others) for having conspired to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention there. At the trial, he became a national sensation for the inflammatory language and behavior that led the judge to order Seale bound and gagged and to separate his case from that of the others. Ultimately, his case was declared a mistrial, and he was sentenced to four years in prison for contempt of court. Defining himself today as a “revolutionary humanist,” Seale has written three books: Seize the Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton; A Lonely Rage: The Autobiography of Bobby Seale; and Barbeque'n With Bobby Seale.

Taking to the stage with his signature charismatic eloquence, Seale illuminates the birth of the “true” 1960s and the youthful intelligentsia of the BPP. He also extols the philosophical range of the 1960s protest movement, which grew out of student activism, research and dedicated, programmatic community organization. He shows how all civil rights issues today are interconnected and interrelated with environmental problems and global economics.