Bobby Seale looked at me stonily, wearily. He had spoken for an hour on the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966, and then had spent another 60 minutes signing his 1996 book “Seize the Time.”
And here I was pouncing on him to get his take on the high prices that some Panther-related memorabilia was selling for at auction – a question I’m sure no one else had asked him that day. In the past five years, Panther posters, photos and other documents have sold exceedingly well.
He was having none of it, though, but I was insistent (that was the reporter in me). He was not surprised at the prices, he said, still trying to get away. “You should go to California. It’s viciously high out there with all that old stuff.”
Old stuff, but isn’t it also historical? “I know it’s historical,” he said. “It’s old stuff in the context of being historical.” He didn’t know enough about the items to “make commentary on it,” he added. So I finally left him alone as he waited for someone to get him out of the place.
Gone was the man who had stood on the stage at the annual Black History & Culture Showcase, and joked, mocked and imitated some of the people he had encountered in the early years of the organization. Now, he seemed to be just plain tired, and wanted to get away.
“The chairman is almost 80 years old,” explained Cyril Innis Jr., who joined the Panthers in 1968 and was selling Panther memorabilia at the event held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. “It’s good that he came to this event. He talked and told about the party, but after a while after signing all that stuff, chairman was like ‘I’m through.’ I have to say the chairman was tired. I know he’s not like that.”
It’s hard to picture Bobby Seale as a senior citizen (he’s 79 years old), not when you see the vibrant and brash young man in black leather jacket and beret staring out at you in posters and photos in Innis’ large display laid out on tables and propped against the walls and tables in his vendor space.
Seale is the only one left of the big names we associate with the Black Panther Party. Huey P. Newton was found shot to death on an Oakland, CA, street in 1989. Another early and well-known member, Eldridge Cleaver, died in 1998.
Seale is revered for what he and the party meant and did nearly 50 years ago, so much so that the audience gave him standing ovations before and after his speech. His tone was measured and his message not as defiant as I had expected. He seemed almost conciliatory, urging such groups as Black Likes Matter to build coalitions with other organizations that support their positions.
“Don’t go around saying ‘no whites can come.’ You want everyone to be involved against racism,” Seale said, noting that there were few black elected officials around with which to form coalitions when the party was formed. “There are positive progressive brothers and sisters in these political seats. We can change stuff, we can shift stuff. We can make a difference (now).”
The Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966 and lasted for 10 years, Seale said. “Huey Newton tried to make it seem like he started it,” said Seale, mentioning Newton’s 1973 autobiography “Revolutionary Suicide.” “He called himself the ‘supreme commander.'”
An iconic poster of Newton in a wicker fan-back chair with a spear and shotgun from the 1967 sold at auction for $16,000 in 2011 (it was the first and subsequent copies did not sell for as much). It was one of the items that I wanted to ask Seale about, along with artwork by Emory Douglas that graced the covers of the Black Panther newspaper, along with other documents.
According to Seale, it was he – who was seven to eight years older that Newton – who commanded Newton to go to law school to learn the laws that party members would need to defend themselves when carrying guns or observing police in their community.
Most histories on the founding of the party credit both men. Seale noted in his speech that the two of them created the party’s 10-point plan.
He was a church-goer listening to preachings of “hell and damnation,” Seale said, until he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Oakland. “He wasn’t talking about hell and damnation,” Seale said. “He was talking about companies not hiring people of color.”
“The next thing I know I done quit my job just to work in the community,” he said. He organized tutorial and jobs programs, registered as a nonprofit organization and got matching funds from foundations before forming the party.
The Black Panther Party was never meant to be a novelty, Seale said. He did research – even closely reading the Declaration of Independence – before he and Newton wrote the 10-point plan. And members were trained.
“As a Panther, we had to study,” remembered Innis. “We studied American politics” as well as international politics and how to follow the money.
Seale said that he insisted that party members bathe, dress appropriately and let one person speak while they were on the streets. “I want you to be neat because we represent the organization,” he told them.
One of the most important lessons was the importance of voting and what it could accomplish. Every party event included voter registration. “Brothers were saying ‘‘We want Black Power,'” Seale said. “You can’t get Black Power until you get some political power. To get the power you have to vote. … They didn’t know politics.”
Party members openly carried guns, which was legal in the state of California. Seale had an Army 45 strapped on his side, and Newton carried a shotgun. Since Newton was in law school at night, he was called on to quote the law when police tried to hassle them as they observed arrests.
Seale said the party gained national and international notoriety after an armed delegation entered a session of the California State Legislature in 1967 while it was considering a bill prohibiting citizens from carrying loaded guns in public. The bill was aimed at the Panthers; it passed.
When King was killed, the membership swelled to 5,000 people, Seale said, and more chapters were formed throughout the country. He noted that two-thirds of the party leadership were women, including Kathleen Cleaver.
The party’s tactics did not go unnoticed, and law enforcement and Panthers warred with each other. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and local police went after them – infiltrating them, raiding their headquarters, and attacking and killing some of their leaders. Seale talked about the notorious murder of Panther Fred Hampton, who with several others were killed in their beds by the Chicago police in 1969 with intel from the FBI. Panthers and police were involved in shootouts, with casualties on both sides.
At an auction once, another auction-goer gave me a 1970 newsprint photo of local members of the Philadelphia branch who had been disrobed, handcuffed and arrested. The raid was made under orders of then–Police Commissioner (later mayor) Frank Rizzo after a police officer was killed and Rizzo suspected party members. Some other photos showed the men naked.
When he lived in Philadelphia, Seale noted, he got to know some police officers and state troopers whom he associated with. Living in Philadelphia in the 1980s, he wrote a barbecue cookbook, participated in the campaign to elect Wilson Goode as mayor, worked at Temple University and ran a youth program.
The Black Panther Party splintered in the early 1970s, with COINTELPRO among one of the reasons, according to Innis. COINTELPRO was an FBI operation to discredit political organizations and movements it considered anti-American, including the civil rights movement.
Innis said he joined the party after learning more about his own history. He was among a group of people offering programs at the Malcolm X Community Center in Corona, Queens, when they were approached by the Jamaica (NY) Branch of the party to join the Panthers.
Some of the photos in his exhibit are from the trial of the Panther 21, members who in 1969 were accused of planning a series of bombings in the city. They were acquitted in 1971.
A photographer gave him the negatives of photos shot on the streets outside the courtroom, Innis said.
“I was into knowing my history,” he said of why he kept some of the items. “I sat on this for a long while. I didn’t do anything with it (until he started exhibiting the items in the 1990s).”
