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Dennis Murphy

For the students, by the students

Cultural Awareness Week Sponsors Bobby Seal, An Distinguishing Leader
By Joe Wilson, Corner Post Staff

Black Panthers founder, Bobby Seale spoke Oct. 4 at Jesse Auditorium as part of a cultural awareness week. The Panthers were young African Americans with little distinguishing them from any one else except they carried guns and went looking for the police. They were educated and knew the law; the police and the FBI hated them.

Bobby Seale founded the Black Panthers after getting out of jail in 1966. While in prison Seale wrote a ten point program that focused on equality and civil rights under the law. Knowledge of the law and civil rights formed the backbone of the Panthers.

Seale’s friend Huey Newton researched California gun laws and police observation. Newton found it was legal to carry loaded weapons within the city limits and to observe police officers from “a reasonable distance.” The Panthers went out looking for arrests being made to fill in officers on the laws they were not following and to inform the arrested what their rights were.

“We were so damn legal it was a crying shame,” said Seale. Seale and the Panthers presence irritated the police. The Panthers knew the laws better than them and weren’t afraid to correct them.

Seale and the Panthers became more powerful after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. After MLK died, it is said the peaceful civil rights protest era ended. The Panthers grew to 48 chapters across the country; the time for armed protest had come.

Each chapter covered a city and that chapter coalesced with any progressive group within the city. The Panthers were not militant anti-white radicals, as some would have them painted. They were a highly progressive group that did a lot of good. At one point the Panthers breakfast program fed more American children than the U.S. government.

Their progressive actions drew the eye of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. Throughout 1969 and later, the police and Federal officers attacked Black Panther buildings across the country. The FBI did everything possible to discredit Seale. They went so far as to list women within the Panther organization that Newton had had relations with while separated from his wife.

Seale, Newton and the Panthers fought for a progressive society in the 1960s. Seale says that by electing progressive politicians through grass roots political movements, unifying special interest groups and adding progressive referendum not affiliated to business, society can be improved.

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