{"id":2858,"date":"2017-02-28T11:36:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T16:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=2858"},"modified":"2017-11-26T19:42:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T00:42:29","slug":"black-panther-bobby-seale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2017\/02\/28\/black-panther-bobby-seale\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Panther Co-Founder Bobby Seale: \u201cWe\u2019d take their arrests, they knew that. But they didn\u2019t come in saying, \u2018You\u2019re under arrest.\u2019\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDr. Martin Luther King came to speak at Oakland, California, the Oakland Auditorium, 7,000 seats, 7,000 people showed up,\u201d Bobby Seale, who co-founded the Black Panthers in 1966, recalled during his talk \u201cPower to the People: An Evening Discussion with Bobby Seale\u201d<\/a> at Lesley University in Cambridge last night.<\/p>\n

Seale said during King\u2019s December 1962 speech, the civil rights leader criticized businesses for refusing to hire people of color, including the producers of Wonder Bread, and called for a boycott. \u201cWe\u2019re going to make Wonder Bread wonder where the money went,\u201d Seale recalled King saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. King inspired me,\u201d Seale said. \u201cDr. King kicked the notion and the feeling in me that I\u2019ve got to go out there and do something about ending this racism, this institutional racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seale got into grassroots organizing, helping start a teen tutoring program. He watched the rise of the Black Power movement. \u201cYou guys aren\u2019t going to get no power until you take over these political power seats,\u201d Seale thought. He wanted to get African-Americans elected to public office, where they could change laws, start programs to help the community, fight racism, and reform police. \u201cI found there were only 50 black people in duly elected office across America in the year of 1965.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/a>
Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale speaking at Lesley University, Feb. 27, 2017. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1966, Seale organized a rally of 700 people at Merritt College, an Oakland community college he had been attending, \u201ctelling young black folks that we\u2019re not going to let us be drafted to fight in Vietnam anymore because this country isn\u2019t recognizing our civil rights.\u201d At the rally, he recited a fiery anti-war poem he\u2019d found called \u201cUncle Sammy Called Me Full of Lucifer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuey [Newton] came at the end of the poem,\u201d Seale recalled. \u201cAnd it blew his mind that I had organized 700 people. That\u2019s the biggest rally that had been organized at Merritt College at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after Newton and Seale were at the University of California, Berkeley. Newton urged him to recite the anti-war poem to passersby on the street. \u201cThe poem has a cuss word in it. I\u2019m telling you that up front. I don\u2019t want y\u2019all to jump up,\u201d Seale warned the Lesley audience as he recounted the anecdote. \u201cI stood by the parking meter. All these people passed by.\u201d He recited the poem. \u201cI stood up on a chair and I could see the Berkeley police department coming into the intersection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seale recited the end of the poem to the Lesley audience: \u201cUncle Sammy, fuck your mama fucking self! I will not serve!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat crowd said, \u2018More! More! More!\u2019 Huey said, \u2018I told ya.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Seale recalled a man in a yellow T-shirt grabbed him, saying, \u201cYou\u2019re using obscene language, you\u2019re under arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know this guy was an undercover officer,\u201d Seale said. So he yelled, \u201cGet your hands off me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNext thing I know, I\u2019m tackled. He hits me in the stomach,\u201d Seale says. \u201cTwo, three underdcovers are kicking my ass.\u201d Huey was boxing the police officers. \u201cMe, I was getting the hell beaten out of me. I thought I was being lynched at the University of California, Berkeley.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLong story short: We went to jail,\u201d Seale said.<\/p>\n

They were quickly bailed out and a judge ordered them to serve probation.<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/a>
Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale speaking at Lesley University, Feb. 27, 2017. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seale said they shortly drew up their \u201c10 Point Platform,\u201d<\/a> finishing it in October 1966. It called for freedom and \u201cthe power to determine the destiny of our black community.\u201d It called for full employment for African-Americans, for housing education, for black men to be except from military service, and for \u201can immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was later we came up with the name Black Panthers,\u201d Seale said.<\/p>\n

Another of the Panthers\u2019 early attention-grabbing actions was \u201cpatrolling the police\u201d\u2014observing police actions in black neighborhoods while the observers themselves were armed with guns. \u201cThe idea for patrolling the police was to try to capture the imagination of the community so I could better organize them,\u201d Seale said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time we decided to patrol the police, we knew every gun law,\u201d Seale says, including that just pointing a loaded weapon at someone could get them arrested on charges of assault with a deadly weapon. So using discipline Seale had learned during his service in the Air Force, they went out armed, but disciplined, he said.<\/p>\n

Around January 1967, \u201cWe went out on 7th Street, a big nightlife place,\u201d Seale said. \u201cFourteen of us, half of us with long guns, half of us with handguns holstered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did believe in the right of peaceful protest,\u201d Seale said. \u201cWhat we said was too many protesters, including our white radical brothers, were getting killed peacefully protesting. We have a right to peaceful protest \u2026 but if you pull guns on us, we will defend ourselves and we will shoot you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seale recalled, \u201cThe cop got out of his car. \u2018You\u2019ve got no right to observe me.\u2019\u201d Newton told the officer the relevant laws that allowed them to do so. \u201cWe were citing the law to the cop.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the policeman tried to take Newton\u2019s gun from him, Seale said. \u201cStep back. You cannot take my weapon,\u201d Newton said in Seale\u2019s recollection. \u201cSome tall black man over here says, \u2018What kind of negro is this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/a>
Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale speaking at Lesley University, Feb. 27, 2017. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Soon California state legislators tried to pass a bill specifically aimed at making the Panther\u2019s armed displays illegal. \u201cHe was trying to pass a bill to stop us from patrolling the community armed with guns and law books,\u201d Seale said. \u201cIt was very important we knew the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Panthers went to the state capital in Sacramento to protest\u2014again armed with rifles and shotguns. \u201cThey actually led me to the floor of the Assembly. I was looking for the spectator section,\u201d Seale said. \u201cThey arrested my people, arrested us all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving led that armed delegation, they put me in jail for six months. That\u2019s all they could give me at the time,\u201d Seale said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Capital,\u201d Seale said, the Black Panthers became an international sensation. \u201cWe went world wide.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Seale was released, Newton had gotten into a shootout with police that left Newton wounded, one officer dead, and Newton charged with murder. \u201cWe proved in court that Huey was shot first by Officer Frey,\u201d Seale said. Seale recounted his apartment subsequently being raided by police in the early morning hours and he and his wife being arrested. He recounted confrontations with Neo-Nazis who challenged their office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Dr. King was killed, young folks flooded my organization,\u201d Seale said. \u201cSeven months later Richard Nixon was elected to office.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/a>
Black Panther Minister of Culture Emory Douglas speaking at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Jan. 20, 2017. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Panthers offered free breakfast programs, free sickle cell anemia testing, free health clinics. They organized voter registration drives and supported Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm\u2019s 1972 campaign for U.S. president. Other branches across the U.S. took up these programs and with encouragement from the Oakland headquarters launched their own\u2014a free ambulance, a free pest control program, and so on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe related to the whole multicultural formula, which really boils down to a class struggle between the people and \u2026 the avaricious money class,\u201d Seale said.<\/p>\n

The Panther community programs \u201cgave us character, that gave us unity in the community,\u201d Seale said. They found great support in the black community, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe breakfast program really took off and really represented what we meant,\u201d Seale said. It inspired the state of California to launch its own free meals program for school students. \u201cIn the next year, 28 state legislatures across the United States of America voted to do something similar. My point is that we were on the right road.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, Seale said, FBI Director \u201cJ. Edgar Hoover jumps on the national horn: \u2018The Black Panther breakfast program is a threat to the internal security of America.\u2019 How do you get that?\u201d And President Richard Nixon pressed Hoover to oppose the Panthers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe told these brothers and sisters how to fortify their offices. And they came and attacked us,\u201d Seale said. \u201cBy the end of \u201969, I had 29 dead Black Panthers and 69 wounded.\u201d Among them was 21-year-old Illinois chapter chairman Fred Hampton, who was murdered by police in a midnight raid in December 1969 in which officers burst in shooting into a Chicago apartment in which several Panthers were sleeping. Over that year, Seale said, 12 police officers were also killed and 39 wounded in these confrontations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d take their arrests, they knew that,\u201d Seale said. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t come in saying, \u2018You\u2019re under arrest.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDr. Martin Luther King came to speak at Oakland, California, the Oakland Auditorium, 7,000 seats, 7,000 people showed up,\u201d Bobby Seale, who co-founded the Black Panthers in 1966, recalled during his talk \u201cPower to the People: An Evening Discussion with Bobby Seale\u201d at Lesley University in Cambridge last night. Seale said during King\u2019s December 1962 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[74,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3985,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions\/3985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}